A CRIMINAL HISTORY OF MANKIND

Venetians had only just concluded a peace with the Turks after sixteen years of war; they paid for it
by handing over some of their trading stations. Half a century later, the war broke out again, and
Venice was forced to hand over more trading stations and pay an immense annual tribute to be
allowed to trade in the Black Sea. In 1480, the Turks invaded Italy and took Otranto, and in the
following year they besieged the knights of St John in Rhodes - fortunately, Mahomet II died and
the siege was called off.
In short, the Turks were now expanding all around the Mediterranean, and strangling trade. There
had even been a point when they commanded the gateway to the Mediterranean itself, a North
African town called Ceuta which looked across the narrow Strait of Gibraltar. If the Turks had been
- like the Arabs before them - willing to exchange ideas and trade, it would have made no serious
difference; but they seemed to be particularly difficult and bloody-minded - for centuries
afterwards, the phrase ‘to play the Turk’ meant to behave with stupid ferocity, like a dog in a
manger.
So in 1415 the Portuguese sent an expedition against Ceuta. Portugal was a young country which
had been founded by commoners during the second crusade. It had a fairly small population and a
long sea coast, and it was natural they should become sea traders. Ceuta threatened its livelihood.
King John of Portugal sent his son, Prince Henry, with a fleet of ships, and they were lucky enough
to be driven by favourable winds and to take the Turks by surprise. Prince Henry sank their fleet,
then systematically destroyed Ceuta. Now, at least, European merchants could come and go as they
pleased into the Mediterranean.
But the Turks continued to play the Turk, and to block the overland trade routes to the east - to
Persia, India and China. And since the Europeans of the fifteenth century had developed a taste for
silks and spices, this was disastrous. They had discovered that spices would preserve meat through
the long winter, and leave behind a rather more interesting taste than salt. They also believed - quite
erroneously - that the smell of spices could prevent the plague, and every nobleman carried an
orange stuck with cloves of cinnamon to sniff when he had to walk through a slum quarter. The
east was full of cheap spices. But the Turks blocked the route, or charged such enormous duties that
it was not worth the long journey.
Europe had still not forgotten Prester John, that great Christian monarch who lived somewhere on
the other side of the Turks. If they could find a direct sea route to his lands, the problem would be
solved. But no one had any idea of whether such a route existed.
The Portuguese had sailed down the west coast of Africa for a thousand miles or so, to Cape
Bojador, south of the Canaries; but there the water turned white and looked very dangerous - it was
culled the Boiling Sea. No one had ventured farther south than that.
Fortunately, Prince Henry of Portugal had money to spare, since he was the Grand Master of the
Order of Christ, which had replaced the Templars. He hired map-makers, navigators and shipdesigners,
and opened a school to train sailors for long-distance exploration. This problem of the
sea route to the realm of Prester John became his obsession, so that he earned himself the title of
Henry the Navigator. In fact, all his navigating was done from an armchair - he had no desire to
risk his own life. His shipwrights built a new type of vessel called a caravel, designed for the open
sea instead of (like most ships of his time) the Mediterranean. And in 1427 his caravels sailed out
into the Atlantic nearly eight hundred miles from the shores of Portugal. They discovered the
islands called the Azores, and Portuguese settlers were soon on their way there.