Conquerors : How Portugal Forged The First Global Empire
As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade. Told with Roger Crowley's customary skill and verve, this is narrative history at its most vivid - a epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation
Nonfiction
1 online resource
9780812994018, 9780571290918, 0812994019, 0571290914
946532488
Print version:
Prologue: The prow of Europe
Part I. Reconnaissance: the route to the Indies
The India plan
The race
Vasco da Gama
"The Devil take you!"
The Samudri
Part II. Monopolies and holy war
Cabral
The fate of the Miri
Fury and vengeance
Toeholds
The Kingdom of India
The great whore of Babylon
"The terrible"
Three days at Chaul
"The wrath of the Franks"
Diu
Part III. Conquest: The great Khan of India
The doors of the Samudri
"What the Portuguese win they never give up"
Prisoners of the rain
The uses of terror
To the eye of the sun
The wax bullet
"All the riches of the world in your hands"
The last voyage
Epilogue: "They never stop in one place."
Title from resource description page (Recorded Books, viewed September 08, 2015)
archive.org Free eBook from the Internet Archive
openlibrary.org Additional information and access via Open Library