Bartolomeu Dias and the Opening of the Indian Ocean Trade Route to India, 1487-88

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Bartolomeu Dias and the Opening of the Indian Ocean Trade Route to India, 1487-88

Overview

The Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500) lies at a crossroad in the history of exploration. For more than 50 years before he set sail to what would become the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal had explored to its own profit along most of the western coast of Africa. When Dias reached the Cape in 1487, he triggered a completely new series of explorations in the Indian Ocean. His achievement should thus be seen as the end of one epoch in the history of European exploration and colonization of the world and the beginning of another.

Background

By going beyond the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias fulfilled a hope of many centuries—circumnavigating that great continent. His exploit, however, was not something that came out of the blue, the result of a lone buccaneer's ship in search of great treasures. Rather, it was part of a grand orchestrated strategy that would give Portugal complete control of the eastward trading routes to India before the turn of the sixteenth century. What Dias actually accomplished was to lead the tiny Iberic nation to the threshold of the Indian Ocean—which was crossed ten years later by his countryman Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524). Although Dias was following in the footsteps of skilled and daring Portuguese seamen, his achievement was only made possible because of innovative breakthroughs in seamanship.

As a matter of fact, the second half of the fifteenth century saw the art of navigation radically transformed. Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), architect and patron of the epoch-making explorations along the coast of Africa, questioned mathematicians and astronomers (Jews, Arabs, and Christians alike) to resolve a number of problems involving navigation on the high seas, first and foremost establishing one's latitude south of the Equator where one loses sight of the Pole Star—the latter always a key navigation tool for mariners. These scholars provided seamen with new theoretical and practical tools that enabled them to calculate their latitude anywhere south of the Equator by measuring the altitude of the Sun at noon. And so, armed with a cross-staff and mathematical tables to calculate the declination of the Sun (the so-called "Regiments of the Sun), Prince Henry's sailors were capable of finding their way along the west coast of the African continent. Shipbuilding also changed considerably; without the strength and maneuverability of the newly designed caravels, Dias's discovery would have been virtually impossible due in most part to unfavorable currents and winds (whirling, that is, counterclockwise south of the Equator).

When Bartolomeu Dias set sail on a journey that lead him past the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal had already discovered and conquered most of western Africa. There is no question that political, economic, and religious motives were at the foundation of such territorial expansion. The outcome for science, though, was somewhat unexpected. The Portuguese—by sailing beyond Cape Bojador (Gil Eannes, 1434) and into the mysterious and treacherous "Sea of Darkness"—discovered new lands and new stars, and some unheard-of plants and animals. Never before in history had the scientific authority of the ancient scientists, and most of all the geography of Ptolemy, been challenged by such a wealth of observed facts. For some historians of science this chain of geographical discoveries triggered nothing less than the seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution and the rise of modern science.

Impact

By reaching what Diogo Cão (fl. 1480-1486) before him missed by many leagues, Dias opened an entire new vista of exploration. In fact, when his weather-beaten caravels landed in Lisbon harbor in 1488 after more than a year at sea, the news of his rounding the Cape of Good Hope disappointed an explorer whose dream was also to get to Asia, but by going westward across the Atlantic. His name was Christopher Columbus (c. 1451-1506). Contemporary with Dias, Columbus was at that moment in Portugal trying for a second time to convince King John II (1455-1495) of the viability of his westward expedition. Even though the Italian impressed the King with his "industry and good talent," it became rather apparent to the former—since a sea route to the Indies around Africa was now found to be practicable—that his project was superfluous. Columbus left Portugal to find again his good fortune under the aegis of the Spanish crown. Thus, Dias's achievement delayed once more Columbus's own discovery.

It took a few years of convincing, but Columbus finally accomplished his life-long dream and came back in 1493 with the news that he discovered an alternate route to the Orient (Columbus did not know at that moment that he had landed on a new continent). Spain claimed these new discovered lands for itself, but so did Portugal, saying, for instance, that they were not far enough away from the Azores (islands belonging to Portugal) to be out of their jurisdiction. The Pope had to settle the difference, which resulted in the signing of the famous Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494). Since the discovery of Dias, it was pivotal for the Portuguese crown to keep intact the gate to the Indian Ocean by the circumnavigation of Africa. For Spain, it was important to lay claim on these new lands (whether or not they were part of a New World or Asia) to ensure that Portugal would not be alone to profit from these new discoveries. Hence it was ruled that a meridian line, drawn from pole to pole 370 leagues (1,185 miles or 1,907 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands, would separate the world between the two Iberic countries, leaving out all the other European nations. Spain was given exclusive rights to all newly discovered and undiscovered lands in the region west of the line, while Portuguese expeditions were to keep to the east of the line. Neither power, of course, was to occupy any territory already in the hands of a Christian ruler. The treaty thus affirmed Portugal's exclusive rights to Dias's discovery and eastward sea route to the Indies.

The running disputes between Spain and Portugal, however, postponed for a full decade the fulfillment of Prince Henry's cherished project: to colonize, Christianize, and take control of the economic trade between Europe and the empire of silk and spices. During his journey, when Dias realized that he had passed the southern tip of Africa, he had wanted to pursue the exploration further. But his crew was becoming restless and longing for home. It was Vasco da Gama, 10 years later, who was chosen by the new king Manuel I (1469-1521) to reach India. When he left in 1497, Dias escorted him as far as Cape Verde Islands, but in a subordinate position. Da Gama was then left on his own to further Dias's previous discoveries. In later years the success of da Gama's oriental mission was considered to be so significant for Portugal that Luis da Camões (1524?-1580) composed an epic poem, Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads," 1572), narrating the voyage.

Bartolomeu Dias was involved in one final important geographical discovery, owing in good part to the sea route promptly adopted to reach the Cape of Good Hope. Indeed, because of the strong opposing currents and winds found along the coast of Africa in the South Atlantic, it was easier to sail far to the southwest of the Azores and afterward veer to the east (in order to catch the now favorable currents and winds) than to follow the said coast all the way down to the Cape. Under the leadership of Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1460-1526), an armada of 13 ships (composed of seamen, priests, soldiers, and merchants) left Portugal in 1500 en route to Calicut, India, to civilize, Christianize, and trade. One of the caravel's captains was Dias. On their way to the Cape, and mostly because they miscalculated the longitude, they went so far to the southwest that they saw land and forests unnoticed before. The trees were bright red, like glowing embers, hence the name given to the new territory: Brazil. Since the Treaty of Tordesillas was still enforced, Portugal could claim these newfound lands. Some time later, in the vicinity of his epochmaking discovery of the Cape of Good Hope, Dias would meet his destiny.

João de Barros (c. 1496-1570), a sixteenth-century Portuguese historian, gave an account of that fatal day of May 29, 1500: "This happened suddenly: the wind burst down in an instant so furiously that there was no time for the seamen to work the sails, and four vessels were overwhelmed, one of which was that of Bartolomeu Dias; he who had passed so many dangers at sea in the discoveries he had made, principally of the Cabo de Boa Esperanqa. But this fury of the wind ended his life and those of other fellow mariners, casting them into the great abyss of that ocean sea ... giving human bodies as food for the fishes of those waters."

Bartolomeu Dias's explorations are often overlooked in comparison to the fame earned by such explorers as Columbus or Ferdinand Magellan (c. 1480-1521). Dias has the great merit of having found the gates to the sea-route to India even though it was da Gama who forced them open. But most of all let us not forget that, regardless of the great achievements of other explorers before and after Dias, it was as a result of these earliest ocean voyages that scientific instruments (and later technology) were made vital to scientific knowledge and progress. The development of increasingly accurate tools of science to measure time and space went hand in hand with the new geographical discoveries, and hence to ever clearer depictions of the universe.

JEAN-FRANÇOIS GAUVIN