When Vasco da Gama landed in 1498 in Calicut, the premier trading centre on the Indian Malabar Coast, resident Muslim merchants informed the king of Calicut that the Portuguese possessed little that the Indians might ever want or need. They advised the king that the newcomers were little more than pirates, quite prepared to take what they wanted by force if necessary. The warning was as accurate as it was ominous.

Predominant Winds and Explorers' Routes
Vasco da Gama navigates the Atlantic and Indian Oceans to reach Asia

© 2000 The Applied History Research Group and The Learning Commons, University of Calgary
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The European Voyages of Exploration: The Sea-Route to India & Vasco da Gama

In terms of both their cargoes and their intents, the new visitors differed sharply from the Ming Chinese explorers who had stopped at Calicut earlier in the century. Both the Portuguese and Chinese expeditions reflected a complex inventory of economic and political motives. Both expeditions had been mounted to extend their respective patrons' trade presence in the Indian Ocean. However, the ultimate aim of the Treasure Ship visit was to establish nominal Chinese political suzerainty on the Malabar Coast of India. Moreover, this aspiration evaporated abruptly in 1433, when the Ming government cancelled plans for future expeditions to the Indian Ocean. By contrast, soon after da Gama left Calicut, the Portuguese embarked on an organised military campaign of terrorism in the area. Storming trade centres in East Africa, India and Southeast Asia, they erected their own forts and colonies in strategic locales in a successful bid to turn the western portion of the ecumenical trading zone into a mercantile empire of conquest.

One incident that took place during da Gama's visit to Calicut provides some insight into the aggressive stance that the Portuguese took towards the traders, merchants and rulers of the Indian Ocean/Southeast Asian trade community. When the Ming commander Cheng Ho visited the Malabar Coast in the early 1400s, he enticed the king of Calicut to establish tribute relations with China by presenting him with much sought-after oriental treasures such as porcelain, lacquer, and silk. The cargo of goods that Vasco de Gama presented the king was mundane by comparison. On examining da Gama's striped cloth, scarlet hoods, oil, honey, washbasins and sugar, Calicut's ruler reportedly laughed, suggesting that the Portuguese admiral return with gold if he wished to buy the spices and other Eastern commodities he had come for.

Clearly, the Portuguese had a commercial problem. Membership in the ecumenical trading zone had long been open to traders of many cultural backgrounds. The Portuguese, however, lacked anything of much interest to trade with Easterners. Even the gold to which they had access in Western Africa was inadequate in quantity to sustain their commercial ambitions. This trade imbalance helps to explain why the Portuguese commercial objective in the Indian Ocean evolved quickly into a bald military campaign to usurp the riches of coastal trade centres like Kilwa and Malacca, and completely control commerce throughout the East.

Geography, the traditional enmity between the rival Christian and Islamic religions, and indigenous Portuguese attitudes towards trade and commerce all fed Portugal's determination to enrich its economy and extend its political domain with sword and gun. The Islamic monopoly of the western segment of the Indian Ocean trade had long precluded direct Portuguese participation in the profitable Indian Ocean trade consortium. Goods that filtered through a succession of middlemen in the Islamic Red Sea and Persian Gulf ports, Alexandria, and the Italian ports commanded intolerable prices by the time they reached the Atlantic hinterland. Regarding themselves as champions of Christendom, moreover, the Portuguese saw their efforts to break the Muslim stranglehold on trade in the western Indian Ocean as a religious crusade.

As they geared up for their maritime excursions along the African coast, the Portuguese tapped both the military traditions of the local feudal aristocracy, which had long been involved in commercial enterprises, and the expertise of Italian merchants and traders living in Lisbon. Both Venice and Genoa had established successful commercial empires in the Mediterranean partly through coercive tactics.

In combination, these various factors helped generate attitudes and behaviours that made little distinction between trade, plunder and politics. It was this lethal model of cultural contact that Portuguese crews carried with them when they sailed their caravels around the coast of Africa in the closing years of the fifteenth century.