Military Review English Edition January-February 2017 | Page 149

BOOK REVIEWS

CONQUERORS

How Portugal Forged the
First Global Empire

Roger Crowley, Random House, New York,
2015, 400 pages

C

rowley has written several books about the
wars between Christendom and Islam in
the Mediterranean. Here he tells how the
Portuguese created their maritime trading empire in
the sixteenth century.
Portuguese mariners began exploring the Atlantic
and coastal Africa in the 1420s for political, commercial, and religious reasons. Prince Henry, their principal
sponsor, harnessed new sailing and shipbuilding techniques to extend Portuguese influence southward. The
goal was to chart the African coast and the islands in
the Atlantic systematically to search for an ocean route
to Asia and break the Muslim-Venetian monopoly of
the trade with India, thereby enriching Portugal and
destroying Muslim power.
The Portuguese trading empire resembled those
formed by the Scythians and Mongols, but their
contemporary analogues were the Venetians and the
Chinese. By 1510 they were in Goa (India), in 1535
they reached Macau (China), and by 1543, Japan. Their
empire encompassed stations in Africa, the Persian
Gulf (Aden and Hormuz), Malacca, China, and Japan.
They forcibly established trading rights, built trading
posts, and depended on local expertise throughout their
expansion, using ships and cannon to open trade when
negotiations failed. The discovery of open ocean routes
to Asia opened the way to the contemporary world beginning with the Portuguese, who were followed by the
Spanish, Dutch, English, and French.
Crowley’s account shows how commercial goals
were accompanied by a crusading impulse. A mixture
of religious zeal and commercial opportunism made
the Portuguese governor, Alonso de Albuquerque, the
protagonist in Crowley’s story, realize Portugal could control the silk and spice trade by occupying a few strategic
points: Aden, Hormuz, Goa, and Malacca. Goa became
the linchpin of the Portuguese trading empire.
The Portuguese followed the Chinese when the
Ming engaged in maritime colonialism, controlling
the main ports on the major East-West ocean trade
MILITARY REVIEW  January-February 2017

networks through force or threats. The Portuguese
would also control the port cities and dominate the
commerce along the trade routes between them.
Neither the Ming, the Portuguese, nor their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century
successors sought
territorial dominion;
they wanted political and economic
command of commercial lifelines, nodal
points, and networks.
By holding ports and
trade routes, they controll ed trade, which
was essential for stability and prosperity.
Crowley judiciously uses the voluminous official correspondence of the leaders and the
diaries kept by their subordinates to give this account
of five hundred-year-old events dramatic immediacy.
The Portuguese accomplishment included changing the
genetic makeup of the South Indian population as well
as European culinary and cultural habits.
Crowley tries to present a nuanced and fair interpretation of these events; he admires Portuguese
bravery and curiosity but emphasizes their cruelty and
greed while de-emphasizing the duplicitous tactics of
the Indian rulers and Muslim merchants. In this, he
mirrors our contemporary belief that the use of force
in international relations began with fifteenth-century
European colonialism. This premise is false, as violence
occurred in world history from its beginnings—everywhere. In fact, the actions of the Portuguese, Spanish,
Dutch, French, and English in Asia were relatively
benign compared to the punishment they inflicted
on each other in Europe. Discovering an ocean route
to India made Portugal the center of a global empire
instead of a backward fringe of Europe. In the end,
Portugal did not retain its dominant position due to
internal and external factors, but that is another story.
This good book has great implications for our contemporary globalized world. Crowley’s skill as a writer makes
this an enjoyable book to read, too.

Lewis Bernstein, PhD, Woodbridge, Virginia

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