Vasco da Gama

Led a fleet around the Cape of Good Hope to India, opening a direct sea route from Europe to Asia.

Life

Commissioned to sail

Vasco da Gama was born c. 1469 in Sines in southern Portugal into a family of the minor nobility, and served in the royal fleet as a young man. In 1497 Manuel I chose him to lead four ships on a voyage to India, a mission built on the experience of Dias's rounding of the Cape of Good Hope. The fleet boldly sailed far from the coast across the Atlantic, rounded the southern tip of Africa and then pushed north along the East African coast.

Reached India

At Malindi he obtained a pilot familiar with the monsoon routes, and in May 1498 he reached Calicut on the southwest coast of India. Because the gifts and goods he had brought did not suit local demand, his negotiations with the local ruler, the Zamorin, went poorly, but the spices he brought back still yielded enormous profits. On his second voyage in 1502 he used extremely brutal force against Arab merchant ships and Calicut.

Death as viceroy

His voyage opened a sea passage between Europe and Asia that bypassed the Middle East, and Portugal went on to control Indian Ocean trade through armed trading posts. In 1524 he was appointed Viceroy of Portuguese India and died in Cochin at the end of that year. Camões's epic takes his voyage as its central thread, but in the memory of the societies of the Indian Ocean rim he stands more for the beginning of violence and plunder.

Legacy

Vasco da Gama's voyage opened a sea route around Africa directly to India, transforming the pattern of Eurasian trade and laying the foundation for Portugal's maritime empire. In Portugal he is regarded as a national hero, and Luís de Camões's epic made his name a household word. But his bombardments and massacres in the Indian Ocean are equally well documented, and in the historical narratives of India and elsewhere he stands above all for the beginning of European colonial armed intervention.

Major works & achievements

• Made his first voyage in 1497–1499, opening the sea route from Europe to India
• 1498: reached Calicut
• 1502: second voyage to India
• Appointed Viceroy of Portuguese India in 1524

Did you know? About 170 men set out on his first voyage, but only some 50 made it back to Lisbon; most died of scurvy.

Key dates

• 1469Born in Sines around this year
• 1497Sets sail from Lisbon with his fleet
• 1498Reaches Calicut in India
• 1499Returns to Lisbon
• 1502Second voyage to India
• 1519Made Count of Vidigueira
• 1524Becomes Viceroy of Portuguese India; dies in Cochin