The Rest Is History - 228. Portugal: The Golden Age of Discovery

Episode Date: September 6, 2022

In the second episode of this Portugal mini-series, Tom and Dominic discuss the Portuguese setting sail for far flung reaches of the world, their relationship with Philip II of Spain, and the impact of Vasco da Gama. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. Or, if you're listening on the Apple Podcasts app, you can subscribe within the app in just a few clicks. Olá e bem-vindo ao Resto e História. Comigo, o belo, grande Dominic Sandbrook,

e com meu criado, o jogador de cricket Tom Holland, que sempre fala sobre o cristianismo. Saudações a todos os nossos discípulos e seguidores. E uma saudação especial aos nossos amigos de Wolverhampton, os melhores futbolistas portugueses do mundo. Olá, Gonzalo Gues, olá, João Moutinho, olá, Mateus Nunes,

olá, Ruben Neves, o capitão, nosso arroje. Tom Holland, I know you love a bit of Portuguese. I thought that was Dutch. No, no, no. That was absolutely pitch perfect, fluent Portuguese, Tom. And I'm sure our Portuguese listeners will be writing in to offer their congratulations.

Was that Juga do Cricket? I heard. Nothing else to know, is there? It's actually worth doing this podcast purely for the pleasure of mangling continental languages, isn't it? So yesterday, Tom, we kicked off our history of Portugal, this sort of epic story that we're telling. And we got up to the death of Henry the Navigator.

So the Portuguese, they've established this sort of medieval kingdom, one of many kingdoms on the Iberian Peninsula. They're not yet defining themselves against Spain. They have expanded to Madeira and the Azores, and they have this sort of sense of mission, don't they? So Henry the Navigator died in 1460, and that's seven years after the Turks have captured Constantinople. Rome really has finally fallen and Christendom is under attack.

And I don't know about you, but I think that's hugely important in explaining the kind of militancy and the sense of mission that the Portuguese have in the next sort of 50 to 100 years or so, don't you? Though it obviously helps that it also makes them very rich. You're so cynical. Well, no, I think, I mean, we talked about that in the last episode, the way that, you know, the lust for spice fuses with a sense that this is what God wants. So Henry, the navigator, obviously he is fascinated and obsessed by exploration. But he is also the grandmaster of the military order of Christ, which is a successor to the Knights Templar, the kind of Christian militancy conviction that God wants you to go out and grab things from Muslims explains why today's story, which is the story of Portugal's expansion down the coast of Africa and then into the Indian Ocean, is a bloody as well as a heroic story. Yeah, it's interesting, isn't it? Because when you read this story, and I should sort of shout out, there's a book by Roger Crowley called Conquerors that I reviewed a few years ago for the Sunday Times,

gave it a rave review actually, because I really enjoyed it. And he told it as an absolutely sort of rip-roaring, rollicking adventure story, although one completely soaked with blood. And it is one of these things where you sort of think there's so much fuss made about Columbus and about the conquistadors,

but the Portuguese have sort of escaped all that because nobody really, you know, people don't speak Portuguese in Anglo-Saxon countries and they don't know what was happening. But there's an awful lot of terrible violence, isn't there? So Columbus venturing out into the vast emptiness of the Atlantic. know what was happening but there's an awful lot of of terrible violence isn't there so columbus venturing out into the the vast emptiness of the atlantic i mean you that is there's an inherent drama there but i think there is also an incredible drama in the idea of sailing down a landmass that

you know nothing about you don't know what's what you're going to find there and the way in which when these expeditions start going down africa to try and get to India, they take with them these pillars, don't they? Stone pillars. Stone pillars. And they set them up in bays as kind of way markers. And I suppose you could say, well, you know, the vastness of the task. So all you can do is put one small stone pillar, the only mark that you can leave on the vastness of this, you know, strange lands full of strange creatures, strange peoples, strange plants. Yeah, it's a very kind of, and I think also that when thinking about this,

because we know what's going to happen, because we know the brutal history that's going to follow, and we know that the Portuguese make it, and we know that in the long run, Europe is going to expand its hegemony across the world. We need to park that and think that Portugal is a tiny peripheral power and the sheer kind of boldness and daring of what they're attempting you know you have to keep that in mind if you're going to have a sense of just how extraordinary a story this is yeah i think that's absolutely right so so henry the navigator died in 1460 and the guy who takes over the sort of mission ultimately is um his great nephew who is Zhao Prince Zhao who

becomes the king of Portugal in 1481 and he's a sort of very melancholy sort of lugubrious fellow kind of long-faced isn't he he's got a very long face a black beard um the Portuguese remember him apparently as the perfect prince and um Isabel i read that isabella queen of castile called him simply the man presumably she called him el hombre because he was such an impressive fellow so he basically has this desire like him with the navigator to be rich but he also is very into the prester john thing so the idea that there's a christian kingdom out there that they can make an alliance with against the islamic And also, crucially, to find a route to the Indies to get the spices. And what's funny is he turns down Columbus.

I mean, actually, the funny thing is people always tell that story and they say, the Portuguese were Muppets. They turned down Columbus. Of course, they were quite right. Columbus says, I can go west and find the Indies. And they say, yeah, don't bother me. Good luck. We're going to go our way. And indies and they said yeah don't bother me yeah good luck we're gonna go our way which we and we'll get and they do get that i mean they weren't wrong well when in due course um vasco to go does get to india uh manuel who succeeds jow he doesn't he

he writes yeah he writes to ferdinand and isabella and says um you know he describes all the stuff that they found in India. So all the cinnamon, the cloves, the ginger, the nutmegs, the pepper, the diamonds, the rubies, everything. And he says, we are aware that your highness will hear of these things with much pleasure and satisfaction.

Which I think is splendid behavior. That's like the way you behave to rival history podcasters tom isn't it yeah it is well we all share we all take pleasure in each other's successes of course we do of course we do so so the first guy they send is um this guy diogo cow and he goes down to i mean he he goes a hell of a long way i have to say he goes to the congo he sales a bit up the con Congo, he sails a bit up the Congo, and he actually leaves a pillar there that's not discovered for another few hundred years. Yeah, so he's dropping off these pillars everywhere. Angola, Namibia. I mean,

Namibia, that's a colossal journey. It's such a long way, and we know so little about him. So actually, that's the case with some of his successors as well. So they're sort of, they sail for 500 miles up the Senegal River. They go up the Gambia. They're crossing the desert. They're going to Timbuktu. So the Portuguese are convinced that they can find the route to India. And also they can find this guy, Preston John.

And also gold, the supply of gold yeah because they know there's gold out there somewhere i mean this is a bit like the spanish in the americas we all know the story of the spanish in america's i actually like the portuguese story better because it's so it's not so hackneyed is it we don't know so much about it i suppose so the last um the pillar that uh cow sets up is on black rocks where seals are basking. And then he turns back around. It's such a kind of powerful image. Yeah.

So the next guy is Bartholomew Diaz. Bartholomew Diaz, I think, would be how the Dutch would pronounce it. Bartholomew Diaz. That is how they say it, Tom. That is how they say it tom that is how they say it yeah i was once on a train by with uh it's a very strange story this i was going to barcelona and um i was sitting in the compartment opposite a couple uh the man had no legs and the woman had no arms oh i mean it was very they were a good team a Yeah. A very good team. And they were Portuguese. It was the first time I'd ever heard Portuguese people. And they had this sort of, at first I thought they were speaking Russian

because there were so many of the sort of shh and the sort of yow kind of sounds. And then I discovered they were talking Portuguese. And they said they could understand Spanish, but the Spanish couldn't understand them. Yeah, well. So that's my great linguistic insight for today's episode amazing amazing thank you for that anyway can we

get back to bartolomeo diash yeah so he leaves he's a knight he's in one of zhao's knights and and basically um zhao says to him off you go i'll give you two of these caravels now if you don't know what a caravel is tom gives a brilliant, brilliant excursion into naval technology. Yes, I did. In our previous podcast. Shallow bottoms. And crucially, Tom, what else have they got? They've got triangular sails.

Triangular sails. Exactly. Triangular sails. And what does that mean, Dominic? It means that they can do what they like with the wind. They can literally do what they like. Is that what it means? That's exactly what it means.

I think that's – I learned that from NAM Roger, the great naval historian. He told me they were his precise words. Yeah. Right. So they set off. They set off in the summer of 1487. We know very little about Bartholomew Diaz. We don't even know when his expedition left,

even though it's going to change the history of the world. And he takes his stone pillars, doesn't he? He takes his stone pillars. They love a stone pillar in Portugal. Can't get enough of them. They take them now when they go on holiday. Anyway, off they go. They go for months.

And by Christmas, they're in about Namibia or so. They've been here for four months. And then they take this absolutely big – so basically the wind is against them, so they think they can't go any further south. And then they take – this is where our grasp of naval technology will come in very useful time to explain this. They take this radical decision. So basically instead of continuing to go south, they say,

let's sail right out into the sea to the west into the nothingness because there basically the wind may kind of whip us around and take us in a big loop well because that's what happens north of the equator isn't it it is that the trade winds you you sail out you go down africa you sail out west into the atlantic and then the trade winds blow you back to portugal i knew you're on top of all this Portugal. I knew you were on top of all this, Tom. Yeah. I knew you were on top of all this. The rest is navigation.

That's what we will be called. I'm like, what's his name? Patrick O'Brien. It turned out, actually, that Patrick O'Brien, do you know the irony is, it turned out that he was making it all up. He didn't know anything about rope or ships. Well, there you go.

No one would ever say that about this podcast. No, we know our navigation so anyway they take this massive loop out into the atlantic bartholomew diaz and his and his guys and then they turn around and they see these mountains and basically what's happened is they have been carried by the winds in this great loop around the Cape of Good Hope, and they have gone around the bottom of Africa. And they make landfall eventually on what's now the Eastern Cape. In Mussel Bay. Is that what it's called? Mussel.

So it's Dutch for mussel. Oh, that's lovely. So you've got a bit of Portuguese, a bit of Dutch in this podcast. Not only do you get top naval technology, you get great European languages. It's like a university in itself. We're offering all kinds of modules. So anyway, they pitch up.

The natives, they are not very keen, are they? Well, no. And they're right not to be keen, basically, because these kind of peculiar people with white skins and guns and a tendency to enslave you, I mean, I i think it's you don't want to hang around when they turn up well there's this sort of story when ds was taking in water close to the beach they sought to prevent him and when they pelted him with stones from a hill he killed one of them with the arrow of a crossbow yeah and that i suppose is the sort of test the template isn't

it because there's going to be an awful lot of killing people with crossbows and things in um yeah in this podcast. So then they, the Portuguese turn around and Bartholomew Diaz, they sail all the way back when they go around the Cape. Apparently they first called it the stormy Cape because it was very stormy. And King Zhao doesn't like that at all when they get back. And he says,

you can't call it that because it's sort of too downbeat. Um, so they attend it to change it to the cape of good hope yeah because it promises holds out hope that then one day they'll they'll get to india and when they've gone around the cape of good hope they've left behind their supply ship which isn't a caravel so it doesn't have a flat bottom bottom dominic or triangular sail so it can't do what they've just done useless absolutely and and they find that it's absolutely it's been eaten up by worms it's rotten with worms and so they haul it onto the beach and they burn it and have a huge bonfire and then they sail back yeah so

dubious behavior all around um they get back to lisbon in december 1488 they've been away for 16 months they've they've discovered more than a thousand miles of new coastline well discovered i mean the people who live there knew it was there. But the key thing is that they've discovered that you can round Africa. Yes. Which of course the Phoenicians knew and Herodotus reports it.

So if he'd been reading his Herodotus, he would have known that. But there are other ways of finding out. And this is of course the best part of four years before Columbus. So this explains, this is one of the key reasons why the Portuguese think, well, what's the point in you heading out to the West? We've already found that we can get around Africa.

Was this publicized or were the Portuguese keeping it to themselves? I think it's not immensely well publicized because I think there's an enormous amount of emerging rivalry, I guess, between the Portuguese on the one hand and Castile and Aragon on the other. Because, of course, up to this point, there's been no Spain. So the Portuguese are just one of many competing Iberian kingdoms. But with the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, you have this sort of big self-confidence

and the conquest of the Alhambra and granada so that's 1492 isn't it so the portuguese are aware that there's this big rival now and and there's a definite sense of competition i think from this point on was that wasn't really there before and the portuguese defining themselves against the spanish so it makes sense they would want to hold on to you Sometimes they want to trumpet it, to boast, but sometimes they want to kind of keep it to themselves. And that is the context for, in 1494, so two years after Columbus crosses the Atlantic,

the notorious Treaty of Tordesillas, when basically the Spanish and the Portuguese divide the world up between them. Yeah. And the Portuguese, I mean, people don't really know this, but the Portuguese trick the Spanish effectively. They send much better negotiators to Tordesillas and they basically fiddle with the original deal. So the deal was they're going to draw a vertical line down the world. And in very, very simplistic terms, the Spanish will get the western half and the Portuguese get the east. So the Portuguese have already gone east and they're going to get Africa and the Indies and

so on. And the Spanish will get the west. But the Portuguese, they basically persuade the Spanish to agree to shift the line by a thousand miles to the west and if they hadn't done that they wouldn't have then been entitled to get Brazil and and so this is one of the reasons why people have argued that Portugal had already discovered Brazil by this point I don't think they'd discovered Brazil at this point but we've been describing how Portuguese ships are starting to veer out westwards yeah and ride the winds so i think it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that they might have yeah it's possible something out there it's possible who knows i mean they don't they don't settle brazil they don't really colonize brazil for another few decades yeah it's not their prime

objective is it no because they're still thinking about presto john, spices. And India. And India and Islam. They're still absolutely all about that. And actually, the year after the Treaty of Tordesillas, where they've – I mean, this sort of carving up the world is pretty notional at this point because, I mean, all they've done is they've sent the odd sort of ship around. But they have this new king, Manuel. Manuel is the great nephew of Henry the Navigator. And he is very militant i mean he really has this profound sense of mission that we will grab the spice trade we

will destroy islam you know we've shown we can get around africa let's let's let's get it on you know let's let's go for it and And coincidentally destroy Venice as well. I mean, yes, because the Venetians obviously have- Yeah, undercut Venice. So actually, when you think about it, 50, 60 years before, Portugal is a nothing. It is a minnow on the absolute fringe. And now it's dividing the world up. And now, because of these splendid ships,

their ambitions really are pretty boundless. And it's at this point that you know the guy that he turns to is probably the most famous of all these portuguese characters and that is vasco de gama so i think we should take a break and when we come back we should tell the extraordinary but bloody story of vasco de gama's voyage to india so we'll see you after the break see you in a minute. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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That's therestis of the entertainment.com that's the rest is entertainment.com bold in action severe in his orders and very formidable in his anger that is a contemporary description of vasco de gama, Dominic. As you said before the break, the most famous figure in the extraordinary story of Portugal's discovery of the world. And he is, I mean, so he's chosen by Manuel, this king who kind of presides over the golden age, really, of Portuguese expansion. And Vasco da Gama is the man who will finally achieve this dream

that's been haunting Portugal's leaders since the time of Henry the Navigator of how do you get, is it possible to get to India going around Africa? Yeah, so Vasco da Gama is a very hard man, I think it's fair to say. Again, like Bartholomew Diaz, we don't know much about him. There are very few records of his early life. We know that he's probably from minor nobility and that he's been sort of doing piracy and sort of corsair behavior. He doesn't seem a pleasant man, does he? No, he's not a bundle of laughs, I think it's fair to say. He's the hard man of Portuguese expansion. I mean to say he's the hard man of portuguese expansion and um i mean if

you're the hard man of portuguese expansion you're pretty hard he's not a man who would who would sit of an evening enjoying a glass of port and listening to some lovely fado music no that's fair to say isn't it tom i think he'd be out crushing heads and mastering people burning them firing grassbows at people and grabbing diamonds yeah he would indeed so um and i think he's chosen because you know because of his hardness he's not chosen because he's a great seafarer or a cartographer or something you know the portuguese absolutely know what they're they're getting into but what's really interesting and what is nice for you because i know you enjoy a nice bit of of Christianity, is they sail from a place that is now known as Belang, so Bethlehem.

So it's in the sort of western side of Lisbon. It's a massive place for tourists to go, as we'll discuss later on when we talk about the monuments that were built after these great voyages. And they sail in, I think, four ships. So they're caracks, they're not caravels. They're bigger than caravels. So what's a carack, Dominic? So it's bigger than a caravel. I think that's the technical.

Does it have more rope? I think it has more rope. I think it probably may well have also had triangular sails. I'd have to do a bit more close naval technological research. I'm glad you said that. There's a point at which we should stop drawing attention to our ignorance

because people will stop listening. Or maybe they'd have stopped already. Stop talking about Carracks then. Carracks. Well, they're in Carracks. I think it's very important to say they're in Carracks. Listen, what's interesting for you

is that they leave in this atmosphere of intense religious passion. And they're named after the archangels, aren't they? The ships. They are. The ships are named after the archangels. And if you read, so I mentioned Roger Crowley's book, Conqueror is an amazing book. And he has this fantastic set piece.

They leave on a Saturday, the 8th of July, 1497. And the huge crowds come out of Lisbon to see them go. Vasco da Gama leads them from the church down to the beach and they're all wearing special tunics and carrying candles and people singing hymns and chanting the litany. And when they get to the water, there's a complete sort of dead silence and everybody kneels and makes their confession and they receive absolution.

So Henry the Navigator has received, you know, they hark back to the permission he got from the Pope for them to go off and kind of conquer the world. And they're all sobbing with religious ecstasy. And then they get on their boats and off they go. In their carracks. In their carracks, yeah. Let's gloss over the carracks from now on.

So it's an enormous, enormous voyage. So to just read from Roger Crowley's book, he says, For Vasco da Gama's men, it was an unending nightmare of back-breaking work, wormy food, foul water, terrible hygiene, and appalling weather. By the time they'd rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Zambezi, many were dying of scurvy, their hands and feet grotesquely swollen

their breath intolerably fetid their gums bloody and putrid so i mean we did a couple of podcasts well we did a series of podcasts on holidays this is not a holiday no you would so they get to by march 1498 so they've been gone for just under a year. They've got to Mozambique and then they go up the eastern coast of Africa. They get to Mombasa, Malindi in Kenya. And then they kind of cut across, didn't they? Because the Monsumians are in their favor. But I mean, that's an amazing thing though, Tom, isn't it? I mean, we're talking about Bartholomew Diaz making his big loop. I mean, this turning, you know, turning, I i guess to their right and heading out across the indian ocean i mean you've got no idea the sheer balls dominic yeah technical term they don't know

where they're going and they could easily have screwed up couldn't they if they got the wrong angle if the winds had changed they got you know they sailed at the wrong time so they sail for 23 days and more than 2 000 miles across this open sea and then they see mountains and lightning and stuff and it's the malabar coast yeah so this is um india this is sort of kerala isn't it yeah i mean you're you're more of an india hand than i am tom with your with your gap year in india and my many cricket tours yes uh was your gap year like this was that the same sense yeah wormy food foul foul weather, terrible hygiene. Exactly.

That's the cricket tours as well. Hands and feet grotesquely swollen. Yes, all that kind of stuff. That's very much what it was like. So they've been going now for 309 days. They've sailed for 12,000 miles, and they can glimpse the coast of India. And they basically get to the places called Calicut. And actually what happens is then a complete dam square because they get there. they can glimpse the coast of India. And they basically get to the place that's called Calicut.

And actually what happens is then a complete damscape because they get there. Then they get there and there's some Tunisians there. Yeah. So some people from North Africa. So they're like, oh, what are you doing here? And they're, hey! Which is utterly deflating for them. And they've brought all their richest treasures. And they give them to the uh

to the local guy and he just laughs in their face doesn't he yeah it's terrible so they have um 12 pieces of i should read this from congress it's 12 pieces of striped cloth four scarlet hoods six hats four strings of coral six hand washing basins a case of sugar and two casks each of honey and oil and then they give them to the sort of local potentates guy. The guy says, the poorest merchant from Mecca or any other part of India gave more. And he says to Vasco de Gama, if you want to give a present, it should be gold. And he's utterly deflated. So there is bathos.

But, Dominic, how would you rate this as um a key moment in global history i think it's pretty big isn't it tom i mean it's some massive moments i mean the funny thing is of course there had been you know alexander the great had gone to india and people had traded with india hadn't they i mean we talked in cleopatra about how cleopatra had thought of fleeing to to india so roman traders are definitely doing it. But I think for Europe, it's a colossal moment. And in the long run for Asia as well. Yeah. I mean, for Asia, it's a bit like kind of opening your window

and suddenly a wasp flies in. I mean, they're small, but they're incredibly annoying. And they kind of buzz around and sting. We should stress that since the Portuguese are some of the smallest people in Europe, we should stress that you're actually talking about Europeans generally rather than the I am talking about Europeans generally. Although, let's carry on with the story. Because the story of, I mean, essentially, once the Portuguese have broken into the Indian

and the Pacific, I mean, they're all over the place, aren't they? They are. There's no stopping them. So Vasco de G gets back in September of 1499. And actually, he has lost two thirds of his crew to sort of scurvy disease, you know, this, that and the other. They're absolutely sort of battered and miserable and bedraggled. But they do bring back all this all this spices. And that's when Manuel writes to Ferdinand and Isabella.

Exactly. Exactly. I mean, how many clothes has Columbus brought you? Exactly. Because that's the funny thing, you see. Columbus is not bringing back the treasures that he had hoped for, which is why Ferdinand and Isabella are constantly saying, where's all the gold?

Where's everything you promised? I mean, Columbus died still claiming that he'd got to India. He never admitted and never believed that he'd made a terrible mistake. Whereas the Portuguese are kind of laughing. Well, because Manuel, I mean, he really beefs up his royal titles, doesn't he? So he's been king of Portugal and Algarve, and he's already claimed a bit of Africa and so on but now he claims to be lord of the conquest navigation and commerce of Ethiopia Arabia Persia and India which is putting Ferdinand and Isabella in their place exactly for the Spanish this is very um

this is enraging and as you say Tom for the next few years the Portuguese they send out expedition after expedition and actually these are often accompanied by horrendous violence specifically against muslims aren't they isn't it i mean so so that militant anti-islam is such an important part of the story yeah vasco de gama he makes three voyages in total i think it is and this i think it's his second voyage that they come across an Arab ship called the Miri, which is packed with pilgrims who have been going to Mecca. And basically Vasco da Gama, you know, he thinks it's his Christian duty. They captured 20 children and take them onto their boat,

forcibly convert them to Christianity, and then they basically burn the rest. Yeah. They set fire to the ship and down it goes. And Vasco da Gama thinks this is absolutely tremendous behavior. When he next goes back... Is that when he captures all the fishermen? Yes. He captures loads of fishermen.

He hangs them from his masts. And their families all come down to the beach because they hear that these Portuguese, very poorly behaved, have captured their relatives. And at this point, Vasco da Gama tells his gunners to fire in the crowd, to sort of shoot them down. And one of his men writes afterwards, seeing them cry, we jeered at them loudly, and the beach was soon cleared.

So there's absolutely no sense. I mean, maybe I'm being unfair here, but quite early on with the Spanish sort of conquest of the Americas, you get people. What's that guy, Tom, the priest Las Casas, you know, who are sort of breastfeeding about what they've seen in Cuba or in in Mexico or whatever. But you don't really get much of a sense of this from the people on Vasco da Gama's ships, do you? I mean, they're just absolutely delighted. Because as we said, Vasco da Gama is appointed because he is a brute, basically. And as far as I gather, his crews are essentially the kind of the sweepings of Lisbon jails. I mean, these are the most brutal men imaginable and kind of desperate, as I think you'd have to be to go on a kind of adventure into the unknown like that yeah um so yeah i mean that they are they are men who've been chosen because they

are brutal i mean there's also i mean it's in a brutal world isn't it because the portuguese see themselves they've been fighting against the north africans they they see themselves as in this sort of ideological hot war with islam they already have this practice with Muslims, what they call merdim boka, which I won't translate, where they do stuff to your mouth. But also they will shove pieces, take pieces and shove bacon fat down their throats and things. I mean, this is a violent world and the violence they're exporting to asia comes out of the sort of european theater i suppose and that's why it is so dangerous for them to go because you know they have no friends out there and it's not as if they're they're exactly making friends once they arrive there um and they and they just decide that violence is the way so they

they intimidate you know they hang people um yeah menace people um but they also decide that and again i mean it's kind of very incredibly bold strategy that they're going to grab land and fortify it and make bases out and this becomes the start of a whole kind of network of portuguese bases that come to span the entire world. Yeah. So they said by 1503, they've got two. I mean, this is just within a few years of Bartholomew Diaz going around Africa, actually. They've got two toeholds in the Indian coast, so Kananore and Cochin. And then in 1509, Manuel, whose ambitions know no limit, I mean, he has written to the Pope and basically said, Christians may hope that shortly all the treachery and heresy of Islam will be abolished and the Christian faith will be spread throughout the whole world.

And he basically says to the Pope, I will deliver you, India. I will deliver you, Africa. And the weird thing is that Ferdinand has been saying exactly the same. So Ferdinand, as in Isabella, has been writing in identical terms. So both of them are basically saying, we're going to conquer the world. We're going to take all the loot. And this is great because it'll win us the Holy Sepulchre. Yeah.

Because we think of the Crusades and the sort of the Age of Discovery is happening in different parts of history. We miss the fact that they really see themselves as crusaders, don't they? They think it's part of the same kind of continuum. And capturing Jerusalem is there. I mean, at the end of his life, Columbus is talking about expeditions to Jerusalem and all this.

Yeah. So early 16th century, they're all over it. So there's this guy, Alfonso de Albuquerque. I hope I've pronounced that right um beautifully tom and he is the second european so there's been a previous one to be appointed a viceroy of india and won't be the last yeah i'm trying to remember the first one i think might have been called almeida and he's um albuquerque's number two but he's the most important because he is do you know what they call him tom you'd enjoy this the caesar of the east the portuguese mars he is a caesar isn't he because he goes around

seating things very good very good so he grabs goa famous tourist destination now our lord has done great things for us because he wanted us to accomplish a deed so magnificent that it surpasses even what we have prayed for he boasts about burning the town killing everyone but we haven't spared the life of a single Muslim. We have herded them into the mosques and set them on fire. We have estimated the number of dead Muslim men and women at 6,000. It was, Sire, a very fine deed. So he's grabbed Goa. So that's adding to, so that's now three colonial possessions in India. Then they move on towards Malaysia. They capture Malacca in 1511. And this is astonishing. I mean, this is such a, you know, they're tiny.

There are so few of them. And Malacca has what? I mean, it's 100,000 people, 120,000 people. Yeah. And they just kind of sail in and grab it. And they only have kind of a few hundred Portuguese. I mean, they have guns, crucially. But I think that the people in Mal mean they have guns crucially but i

think that don't the people in malacca have guns as well they do but the portuguese they're just not prepared for the portuguese the violence of it the violence of the onslaught from the sea they're taken unawares but i mean this is um a cortez level victory against the odds it is and isn't it funny that uh unless you'd read i mean, I remember when I first read Roger Carrella's book, when I was reviewing it, I had never heard of Alfonso de Albuquerque. And he's within decades of the Portuguese setting out, just a couple of decades, basically. They've got as far as Malaysia and they're taking towns, establishing forts and colonies. He sends ambassadors to Burma, to Thailand, to Sumatra. He has ships that are mapping Eastern Indonesia.

He sends ships to Canton in China. And Duke Corsair grabbed Macau, didn't they? Macau, exactly, yes. It's not just the violence. It's also incredible kind of pioneering voyages. Amazing current, yeah. And they get to Japan, don't they? They found a colony in Nagasaki.

They do, yeah, unbelievably. So a little bit later, 1543, they get to the southern bit of Japan, the first Europeans to reach there. And then they actually founded Nagasaki, the Jesuits, I think it was. Again, very little known in the kind of Anglo-Saxon world, but an astonishing sort of just the visionary scale of the achievement. Of course, one carried out with enormous violence. And since we've had so much violence, maybe we should have a tiny bit of,

well, it's still violent, but it's a bit of light relief. Because Albuquerque also sends back to Lisbon a white elephant and a white rhino and the right is the rhino is the one that um albert jura was without having seen it it's the first rhino to come to europe since the um since the time of the romans and the portuguese being the portuguese you know what they do with the they get them to lisbon and this huge crowd everyone's sorry and they say great now we'll like a child like a child saying who would win between a lion and a shark. Basically, their instinct is to say, now let's see who would win the fight. But the elephant runs away.

Well, it's very Roman behavior. Yes, it is. It's very, well, the elephant goes to Rome. It gets sent to the Pope, doesn't it? Yeah. So Manuel sends the white elephant to the Pope. And there's a huge, there's some Indians, there's parrots. It's a bit like a triumph, actually.

I mean, I wonder if that was in their mind. They had this huge parade through the streets of Rome. Because they're very alert to Pliny, who is describing the wealth of the world, and particularly the wealth of India. There's a huge kind of influence on them. So I'm sure that that must be lurking at the back of their minds this all this very roman behavior and the other roman behavior is that they build kind of great monuments they do i was just going to say you know but we're talking about the romans they call the the pope calls the elephant hanno which i believe is that is that is a hannibal um reference isn't it yes yes so hanno is a is a carthaginian name name. So it's an allusion to the Carthaginians.

But you were saying about the monuments, Tom. So by now, Lisbon is this, you know, which I suppose it wasn't exactly a backwater, but it's not one of the world's great cities before then. But now it definitely is. It's this incredibly colourful kind of entrepot of peoples and traders and ships and all kinds of stuff. Of course, lots of slaves because the slave markets are absolutely booming. And you were saying about monuments. So there are two very famous monuments. This is Manuel is the King, and it's what's called Manueline architecture. And if you want to see, if anybody hasn't been to Lisbon

and they want to go and they want to see the what kind of architecture you produce if you are incredibly self-confident and sort of puffed up with your own um your own glory then you go to beleng which is in the sort of western bits of lisbon it's where vasco de gama is set off from and it's where he's buried isn't it yes in the i think in the monastery yeah um so there are two very really famous buildings that are symbols of lisbon so one is that it's called the tower of belen which is this sort of fort sort of watchtower kind of building very ornate decorated with um the heads of the white rhinoceros and all these kinds of things so the classic kind of monument that you

see is a symbol of lisbon and the the other, which is even more impressive, is this monastery. The monastery, are they called the Hieronymites? They're called the Hieronymus in Lisbon. I don't know what the Hieronymites are. There must be an order of monks. But it's this massive monastery. Again, unbelievably ornate, the sort of gorgeous stonework. And it's that monastery, Tom,

I know you like a bit of food and drink on this podcast where they invented the custard tart oh the famous portuguese custard tart so the pastiche to nato the pastiche to berlin which you can buy in this there's a very famous kind of cafe next to the monastery or just across the road from the monastery called the antiga cafetaria de berlin and there the custard tart, and actually Roger Crowley ends his book about the age of Vasco de Gama with the custard tarts, because he says they're basically a symbol. They are a symbol of Portuguese. Have they got coffee by the way? Because you have coffee with it, which is obviously an import, but they're dusted with cinnamon. And the cinnamon the the perfect symbol of what they've gone to india to get the spice trade so he says cinnamon sugar coffee that combination but they i mean they have they have

gone to india for spice but they've also gone to india as part of a kind of global crusade against islam and to find prester john and presumably it wasn't there yeah Yeah. By this point, so what, 1520, say, they've realised Prester John isn't out there. Yeah. And so their focus now presumably is starting to turn just to trade. Yes, I think so. I mean, I think they also realise now that Islam is not going to be defeated overnight, certainly by the 1520s or 1530s. And also they're starting to... There's a point at they're starting to there's a point at where i guess

there's a point with all of these things with any empire builders where the focus sort of tips from exploring and the sort of the glamour to the sort of humdrum job of administering and the point is they're actually not very good at the latter so to what extent then is this empire as it emerges over the course of the 16th century a prototype for the european empires that will follow so that it's it's based on the seas which the dutch and the british empires will be as well and basically it seems to consist of establishing nodes across the world. Yeah. And then linking them up and using them as trade. And that's basically where the Dutch and the British will,

and the English and then the British will do as well. I think you're absolutely right, Tom. I think that's exactly what it is. So it's quite different, I think, in some ways from the Spanish empire, which sees large scale immigration from Spain. I mean, one reason they're able to overwhelm, you know, the Aztecs or the Incas is so many people arriving arriving but it's also land-based isn't it i mean i know they have to bring all the gold back in ships but it's not like i suppose the spanish are as well aren't they they're going they're getting the philippines and so on but they are but they're also they're

expanding as you say by land and by sea i guess but also by land through the americas the portuguese are obviously not doing that in India. They're taking little coastal enclaves and using them as trading posts, but they're not settling abroad in huge numbers. I mean, obviously, we'll come to Brazil. I think we'll probably come to Brazil in our next episode because the great expansion into Brazil really doesn't happen until slightly later. But I think it's a very good well the dutch and the portuguese are absolutely implacable rivals and again we'll probably mention that next time we will yeah about this intense competition between

the dutch and the portuguese and actually at one point the dutch basically take over a lot of the portuguese empire and then the portuguese get it back again but yeah i think it's it's a really it's the prototype for the dutch empire i think and for aspects of the british empire um the portuguese empire i mean the portuguese are not good at running it so by the mid 16th century they're already you know there's endless governors fighting against each other i mean they're literally fighting against each other like the kings will send out governors who have to fight their predecessors to get hold of these sort of forts and trading stations. Brazil they go to in the 1530s, and obviously the slave trade starts to become a bigger and bigger issue.

We'll probably talk about that next time. But there's a definite sense that by the mid-16 16th century there's a bit of a loss of momentum i would say and a loss of mission that the sense that basically the portuguese are inventing uh well a crucial aspect of modernity that they're blazing a path for globalization for european hegemony all this the slave trade um global, global trade, all these things that will utterly transform not just Europe, but the world. But in the mid 16th century, you have this kind of reversion back to the norm, where you have a King, King Sebastian, who basically behaves like a crusader. And he, rather than kind of focusing on distant lands,

he invades and attacks Mauritania, doesn't he? I suppose you could say King Sebastiao is where it all goes wrong for Portugal to some extent. So his, let me work this out, his great-grandfather was Manuel. And he succeeds when he's a boy, Sebastián, and his grandmother and then a cardinal run the country for him. Well, the cardinal is his uncle, isn't it? That's right, yes. And he's a crucial figure, and he is known as Enrique the Chaste.

Well, that's pretty good for a cardinal, isn't it? Yeah, but this will become an important part of what then happens. Yes. Well, so Sebastien becomes, or Sebastiao in Portuguese, he comes of age in 1568. And I guess, I wonder whether there's a sense that Portugal's great glory days are already ebbing into the past. And so that makes him even more determined to sort of stake his own... To cut a dash. Yes own to cut a dash yes to cut a dash and he decides he's going to lead a crusade against the moroccans and he makes a terrible error tom which is to trust philip the second of spain who says to him rookies error yeah sure i'll

send you supporters i'll send you know people to help you they all assemble all these troops and mercenaries they assemble at cadiz and the the Spanish are nowhere to be seen. All these promised Spanish reinforcements aren't there, but they go anyway, Sebastião and his men. So this is 1578. They cross the Mediterranean. They land in Morocco. And, I mean, you were in a previous episode, I think it was, Tom, you were complimenting the Crusades, but this is not a Crusade that goes, you said

some Crusades went better than others. This is one that doesn't go well. Doesn't go well, because in their very first battle, they're absolutely routed, absolutely routed. And he presumably dies. The last scene of him is he's charging the enemy, but his body is never found. So the mystery of what has happened to him, he leaves no heir. And so he is succeeded by his uncle, the Cardinal Enrique the Chaste. But by definition,

if you're called the Chaste, you're unlikely, and you're kind of 60 or whatever, you're unlikely to be producing an heir. And so when Enrique the Chaste dies in 1580 the guy who is next in line for the throne is none other than philip the second of spain very much not a friend i think it's fair to say of the rest of his history philip the second of spain he hasn't appeared in this podcast before but now that he has i just want to absolutely state my colors to the mast and say not my favorite person not a fan well he's he's not he's not behaving well here um no and he he essentially well so he says about portugal i inherited it i bought it and i conquered it so yeah in every way he takes over although having said that i think we're doing philip the second

down because he does actually behave quite well i mean he doesn't he treats portugal with dignity portugal remains yeah you know supposedly an independent kingdom and i think actually tom we haven't really touched on this as much as we could have done but spain itself is a very recent creation at this point and you know spain is itself a patchwork of kingdoms isn't it obvious most obviously, Castile and Aragon. So Philip II is adding another kingdom. So he wouldn't necessarily absorb it. Because I mean, his predecessor, Charles V, had been ruling all kinds of different places without combining them into one. So the Portuguese, who already have, I think it's fair to say by now, a sense of their own

distinctiveness, which has been forged in the previous 100 years because of their own explorations and their own missions. They have no intention of becoming Spaniards. And it's a bit like Scotland and England, I suppose. It's going to be very difficult to combine them. The parallel is, I guess, with Catalonia, which similarly has a very strong sense of its distinctiveness, gets absorbed into what will become the kingdom of Spain and stays part of Spain. But the difference with Portugal, and the same thing might well have happened with Portugal, but I suppose the difference is that Portugal does have this, I mean, it has a vast global empire that is Portuguese. And as we enter

the 17th century, so there are other powers that are arriving, Protestant powers of whom the Dutch are the cutting edge. And the Dutch start to look with envious eyes at all these Portuguese possessions. And so the question of whether the Spanish monarchy will help the Portuguese to see these, you know, these Dutch pirates as the Portuguese season helped see them off is,

is crucial to whether Portugal will become a loyal part of this emergent kingdom. Cause also the Portuguese feel, I think that they've been dragged into this world war against the Dutch. Yeah. Because, because they're yoked to the Spanish. Yeah.

And the Spanish don't care about protecting the Portuguese possessions. And the Portuguese, you definitely get the sense, I think, by the beginning of the 17th century, that Portugal has been hard done by in being sort of united with Spain. And I think it's at that point, isn't it, where you start to get, well, you definitely get at the end of the 16th century all of these imposters so people who basically say you know sebastian who was charging towards those lines and never seen again here i am yeah he's despite the fact i can't speak portuguese in one one of them well there's one of them who's um so the first one is a sort of a a guy who's is just an ordinary commoner. Then there's a guy who's a stonecutter from the Azores. He's obviously not – he's very poorly treated. He's hanged.

But isn't the one who doesn't speak Portuguese at all? Yeah, he's from Naples. He doesn't speak – So – Yeah. I think that's pushing – It's very Perkin, Warbeck, and Lambert Simnel, isn't it? But basically, it becomes clear that he is dead,

and so then you start to get these kind of weird King Arthur-type that actually he is hidden away, and he's waiting to come back. And this is a fantasy that sustains the Portuguese under Spanish rule. But I still think it's possible that Portugal might have accepted Spanish rule, except for what happens in the 17th century, which is basically the First World War. And I think that we should take a break here, come back tomorrow with a further episode, and we will begin with the First World War. So we will see you then. See you then. Goodbye. Adios. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to The Rest Is History.

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