Portugal maintained a commercial monopoly of these commodities for several decades. The main spices from Southeast Asia were pepper and cinnamon, but soon included other products, all new to Europe. Unopposed access to the Indian spice routes boosted the economy of the Portuguese Empire, which was previously based along northern and coastal West Africa.
The sum of the distances covered in the outward and return voyages made his expedition the longest ocean voyage ever made until then.Īfter decades of sailors trying to reach the Indies, with thousands of lives and vessels lost in shipwrecks and attacks, da Gama landed in Calicut on. Traveling the ocean route allowed the Portuguese to avoid sailing across the highly disputed Mediterranean and traversing the dangerous Arabian Peninsula. The violence and hostage-taking employed by Da Game and those who followed also assigned a brutal reputation to the Portuguese among India’s indigenous kingdoms that would set the pattern for western colonialism in the Age of Exploration. This is widely considered to be a milestone in world history as it marked the beginning of a sea-based discovery of the sea route to India which opened the way for an age of global imperialism which enabled the Portuguese to establish a long-lasting colonial empire along the way from Africa to Asia.
His initial voyage to India was via the Cape of Good Hope from 1497 – 1499, so he was the first seafarer to link Europe and Asia by an ocean route, connecting the Atlantic and the Indian oceans and therefore, the West and the Orient. This Portuguese explorer/seafarer was born between 14 and died on 24 December 1525 and he was the first European to reach India by sea.
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