On This Day in History: July 8

The voyages of Vasco da Gama

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Humans just can’t let shit be. When we saw a neighbor who had something we wanted, we went and took it, and then stuck around saying, “This is our land now. We’re in charge.” Empire building is just a thing we do, with the first big one we know of being the Akkadian Empire of Sargon the Great during the 23rd century BCE. A few thousand years later, explorer Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea, opening a new age of intercontinental imperialism.

--On This Day in History, Shit Went Down: July 8, 1497--

We all know about Columbus, that dick. Fewer consider the role of da Gama in opening Asia to European conquest. Five years after Columbus tried to reach India by going the wrong fucking way and accidentally bumping into a whole other hemisphere, Vasco left for his first voyage to India on July 8, 1497.

Da Gama was Portuguese, who were renowned navigators. Prior to his voyage, the only way western Europeans reached India was through the Mediterranean, which was hostile territory, then crossing the Arabian Peninsula, which was also hostile territory. Previous European efforts at reaching India ended the lives of thousands of sailors, lost to shipwrecks and attacks.

So, da Gama went the long way. A real long fucking way, taking his four ships around the southern tip of Africa called the Cape of Good Hope, then hugging the east African coast northward making a final sailing across the Indian Ocean, landing in Calicut almost 11 months later. The entire round trip was by far the longest sea voyage ever completed, comprising a distance greater than Earth’s circumference.

FYI, on the return trip he ignored the local advice about monsoon season, it took forever to get back to Africa, half the crews died, and the rest were scurvy as fuck and smelling like a goat orgy in a steam room. But they eventually returned to Portugal with spices ‘n shit. Da Gama was rewarded by the Portuguese crown with a lordship, an admiralty, and a shit-ton of cash.

Da Gama undertook a second such voyage in 1502, during which he did some nasty shit, including burning alive 400 Muslim pilgrims on their ship as they begged for mercy. That tanked his reputation, so he did fuck all for two decades. Then there was a new king who liked da Gama’s style and he was back in and named Viceroy of India. He made his third voyage in 1524, landed in India and said, “All right, motherfuckers, this is how shit is gonna be,” contracted malaria, and died.

But his fuckery lived on. The Portuguese opened the Asian door for some good old European conquering, and various countries stampeded on through it.

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