Lectures on Modern History - Faculty of Social Sciences

<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern History/47at six months from home, rests on the occupation of seaports, and hecarried the forward policy so far that Portugal possessed fifty-two establishments,commanding 15,000 miles of coast, and held them, nominally,with 20,000 men. Almeida’s victory had broken the power of theMoors. Albuquerque resolved to prevent their reappearance by closingthe Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. With Aden, Ormuz, and Malacca, hesaid, the Portuguese are masters of the world. He failed in the Red Sea.When Socotra proved insufficient, he attacked Aden, and was repulsed.There was a disconcerting rumour that no Christian vessel could live inthe Red Sea, as there was a loadstone that extracted the nails. Albuquerquesucceeded in the Persian Gulf, and erected a fortress at Ormuz, andat the other end of the Indian world he seized Malacca, and becamemaster of the narrow seas, and of all the produce from the vast islandsunder the equator. He made Goa the impregnable capital of his prodigiousempire, and the work that he did was solid. He never perceived thevalue of Bombay, which is the best harbour in Asia, and did not see thatthe key of India is the Cape of Good Hope. His language was sometimesvisionary. He beheld a cross shining in the heavens, over the kingdom ofPrester John, and was eager for an alliance with him. He wished to drainthe Nile into the Red Sea. He would attack Mecca and Medina, carry offthe bones of the prophet, and exchange them for the Holy Sepulchre.The dependency was too distant and too vast. The dread proconsul inhis palace at Goa, who was the mightiest potentate between Mozambiqueand China, was too great a servant for the least of European kings.Emmanuel was suspicious. He recalled the victorious Almeida, whoperished on the way home; and Albuquerque was in disgrace, when hedied on his quarter-deck, in sight of the Christian city which he hadmade the capital of the East.The secret of Portuguese prosperity was the small bulk and the enormousmarket value of the particular products in which they dealt. Inthose days men had to do without tea, or coffee, or chocolate, or tobacco,or quinine, or coca, or vanilla, and sugar was very rare. Butthere were the pepper and the ginger of Malabar, cardamoms in thedamp district of Tellicherry; cinnamon and pearls in Ceylon. Beyondthe Bay of Bengal, near the equator, there was opium, the only conquerorof pain then known; there were frankincense and indigo; camphorin Borneo; nutmeg and mace in Amboyna; and in two small islands,only a few miles square, Ternate and Tidor, there was the clovetree, surpassing all plants in value. These were the real spice islands, the