Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire Kindle Edition

Everyone knows that in 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue. Less well known, but dramatically more important in the near term, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa and into the Indian Ocean in 1498. It was a triumph of seafaring and endurance that had the effect of a hydrogen bomb being dropped on the vibrant East Indian economy.By the end of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese, led by their ambitious king Dom Manuel, were propelled by “a high-octane mixture of prickly pride, reckless courage and a desire for glory, linked to crusading fever.” Portuguese vessels probed the coast of Africa looking for an inland river passage to the Indies and searching for the mythical Christian king, Prester John, all in a hope of attacking the Muslim world from the rear. “The idea of outflanking Islam’s grip on Europe was both economical and political,” Crowley writes. The Portuguese were indefatigable in their endurance and their willingness to push themselves over the edge of the known world and spread the Christian faith.Columbus’s voyage took just one month; Gama’s took seven and consumed nearly two thirds of his crew. This first voyage of just four ships was for reconnaissance purposes only, both economic and religious. Gama was startled to find that “it was Europe that was ignorant and isolated,” Crowley says, not the East Indians. Unlike Columbus, Gama had stumbled into a highly sophisticated and high functioning society; a poly-ethnic free trades zone that operating openly and efficiently. The Hindu leaders and Muslim traders of the Indian Malabar coast turned up their noses at the trifles Gama had brought as trade items. He tried to assure them that his was only an exploratory expedition; the Portuguese would be back with more ships and more goods. It was a promise the locals should have taken as a dire warning.A mere six months after Gama returned home to Lisbon another Portuguese fleet, this time of 13 ships brimming with valuable trade goods, set sail for the Indian Ocean. It was an expedition “aimed at winning material advantages and the crusading admiration of the Catholic world.” The Portuguese were not returning with the goal of mixing harmoniously with the current ebb and flow of the established spice trade. They were coming to dominate the region, shutting down the long established trade route through the Red Sea that supplied Venice and Genoa with her goods. They weren’t going to rely on any superior trade route to win; they were going to rely on superior European firepower. They weren’t coming to outcompete the Muslim traders; they were coming to destroy them. “They came with intemperate demands for spices and for the expulsion of the deep-rooted Muslim community,” Crowley says, “they flouted the taboo of Hindu culture and backed up their threats with traumatic acts of violence beyond the acceptable rules of war.”The existing network of trading centers on both the Swahili east coast of Africa and the southern Malabar Coast of India didn’t know what hit them. “Metronomically, year after year, fleets were despatched and returned.” The Portuguese came to trade. The Portuguese came to kill. The innovations they brought from Europe weren’t commercial; they were military, especially bronze cannon and the Swiss pike infantry formation. Like in the New World, a small handful of men were able to conquer as if they were an invading horde. “Santiago!” was their battle cry.The Portuguese were merciless. A Muslim ship loaded with men, women and children returning from the Hajj was butchered in 1502. The trading port of Chaul was razed in 1508. A Muslim fleet sent out by the Mamluks of Cairo to confront the Portuguese was annihilated in 1509. A few hundred well-trained and fanatical “soldier-merchants” captured the cosmopolitan eastern trading hub of Malacca in 1511. By 1513, the Portuguese had brazenly entered the Red Sea putting Mecca and Cairo in a panic. “A trading system that had endured for centuries was being bombed into submission,” Crowley writes. Portuguese firepower and a crusading religious zeal proved an irresistible combination. However, it almost seems as though domination of the spice trade was of secondary importance to the wholesale destruction of Islam’s presence in the Indian Ocean.Meanwhile, Lisbon was awash in money – lots of money. Exotic animals of the east, such as a white elephant and a rhinoceros, were paraded through the streets to gawking onlookers. King Dom Manuel embarked on an ambitious building program. Tiny, sleepy Lisbon, just a generation ago a third-rate city on the fringes of Europe, was muscling out Venice as the premier trade hub of the entire Mediterranean world. “The city was a swirl of colour,” Crowley writes, “a febrile gold rush of floating populations of many races and colours.”Crowley does an excellent job telling the story in a tightly constructed chronological narrative. He excels at developing characters and putting human faces to dramatic human events. No man looms larger in Crowley’s story than Alfonso de Albuquerque, the governor of Portuguese India from 1506 to 1515, the so-called Lion of the Sea. “[I]ntelligent, fearless, incorruptible and strategically brilliant … Albuquerque oversaw everything, ruled everything, worked tirelessly,” Crowley gushes. He hails Albuquerque for developing a revolutionary concept of empire. Relying on a powerful, flexible fleet and a network of defensible coastal fortifications, Albuquerque was able to forge, with never more than a few thousand men, the first European empire in Asia since Alexander the Great. “With his long white beard and his frightening demeanor,” Crowley writes, “he was regarded across the Indian Ocean with superstitious awe.”In sum, “The Conquerors” is another gem in Crowley’s crown of popular histories about the medieval Mediterranean world. If you enjoyed “1453” or “City of Fortune” you won’t be disappointed here.

The book is good for someone who is a novice and interested in learning about how Portugal grew in world influence during the age of discovery. At times, I especially valued when the author took a more high level view of the events and happenings with the various new lands and peoples discovered, and the impact they all had on the quest for trade domination. However, I also found the book a bit too detailed in battle descriptions with all the battles and players fighting "with great valor". It reminded me much of reading the Iliad, with all the characters and their actions in battle.Finally, I wish the author would have completed the full story to include the fall of the Portuguese empire and not just leave it to the epilogue to talk of the fall.Overall I give a 5 star for insight, which is valuable and a 3 star for writing style, reading flow and balanced content, hence a 4 star.

This was a fascinating book about history of Portugal. I will be traveling on vacation to the country soon so I wanted to read about the history, culture, religion etc The author did a great job in sharing engaging stories and first hand accounts on the Portuguese journey in reaching India and the Spice route.I highly recommend this book and look forward to reading other books from this author.

Portugal’s history in India and the Far East shows how commercial expansion usually drove European exploration, not some militaristic impulse at conquest. The expeditions’ leaders were, admittedly, not nice people, but neither were those they encountered. This is an interesting, very readable history, seen neither through rosy spectacles nor West-bashing lenses.

This book has it all--adventure, geography, history, you name it. It's helping me learn more about that part of the world. I'm in awe of not only the courage but also the cruelty of the Portuguese explorers. Of course we (the U. S.) never did any massacres (ha!!). You won't regret reading this book.

Having visited and lived in the areas whose history this book covers, I could instantly relate to it. The book is fascinating, entertaining and delightful reading, yet every so often I felt that it came up a bit short.Crowley heavily emphasizes the indisputable ruthless brutality the Portuguese used against Muslims, which originated in the Portuguese wars to free their country from Muslim occupation, without ever describing whether they suffered similar brutality under their occupiers and there might have been an element of self defense to their behavior. As Crowley does seem at times to subtly be judging them, this seems unfair.Similarly Crowley describes the at times amazingly brutal Portuguese conduct in India and modern day Malaysia, but doesn’t describe how the humanely or not so humanely the inhabitants had habitually treated each other, making it impossible to put their behavior into an informative context. Is he willfully being unfair, subtly yet gleefully engaging in the leyenda negra? The reader can only guess. As life was long incredibly cheap in most parts of Asia, my guess is yes.At least in the kindle edition, pictures of the sights mentioned in the book like the Jeronimos monastery, the fort in Hormuz and buildings in Goa would have been a significant enrichment and trivial expense, as would a brief description of the Portuguese occupation of Bahrain.Lastly he describes priests on a ship celebrating “masses without consecration;” there is no such thing. Without consecration, there are prayer services but no mass ever. This makes me wonder if he and his editors missed or misunderstood other facts as well.As a highly entertaining introduction to the history for readers with less than very high standards I would warmly recommend this book, albeit, as always, with advice to read it critically.

I love history, and this is one of the best written I have read. It is very informative, but reads like a novel. One gets a feel for the personality and motivation of the main protagonists which makes it far more readable than most other history books which tend to be a compilation of facts. I will definitely buy other novels written by this author.

One first history books that kept me wanting more in a long time

Learn everything you need to know about the earliest explorers from Europe. Written as if you were on the ships that first crossed the world and covers the most important age of Portugal s expansion that changed the world as we know it. Great read before you go to Lisbon because it adds so much historic context to the city's squares, castles and even the famous pastries. I will never look at Pastéis de nata the same again.

Ho comprato quest Libro in inglese poiché in italiano non l’ho trovato, motivo per cui dono ancora a meta.Comunque molto interessante e scorrevole, a volte un po’ troppo descrittivo, ma ben scritto.Lo consiglio a chi piace il genere storico

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