Da Gama could not establish a good relationship with the King of the Zamorin as he refused to pay the routine customs duties for trade. He then left India in Aug but changed the face of the subcontinent as it laid the stone of the Age of Discovery. It began the European colonisation of India. Da Gama's timing could not have been worse; his departure coincided with the start of a monsoon.
By early , several crew members had died of scurvy and in an effort to economize his fleet, da Gama ordered one of his ships to be burned. The first ship in the fleet didn't reach Portugal until July 10, nearly a full year after they'd left India.
In all, da Gama's first journey covered nearly 24, miles in close to two years, and only 54 of the crew's original members survived. When da Gama returned to Lisbon, he was greeted as a hero. The crew reached India in just six months, and the voyage included a firefight with Muslim merchants, where Cabral's crew killed men on Muslim cargo vessels. More important for his home country, Cabral established the first Portuguese trading post in India.
In , da Gama helmed another journey to India that included 20 ships. Ten of the ships were directly under his command, with his uncle and nephew helming the others. In the wake of Cabral's success and battles, the king charged da Gama to further secure Portugal's dominance in the region.
To do so, da Gama embarked on one of the most gruesome massacres of the exploration age. He and his crew terrorized Muslim ports up and down the African east coast, and at one point, set ablaze a Muslim ship returning from Mecca, killing the several hundreds of people including women and children who were on board.
Next, the crew moved to Calicut, where they wrecked the city's trade port and killed 38 hostages. From there, they moved to the city of Cochin, a city south of Calicut, where da Gama formed an alliance with the local ruler. Finally, on February 20, , da Gama and his crew began to make their way home.
They reached Portugal on October 11 of that year. Little was recorded about da Gama's return home and the reception that followed, though it has been speculated that the explorer felt miffed at the recognition and compensation for his exploits. If Vasco da Gama and his men, weighed down by centuries of collective European curiosity and imagination, anticipated the legendary Prester as they stepped on to the shores of Kerala in India, they were somewhat disappointed.
For when envoys of the local king arrived, they came bearing summons from Manavikrama, a Hindu Rajah famed across the trading world as the Zamorin of Calicut. This prince was the proud lord of one of the greatest ports in the world and a cornerstone of international trade; even goods from the Far East were shipped to Calicut first before the Arabs transported them out to Persia and Europe.
Until the Ming emperors elected to isolate themselves from the world, huge Chinese junks used to visit Calicut regularly; between and alone, for instance, the famed Admiral Zheng He called here no less than seven times with up to ships manned by 28, soldiers. In fact, even after the final departure of the Chinese, there remained for some time in Calicut a half-Malayali, half-Chinese and Malay community called Chinna Kribala, with one of its star sailors a pirate called Chinali.
The city itself was an archetype of commercial prosperity and medieval prominence; it hosted merchants and goods from every worthy trading nation in its lively bazaars, its people were thriving and rich, and its ruler potent enough to preserve his sovereignty from more powerful forces on the Indian peninsula. Da Gama and his men received one courtesy audience from the Zamorin and they were greatly impressed by the assured opulence of his court.
But when they requested an official business discussion, they were informed of the local custom of furnishing presents to the ruler first. Leonardo da Vinci was a painter, architect, inventor, and student of all things scientific. Francisco Pizarro was an explorer, soldier and conquistador best known for conquering the Incas and executing their leader, Atahuapla. He was born around in Trujillo, Spain. Sir Francis Drake participated in some of the earliest English slaving voyages to Africa and earned a reputation for his privateering, or piracy, against Spanish ships and possessions.
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