Due to the unfortunate demise of his father, the responsibility fell on Vasco. Actually, the Portuguese ruler had chosen Vasco Da Gama’s father for the expedition. That is why he chose da Gama, whose resume showed his experience as an administrator, not an explorer. Diaz’s report along with the information provided by Pero de Covilham, who visited Calicut and Kannur in 1487, convinced the Portuguese ruler that his nation was ready for a political alliance with Zamorin (Samutiri), the most powerful king of Kerala at that time. He was the one who reported back to the Portuguese ruler that there was a possibility of travelling north from the Cape of Good Hope to reach India. But if we do so, we will be forgetting the contribution of Bartholomew Diaz, a genuine explorer who reached the Cape of Good Hope (now Cape Town) but had to return to Portugal due to financial and political pressure. With this context, can anybody give the glory of discovery of India to da Gama as he did not find the sea route from Malindi to Calicut? One may argue that he should be praised for finding the direct sea route from Portugal to Malindi. A broker named Davane, again a Gujarati, also joined da Gama from Zanzibar.īoth these Indians should be given the recognition of taking da Gama to Calicut.
The author of the journal of da Gama’s journey calls him Malemo Canaqua (Master Kanaka), who hailed from Gujarat. Da Gama followed an instruction of the Periplus, written nearly 1,500 years earlier, and hired a pilot from Malindi to Calicut.
#What was vasco da gama known for professional
Even when da Gama reached the eastern coast of Africa in the late 15th century, there were agents, merchants and professional pilots settled in port cities like Zanzibar, Malindi, Aden and Hormoz, who undoubtedly knew about the passage to India using the Hippalus wind. That ancient seafarers suggested that one should hire a local pilot from the region of the Horn of Africa (Malindi, Aden, etc.) to travel to India is known to us thanks to the Periplus of the Erythrean Sea. For the Indians, this is known as the monsoon wind that starts blowing from mid-January till July. They never talked about the ease of navigation from the Horn of Africa to India using the wind that blows from the east coast of Africa to India, called Hippalus wind. The goods were sold with everyone making a profit with the poker-faced justification of the perils of collecting these spices that were protected by flying snakes and gigantic ferocious birds. Jewish merchants from Venice (remember Shylock of Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice) would buy the spices from these cities and distribute them all over Europe.
The goods would then travel on land to Alexandria or Istanbul. The trade of the Arabian Sea was controlled by the Arabs and Baniyas of Gujarat who took the cargo of pepper from Kerala and textiles from Cambay, reached Aden and then handed them over to Egyptian, Abyssinian and Arab merchants.
Among these spices, cloves and cinnamon came to Calicut (present-day Kozhikode) from Malacca (Malaysia) and Sri Lanka respectively. Seafarers like the Phoenicians, Arabs and Jews, and Venetian merchants used these stories to inflate the prices of the merchandise like spices like black pepper, cardamom, cloves and cinnamon. The chronicles of the journey sounded as if they were taken straight from the adventures of Sinbad the sailor. Before Vasco da Gama set foot in India on, the trade route from India to the West, known as the spice route, had to traverse tricky seas, hostile winds, perilous deserts, regions of looting nomadic tribes, greedy sultans and so on.
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