Vasco da Gama

Vasco da Gama by H. Reade Reade, H. Vasco Da Gama. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1898, 589–604. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25208011 This biography of Vasco da Gama was identified in a project to collect early historical descriptions of scurvy. Symptoms consistent with scurvy were recorded during the first voyage of Vasco da Gama. Charles Nowell (1940) criticized several earlier biographies of Vasco da Gama and commented that the biography by H. Reade was “Somewhat better”.1 However, the version available through the above link is particularly difficult to read and therefore this easy-to-read version was made. This text is available at: https://doi.org/ 10.5281/zenodo.17779398 2025-12-1 This annotated version was prepared by: Harri Hemilä, University of Helsinki, Finland https://www.mv.helsinki.fi/home/hemila https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4710-307X https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=hemila+h https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=2mkomzUAAAAJ https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.17085738 Reports on scurvy uploaded to Zenodo by Harri Hemilä. 1https://doi.org/10.2307/2506808 https://www.jstor.org/stable/2506808 1 Biographies of Vasco da Gama and summaries of the first voyage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasco_da_Gama https://www.britannica.com/biography/Vasco-da-Gama https://exploration.marinersmuseum.org/subject/vasco-da-gama/ The Fourth Centenary of Vasco da Gama’s Voyage to India (1898) https://doi.org/10.2307/1774494 Vasco da Gama (1898) https://www.jstor.org/stable/25208011 The Fourth Centenary of the Death of Vasco Da Gama (1925) https://doi.org/10.2307/1782341 Vasco da Gama–First Count of Vidigueira (1940) https://doi.org/10.2307/2506808 A Mediaeval Navigator: Vasco da Gama (1944) https://www.jstor.org/stable/717806 Discovery of the Sea-Route to India (1982) https://www.jstor.org/stable/45071773 Vasco da Gama and Africa: An Era of Mutual Discovery, 1497-1800 (1998) https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078728 Da Gama’s Blundering: Trade Encounters in Africa and Asia during the European ‘Age of Discovery,’ 1450-1520 (1998) https://doi.org/10.2307/494876 Vasco da Gama’s Voyage: Myths and Realities in Maritime History (2003) https://www.jstor.org/stable/41105193 Did Vasco da Gama Matter for European Markets? (2009) https://www.jstor.org/stable/20542963 Vasco da Gama and his successors: 1460-1580 (1910) https://archive.org/details/vascodagamahissu00jayn/page/32/mode/2up https://archive.org/details/vascodagamahissu00jaynuoft/page/32/mode/2up The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama by Sanjay Subrahmanyam (1997; Book reviews) https://doi.org/10.1086/235226 (p.223-224) https://doi.org/10.1177/084387149901100222 https://doi.org/10.2307/2543592 https://doi.org/10.2307/2651265 https://doi.org/10.2307/2659376 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20078794 https://www.jstor.org/stable/206259 https://www.jstor.org/stable/24424663 https://www.jstor.org/stable/27586624 https://www.jstor.org/stable/40107945 https://www.jstor.org/stable/41105073 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4407158 https://www.jstor.org/stable/4407158 2 Reade, H. Vasco Da Gama. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland, 1898, 589–604. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25208011 ART. XXIV. — Vasco da Gama. By H. READE, F.R.G.S. VASCO DA GAMA, though not a man of words, was, as p.589 Camoens2 says, a man of strenuous deeds, and it is for the sake of his deeds, and of the results which during four centuries have flowed from them, that we are now commemorating him. We celebrate in him the man whose courage and perseverance gave India to Europe and to England, and who, all unknowingly, was, with Columbus and Magellan, one of the three men who saved the Europe of the Renaissance and of the Reformation from being laid in ruins by Turkish tyranny seconded by French treachery. Had not Columbus and Da Gama, twenty years before the battle of Mohacs3 and the successes of Barbarossa4 in the Mediterranean, bestowed upon Spain and Portugal the riches of Asia and America, Charles V could never have hurled back from the German frontiers and the Italian coasts the all but overwhelming inrush of the hordes of Suleiman the Magnificent.5 But what could the defenders of Christendom have done save for the coffers of the Fuggers6 and the Welsers,7 of the bankers of Antwerp and the bankers of Genoa? and whence did these derive their wealth but from the newly-opened Spice Islands of the East and the newfound gold-mines of the West? By discovering the sea road to India, Vasco da Gama made Lisbon and Antwerp the emporia8 of the world. In 1517 the Turks conquered Egypt, and thus closed the last of the roads along which the world’s wealth had of old passed from East to West. But twentyfive years earlier the loss of this Eastern trade would have paralyzed the strength of Germany and of Italy, at the very moment when the fall of Hungary and the treason of Francis I were to leave the walls of Vienna and Doria’s p.590 galleys as the only bulwarks between Turkish savagery and the printing-presses of Basle, the studios glowing with the canvasses of Titian, and the universities where the germs of our modern civilization were just bursting into vigorous life. But the tender plant of culture did not thus perish. Thanks to Vasco da Gama, who had formed new trade 2https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lu%C3%ADs_de_Cam%C3%B5es 3https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Moh%C3%A1cs 4https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayreddin_Barbarossa 5https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suleiman_the_Magnificent 6https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fugger_family 7https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welser_family 8 Emporium. A large retail store selling a wide variety of goods. 3 routes far beyond the reach of the Sultan’s power, Europe at this most critical moment was not deprived of the riches of the East. “The Kings of the Isles could still send their presents, Arabia and Saba could still bear their gifts” to the foot of the Cross; and thus strengthened, Europe was able to stand up against the utmost efforts of her foes. Vasco da Gama, then, was one of the chief saviours of our modern civilization, nor need I remind you how in later years Holland drew from her Eastern trade the strength which enabled her to break the yoke of Louis XIV from off the neck of Europe, nor bow the wealth of India in the hands of England helped her to free our continent from the tyranny of Napoleon. Vasco da Gama was not only a saviour of civilization; with Albuquerque9 and Almeida10 he was one of the first pioneers on the road which, in the end, led England to her Empire in the East. He it was who taught Europe how to conquer and how to hold the East. To the detriment of his own country he failed to teach Europe a lesson she has not yet learned, and which, perhaps, will never be learned by any race of Latin or of Teutonic11 blood. He failed to perceive how Europe was to rule Asia sympathetically and with the consent of the Asiatics, and his failure in the end cost Portugal the Empire he had won her in the East. Yet Vasco da Gama was the first discoverer of the true means of utilizing sea power as the foundation of a colonial empire. He clearly saw that when a commercial nation can send its goods more cheaply by sea than by land, and at the same time fails to maintain an efficient fleet, its independence is practically at the mercy of any power which can, by means of its navy, control the routes along which those goods are conveyed to their markets. Knowing, p.591 as he did full well, the unchanging meteorological and oceanographic conditions of the Indian Ocean, he clearly saw that by stationing a few caravels on the trade routes into which these conditions forced the clumsy vessels of Ormuz, of Jeddah, and of Tor, and by securing for these caravels a fortified port—he only asked for one, Calicut,12 Cochin,13 or Cranganor14—to which they could withdraw at need, Portugal might secure for herself the control of the whole coastline of the Asiatic and of the African world, and with the control of the coastline that of the vast hinterlands, whose well-being depended upon the unchecked flow of trade through their natural ports. These hinterlands she could rule indirectly through their native kings, 9https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afonso_de_Albuquerque 10 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francisco_de_Almeida 11 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teutons 12 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kozhikode 13 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kochi 14 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodungallur 4 secure in her knowledge that she could at any time enforce the unquestioning obedience of her vassals, by closing the trade routes by which they lived. His theories were carried into practice, and eleven years after his discovery of India the victory of Chaul15 transferred the sceptre of the world’s commerce from Egypt and from Venice to Portugal. The discovery of the value of those factories, which in his day served all the purposes of our modern coaling stations, is also mainly due to Vasco da Gama. Look out on the map the former seats of Portuguese power. You will see that they correspond, for the most part, as nearly as the requirements of those days will allow, with the strategic points which are of prime importance in the eyes of our naval scientists to-day. In the sixteenth century, sheltered ports of a moderate depth, which could be reached without the necessity of contending with adverse currents, or with adverse winds, were those best fitted to meet the wants of the Portuguese seamen, and so it comes to pass that the only world centre of any actual importance which was known to but left unoccupied by them was Table Bay; probably they failed to annex it because their heavy carracks were ill-suited for struggling on to India against the Mozambique current, or for beating up against the gales which so often rage around the Cape of Storms.16 But to look elsewhere, it is p.592 only since the introduction of our modern steamships, that is to say, for all practical purposes, within the last thirty years, that, on the East African Coast, Delagoa Bay, Beira, and Zanzibar have replaced Sofala, Mozambique, Kilwa, Mombassa, and Melinde as important centres. Now, of these five, four were chosen by Vasco da Gama and his predecessor, Pero de Covilham,17 as suitable sites for Portuguese factories; nor were their selections less happy on the Indian coast. It is true that the naval power of Timoja18 forced Da Gama to refrain from occupying Goa; but Calicut, and even Cochin, were far more suitable centres than Bombay would have been for the spice trade with the Further East; and, indeed, Bombay could only rise into importance when the enterprise of Waghorn had established steam communication with Suez, and when 15 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Chaul 16 The Portuguese, through not occupying Table Bay, lost the command of the healthy routes which lend thence into the interior of Africa, and were thus forced to content themselves with ports which are separated from the plateaux of the interior by “Fly Belts’’ and marshes. This is probably the explanation of their failure as colonists in Africa to which Lord Loch has alluded. Mossamedes, the one really healthy port in Portuguese Africa, was completely off the route taken by ships going to India. Mossamedes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo%C3%A7%C3%A2medes 17 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%AAro_da_Covilh%C3%A3 18 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timoji 5 the railway had been carried through the Western Ghats. In our great-grandfathers’ day, Madras and Surat, the successor of Cambay, were far more important to our trade than was the “Good Bay” which had passed to Englund in the dowry of Catherine of Braganzu. Yet even more important results of Vasco da Gama’s voyage remains to be mentioned. Portugal was in the fifteenth century the one world power whose genius fitted her to serve us an intermediary between the East and the West. France, England, and Germany, wasted by centuries of foreign war and of civil broils, and as yet but little civilized in comparison with the nations of Southern Europe, were in no ways fitted to undertake the task of colonizing lands densely peopled with races which in many respects were far more civilized than themselves. The hard, unyielding temper of the Teutonic races had sufficiently shown its inability to adapt itself to altered conditions and p.593 surroundings in Ireland, in Poland, in Bohemia, and in the Baltic provinces. Italy, a nation of statesmen, of bankers, and of merchants, was divided into a crowd of rival states, whose commercial jealousies had already, three centuries before, rendered them unable to profit by the magnificent inheritance which had come to them at the capture of Constantinople, whilst the Papacy, itself an Italian power, and owing its existence solely to the skilful adjustment of the balance of power between its rivals in the Peninsula, would have been utterly unable to carry out the task of partitioning two new worlds between Venice and Genoa, between Florence, Milan, and Naples. It was a Spanish and not an Italian pope who signed the Borgian Grant. Spain, embittered by her secular struggle against the Jew and the Moor, was but an ill trainingschool for men who would be called upon to govern lands tilled with civilized Pagans, with followers of Mahomet allied by religious sympathy, if not by actual ties of blood, with her own lately conquered vassals of Granada, and with Christians, who bowing the knee as they did to the successors of St. Thomas, but not to the successors of St. Peter, were to rigid Catholics more hateful than even infidel, heathen, or Jew. Had Columbus really reached the eastern shores of Asia, and had it fallen to the lot of Spain to undertake the conquest of the lands of Chathai and of Zeiton, of the Great Khan and the Great Mogul, Spanish “Inquisitors” and Spanish “Conquistadores” would in a few years have rendered the future rule of a European nation over India for ever as impossible as the memory of the Jesuits has rendered it over Japan or over Abyssinia, or as centuries of “passive resistance” may render it in China. Only Portugal remained. For 6 three hundred years her soil had been free from the presence of the Moor; her ecclesiastics were far removed from the ambitions and from the influence of the Roman Curia; her kings, since the first conquest of Ceuta,19 had been guided in their self-imposed task of world exploration by wise men trained in the schools of the Torah and of p.594 the Koran, and had not scorned to seek the advice of pagans as to the means of reaching the Christian realms ruled over by Prester John.20 Vasco da Gama’s own expedition had, indeed, been chiefly decided on in consequence of information obtained by John II from the pagan king of Benin during his visit to Portugal in 1484, and his instructions had been drawn up by Don Manoel in consultation with the learned Hebrew astronomer Abrahamben-Zaccuth. The fire of the Catholic faith burned brightly in Portugal, but in the fifteenth century the Portuguese were, as yet, far from being a fanatical race, and though Vasco da Gama might be eager to bear the Standard of the Cross through the length and breadth of Asia and Africa, yet we never find him, except, perhaps, in one or two instances for political reasons, forcing unwilling converts to the baptismal font. His men, many of whom had already lived in friendly intercourse with the negroes of Manicongo,21 interested themselves whilst in Calicut in obtaining vocabularies of the native language and in drawing up memoirs on the geography and commerce of the Further East from information obtained from friendly Moors. Thus the way was paved for a system of alliances between the Portuguese and the native kings, which materially facilitated the introduction of European rule and European religion into India, and which certainly could not have been established by any other Europeans of that day. The unknown author of the “Roteiro,” compiling with the help of his Moorish and Jewish friends his scanty notes on Eastern Geography and his scantier vocabulary of Malayalim, was the true forerunner of St. Francis Xavier, of Gonçalvo da Silveira, of Sir William Jones, of Professor Max Müller, and of Sir William Hunter. The Archbishop who burnt the Aztec Manuscripts, the Governor who cast the art treasures of Cuzco into the melting-pot, were Spaniards; but the discoverer of Sanskrit, the first philosopher who conjectured, in some measure, the tie of blood which unites the Aryan peoples of India and the West, was an Italian Jesuit, working under the p.595 protection of the Portuguese Viceroy of Goa. It was, indeed, fortunate alike for Europe and for the East that 19 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ceuta 20 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prester_John 21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manikongo 7 it was Portugal who was called upon by Providence to take upon herself the task of pulling down the barrier which had so long kept apart the two worlds.22 But what manner of man was Vasco da Gama in himself? For my part I believe that we find him as he lived and breathed, rather in the simple words of the “Roteiro,” than in Correa’s exaggerations, in the rhetoric of Da Barros, or even in the glowing poetry of the “Lusiad,” albeit that, with true poetic insight, Camoens appears to have kept closely in many places to the sober words of the oldest journal of the voyage. If we could be sure that this journal is really the one compiled by Dom John Figueira, who seems to have been one of the chaplains to the expedition, which Correa professes to have used as the foundation on which he reared his “Indian Memoirs,” we could accept it as a true portrait of Vasco da Gama with very little hesitation, but, unfortunately, the authorship of the “Roteiro” will, in all probability, never be satisfactorily ascertained. Taking, then, Vasco da Gama as we find him in the “Roteiro,” I seem to see a plain seaman, to whom the task of leading the expedition, which was destined to open the sea road to India, appears to have fallen very much by chance. Correa, indeed, states that he was entrusted with the command merely because he happened to enter the room where King Manoel23 was deliberating with his council on the coming expedition, and, as Mr. Stanley24 points out, this view is shared by Camoens, who makes Da Gama say:— “I, whose foreboding heart would still project Great things like this, as if for me designed, But who had scarcely hoped to give effect To such ambitious longings of my mind. I know not for what reason, what respect, p.596 Or what good omen in my star divined, The King entrusted to my hands the key Of this reluctant stubborn mystery.” Lusiad, canto iv, 77. (Quillinan.)25 Others say that he simply took the place of his father, Estevam da Gama, who had been named to the command, 22 “Lusiad,” anto vii, 3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Os_Lus%C3%ADadas 23 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manuel_I_of_Portugal 24 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Stanley,_3rd_Baron_Stanley_of_Alderley 25 https://archive.org/details/lusiadluisdecam00adamgoog/page/n174/mode/2up 8 but who died before the expedition was ready to sail. However this may be, Da Gama had evidently not made any special studies to fit himself for his task. Unlike Columbus, he had not pored for years over the pages of Strabo, of Ptolemy, of Seneca, and of Cardinal d’Ailly; he was not the correspondent of Toscanelli, nor would he have been prepared to defend the existence of a sea road to India before an assembly of theologians by combating the “dictamina” of Lactantius and of Saint Augustine with quotations drawn from Holy Writ. On the contrary, he know nothing of the literature existing on the subject of India even in his own day, had certainly never read either Josafat Barbara or Niccolo Conti, and possibly had never even heard of Marco Polo, but had prepared himself for his tasks solely by consulting the reports, invaluable it is true, of his predecessors, Bartholomew Diaz,26 Joam Ynfante, and Pero de Covilham, or, at most, by studying Martin Behaim’s globe and some faulty copy of Fra Mauro’s map.27 If we may judge from an incidental description of the geography of the Indian Ocean in the “Roteiro” (cf. p. 49, ed. 1861), it is very doubtful if he even knew of the existence of the Persian Gulf, unless, indeed, he confounded it with that of Cambay, and he evidently was ignorant of the name of the Koran, or he would have used it in speaking of the “books of their law,” which be captured in the Moorish pirogues at Mozambique (cf. “Roteiro,” p. 33, ed. 1861). He shows not the slightest trace of any literary knowledge. All his comparisons and similes are derived from his practical experience in Portugal. The birds and dogs at St. Helena Bay (cf. “Roteiro,” p. 5, ed. 1861 p.597 are “pretty well the same as those of Portugal.” At Mossel Bay he buys a black bullock, “the beef of which was as tasty as our own in Portugal” (cf. p. 11). The riding oxen of the Hottentot ladies “are as large as those of Alemtejó, and have pack-saddles like those used in Castille” (cf. p. 13); and the shore of Cape Delgado is fringed with trees “like elms” (cf. p. 30). He is entirely ignorant of the existence of any religions save those of Mahomet and of Christ. All that is not Moorish must, therefore, necessarily be Christian: and under the name of Christian he confounds together, with charming, if ignorant, impartiality, the Kali-worshipping Hindoos of Calicut (cf. p. 56, etc.); the devotees of Krishna, whom he voluntarily hails as “Christ” when he meets them at Melinde (cf. p. 47); the Buddhists of the IndoChinese Peninsula in Pegu (cf. p. 111) and Siam 26 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartolomeu_Dias 27 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Mauro https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fra_Mauro_map 9