Captain Major Of The Seas Of Arabia

 In the early part of the 16th century, a Portuguese explorer and aristocrat, Afonso de Alberquerque became known as the Caesar of the East and Captain-Major of the Seas of Arabia.  While familiar with the European exploration of the Americas I had only a vague notion what the Portuguese had accomplished in the Indian Ocean during the same time frame.

One of the joys of writing this blog has been coming around brief mentions in other books or articles I've read to someone or to events I'd never heard of and then taking the time to learn more - for instance, with Henry Lafayette Dodge or, more recently, with The Last Message.  In this case I came across an intriguing reference to Alberquerque and began doing research online.  Dissatisfied with the online material I finally tracked down and read the leading work on the subject, Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 by Bailey W Diffie and George D Winius (1977).  Though we can not recapture the essential personal characteristics of those who carried out the exploration and its exploitation, their deeds make for fascinating reading.

It was from the Portugese kingdom in the mid-15th century that daring captains began venturing south along the coast of Africa under the direction of Henry the Navigator.  For seventy years they inched their way slowly southward, discovering and colonizing the Azores and Cape Verde Islands along the way, before Bartolomeu Dias sailed around the southern tip of Africa in 1488, followed a decade later by Vasco de Gama who reached India, a voyage that forever linked Europe with Asia. And then within twenty years later the Portugese created the first European empire across the Indian Ocean.

The Portuguese of the 15th century exuded self-confidence and martial ardor.  After centuries of struggle against the Muslim occupation the final portions of what became Portugal were liberated in 1249.  With the help of its long-time English allies, Portuguese trade expanded and it began looking for new territories in Africa and among the newly discovered islands of the Atlantic.

In the Americas, Spanish and Portuguese adventurers had significant advantages in their encounters with natives.  Their technology (sailing ships, arms and armor, horses) was significantly better than those they faced and, unknown to them initially, the biggest contributor to their success were the germs that hitched a ride with the Europeans, exposing native populations to a host of diseases for which they had no immunity, eventually reducing the pre-Columbian population of the Americas by 80-90%.

The Portuguese found well-equipped opposition with the odds more balanced when they encountered Asian peoples.  And on the disease front it was the Europeans who were the more vulnerable, in Africa as well as Asia to malaria and other tropical diseases.  The distances involved were also much greater, it being three times farther from Portugal to India than from Spain to the Americas.  And Portugal itself had a smaller population and was poorer than Spain.  Given these difficulties there were never more than 12-14,000 Portuguese in the Indian Ocean Empire.

During these years, the priority for Portuguese kings was expansion in the Muslim areas of North Africa, particularly Morocco.  By the start of this period, Muslim holdings in Iberia had been reduced to the Kingdom of Granada, which finally fell in 1492.  Portugal began seizing footholds in Morocco like Ceuta and Tangier with the idea of conquering the entire area.

Meanwhile, Portuguese captains ventured down the African coast, seeking a route to the fabled wealth of India and the spice lands.  Along the way they also initiated a slave trade with African kingdoms, a trade that accelerated in the 16th century with the discovery of America.  The Muslim world already had a centuries long slave trade going on the east coast of Africa.  The Muslim states of North Africa also routinely raided the northern shores of the Mediterranean in search of Europeans to enslave.

Venice had dominated the spice trade for centuries from its outposts in the eastern Mediterranean and Aegean seas serving as the middleman between the Muslims and the states of Christian Europe.  In term the Muslims controlled the trade in the Indian Ocean and from the source of spices - India and the far eastern islands of what is now Indonesia.  The Venetian Doges had a long-standing alliance with the Mamelukes who ruled Egypt untl 1517 but their relations with the Ottomans were trouble and led to an interruption of the spice trade just as the Portuguese finally found the route to India via the Cape of Good Hope.

Following de Gama's first voyage the Portuguese moved rapidly to exploit their advantage sending 81 ships in annual convoys from 1501 to 1506 with more than 7,000 sailors and soldiers.  It was a grueling voyage.  Outbound ships left Lisbon between February and April, swinging southwest, almost to Brazil, to catch the tradewinds, the ships would round the Cape of Good Hope between June and August, arriving in Goa in late summer or early fall.  The return voyage would begin between Christmas and April, arriving in Lisbon in the fall, a roundtrip equivalent to circling the globe at the equator.

The Portuguese quickly captured the bulk of the spice trade and by 1503-4 the German bankers and merchants formerly based in Venice had come to Lisbon.  Diffie and Winius characterize Portugal as a wharf for goods transiting from Asia to the booming markets of Northern Europe.

After an initial successful India voyage in 1503-4 Afonso de Albuquerque returned in 1506 and remained until his death a decade later.  Afonso, born in 1453 and from a family of the aminor nobility, was educated at the court of Afonso V.  From 1471 to 1481 he achieved  a distinguished military career fighting in war with Morocco, Castile and in a campaign in Italy against the Ottomans.  He later became Master of Horse and held other prestigious titles under his good friend, John II but when John was succeeded by Manuel I in 1495 his career fell into eclipse until his performance in the India expedition of 1503 allowed him to finally gain Manuel's confidence.  On his return to India he carried the king's appointment as Viceroy of India, an appointment he retained until his death.

A master strategist, Albuquerque parlayed a relatively weak Portuguese position by exploiting divisions among Asian rulers seizing Goa and other Indian ports, Malacca which controlled the straits between the Malay peninsula and Sumatra and Ormuz at the exit of the Persian Gulf.  His strategy was to control all the entrances to the Indian Ocean, from the Atlantic, Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Pacific.  While thwarted in the attempt to completely shut off access, particularly that of Muslims, Albuquerque came close to achieving his goal.  He failed to take Aden which controlled the approaches to the Red Sea although he led expeditions into those waters, also attempting to take Jidda on the Arabian peninsula.

In contrast to their views of Muslims, seen as implacable enemies, and the native peoples of the Americas, seen as an inferior civilization and targets for conversion, the Portuguese had a different take on the peoples they encountered in Asia who they considered civilized and made no concerted effort to convert to Christianity.

Later in the 16th century the Portuguese ventured into the waters of East Asia, establishing trading outposts with China at Macao and in Japan at Nagasaki.  Roundtrip voyages from Portugal to these outposts required two to three years.  According to Diffie and Winius, the Portuguese admired the Japanese more than any other Asia peoples:

"Probably the main reason that the Portuguese and the Japanese struck it off so well was that they had many qualities in common.  In China it was the mandarin bureaucrat and his writing brush who stood at the top of the social ladder and even symbolized the society; but it was the hereditary fighting class, the samurai, whose wearing of the sword symbolized Japan - and made the sword-wearing Portuguese feel at home  . . . the samurai pride and rigid code of honor . . . was similar to the chivalry and pride of the Iberian nobleman."

A little known and quite astonishing episode took place during this period showing a different side of the Portuguese.  For several centuries, stories had circulated in Europe about a mysterious Christian monarch to the east known as Prester John.  Europeans, under constant threat from Muslims, believed that if they could only locate the kingdom of Prester John the resulting alliance of Christian states could finally defeat the Muslims.  Then word arrived of a Christian state to the south of Egypt in the Abyssinian highlands ruled by an African monarch.  With great difficulty some Portuguese emissaries made contact with the rulers of Ethiopia.

In the early 1540s Ethiopia came under attack by Somali Arabs who carried all before them, threatening the very existence of the Kingdom.  By chance, a Portuguese fleet was operating in the Red Sea and received a plea for help.  Four hundred Portuguese under the command of Cristovao da Gama responded.  In the Americas other Iberian conquistadores had entered highland in force but with the goal of conquest and visions of riches.  In this case, the Portuguese went to support their fellow faith members with no personal potential for gain.  In two years of fighting the volunteers defeated the Somalis, saving the kingdom, but at great cost - da Gama captured and beheaded and only a quarter of the four hundred surviving.   Diffie and Winius observe:

"The story of the Portuguese association with Abyssinia has an unreal quality because it smacks more of chivalric romance than of motives people of today can understand. . . The Portuguese conquistadores made far better thieves - and also far better saints - than we."

In the late 16th century the Portuguese were ousted from their Indian Ocean Empire by the Dutch and English, though Goa and Macao remained as relics tolerated for several centuries by India and China.  The loss can be attributed to several factors.

The Empire never prospered as much as anticipated in part because the Portuguese ignored the profitable intra-Asian trade in favor of exports directly to Portugal.  Their Dutch and English successors built their trading empires on the intra-Asian trade.

The profits that did accrue to the Portuguese monarchs were spent on their neverending crusade to conquer Morocco and the Indian Ocean empire always remained starved for resources.  The Moroccan obsession ultimately proved a grand failure.  In 1578 the boy-king Sebastian led an army into Morocco for the intended final conquest but Instead, the king and his army were massacred and the kingdom plunged into financial and dynastic chaos, leading in 1580 to a union with Spain that last for six decades.

Diffie and Winius contrast the relative success of the Dutch and English with the failure of Portugal and Spain:

"European monarchs [Spanish, Portuguese, French] have always been far more interested in what went on under their noses than in places thousands of miles away, and the only historic empires safe from periodic neglect [Dutch & English] were those built and operated by joint stock companies, which had no outside interests to distract them."