From this point Da Gama’s task was easy. He had entered a field of navigation known in all its parts from remote times, and familiar ground to resident Mohammadan seamen and traders, who received him amicably and furnished him with pilots. From Mozambique he proceeded to Mombasa, where he fell in with non-Mohammadan residents, supposed by him to be Christians, but in reality Banyans of India. A still larger “Christian” population of the same nation was found in the port of Malindi. Here the adventurers were furnished with a “ Christian” pilot, who conducted them safely across the Indian Ocean to Calicut, off which place Da Gama anchored on May 20, ten months and twelve days after leaving Lisbon. Calicut was the great emporium of Arab trade. It was the chief among the many ports ot the Malabar coast, whence Europe drew its supplies of pepper and ginger. Here Mohammadan merchants purchased cinnamon brought from Ceylon and spices from the Molucca Islands, which they carried to the port of Jiddah in Arabia, and then to the port of Tor in the Sinaitic peninsula, whence they were carried overland to Cairo. Here they were shipped down the Nile to Rosetta, and the last stage of transport was performed on camels to Alexandria, where they were purchased by European merchants. At all these places duties had to be paid, in consequence of which the cost of the merchandise was quadrupled; and large profits could be reaped by merchants who carried them directly from the East to Western Europe. There was another trade route to Europe by way of the Persian Gulf, and so through Syria to Aleppo and Beyrut. Although frequent wars were waged between the native princes of the Malabar coast, they all maintained a good understanding with the Muslim sailors and traders, and many of the latter permanently resided on the Malabar coast and in the Far East. The arrival of the Portuguese was not altogether unexpected. Their intention of penetrating the Indian Ocean was well known; and on his arrival Da Gama pretended to be in search of some missing vessels of his squadron. Having landed to enquire concerning them, he asked permission to trade, which was granted. Meanwhile the Muslim residents intrigued with the native prince, entitled the “ Samori,” or “ Zamorin,” hoping to deal the Portuguese a crushing blow on the very threshold of their undertaking. Representing the new-comers as mere marauders, they so far succeeded as to induce the Zamorin to detain Da Gama and some of his companions as prisoners. He barely himself escaped assassination; but a good understanding was at length restored, and the Portuguese commander, after taking in a valuable cargo of pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmegs, besides rubies and other precious stones, sailed on his return voyage on August 29, 1498, and in September 1499 at length made his triumphal entry into Lisbon. Besides the merchandise which he secured, he brought back precise information concerning the coasts of India as far as Bengal, Ceylon, Malacca, Pegu, and Sumatra.
Thus was the way opened for Europe’s maritime invasion of the East; a process in modern history perhaps of even greater importance than the European occupation of the New World. Ever since Da Gama’s great voyage Southern and Eastern Asia, comprising then as now the most populous nations on the globe, have been gradually falling under the sway of the European powers, who have first appropriated their foreign trade, making permanent settlements on their coasts in order to secure it, thence advanced to controlling their administration and usurping their government, and in some varying degree have succeeded in the more difficult task of gradually changing their habits of life and thought. In all this Europeans have been following in the footsteps of the Mohammadans of Western Asia and Northern Africa; and these had inherited their commercial sphere from remote antiquity. Greek tradition even ascribed the invention of ocean navigation to the aboriginal Erythraeans, who had ploughed the Red Sea long before Phoenicians and Greeks ventured to cross the Mediterranean; and ancient ethnology distinguished these from the Semitic adventurers who in historical times had colonised the islands on the southern coast of Arabia, and not only traded by sea along this coast in its entire length, but frequented the adjacent shores of Africa, and regularly crossed the mouth of the Persian Gulf with the monsoon in search of the commodities of Western India.
The establishment of Islam gave a new and powerful stimulus to all Arabian enterprise. By the end of the fifteenth century there existed from the Red Sea to Japan a valuable and well-organised commerce, mainly in the hands of Arabian or other Muslim seamen and merchants. For the effect of the propagation of Islam had been to bring to the field of Asiatic trade a crowd of adventurers of many nations, many of whom were Turks of Anatolia or Europe. Others were Greeks, Albanians, Circassians, and other Levantines of European descent who had abandoned the Christian faith for gain, and had brought to the Muslim sailors and merchants of the Eastern ocean the knowledge and experience of the Mediterranean peoples. These were generally known in India and the Far East as “ Rumes” (Arab. Rumi, a Greek); and Muslim opponents found in the East by the Portuguese thus included not only true Arabs, whether of Arabia, Africa, or India, generally known as “ Moors,” but large numbers of Turks and “ Rumes,” whose European experience and connexion greatly aided the Moors in their resistance to the European maritime invasion.
The course of trade in these seas was not exclusively from west to east and back again. From very early times a maritime commerce had been carried on in the reverse direction; and the meeting-place of the two trades was the port of Calicut. Hither came, once a year-for only during the summer were the Chinese seas navigable for Chinese vessels- a large trading fleet from the ports of China. The huge Chinese junks, with their fixed sails of matted reeds, never lowered, even in harbour, and mainly propelled by oars of immense length, and having on board gardens of growing vegetables, and large chambers for the ships’ officers and their families, so that each was as it were a floating town, were objects of curious interest to the Arabian sailors. The largest were reputed to carry a thousand persons, and each was attended by three smaller craft for the purpose of loading and unloading. It was natural for the Arabs, who had already secured a part of the Indian coasting trade, to push their way towards the Far East, and to claim a share in the trade of China and the Spice Islands. They found a convenient station in the port of Malacca, which in their hands quickly became the second great emporium of the Eastern trade. Nor did they rest here. Making their way to the ports of China itself, they were amicably received, and allowed to form settlements of their own. Many such settlements, each having its resident magistrate and Sheikh ul Islam, existed hard by the chief Chinese ports, and others were scattered through the Eastern Archipelago. Malacca became the western outpost of the Far-Eastern trade thus developed. Hither were brought the cloves of the Moluccas, the mace and nutmeg of Banda, the sandal wood of Timor, the camphire of Borneo, and many other spices, drugs, dyes, and perfumes from Java, Siam, China, and the Philippine Islands, all of which could be purchased here more cheaply of the resident Arab merchants than of those of Calicut, who obtained them in the ancient course of trade from the Chinese fleet. Hence the sailors of Africa and Arabia, at the arrival of the Portuguese, already resorted directly to Malacca for the produce of the Far East, and Calicut became chiefly a market for the cinnamon of Ceylon, and the ginger, pepper, and miscellaneous commodities of Malabar itself.
The ports of Arabia, and the Arab settlements in Eastern Africa, were the inlets through which the produce of India and the Far East were finally dispersed; and large quantities found their way through Suez, Jiddah, Mascat, and Hormuz, to the markets of Europe. It thus appears that the area of the Eastern trade naturally fell into two divisions, the mouth of the Persian Gulf marking the partition. Eastward of this lay the area of export, westward the area of import. Hence the fact that the Portuguese, having rounded Southern Africa, made straight for Calicut, the outpost of the exporting area. The ideas and expectations with which they approached this immense and unique field of enterprise were tinged with the arrogance of prolonged success. It was necessary, as a means to making themselves masters of the Eastern trade, before all else, not only to prove themselves masters of the Asiatic seas, but to be able to defy resistance on land, and to hold by military force whatever positions it might be desirable to occupy. For these purposes such demonstrations