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GETTY IMAGESprevailing winds blow from the west. So If you want to
sail to the Americas from Europe, simply head south a little
bit first to position yourself in the zone of the trade winds
and ride them all the way across the Atlantic. To get home
again, you need a band of prevailing winds blowing in the
opposite direction.
These alternating bands of prevailing winds – the trade
winds and the westerlies – also blow the sea surface into great
circling currents known as the ocean gyres. Because water is
so much more dense than air, these ocean currents can have
a significant impact on a ship’s course. An example is the Gulf
Stream, which is part of the North Atlantic gyre flowing from
the Caribbean to Scandinavia. The Gulf Stream was discov-
ered by European sailors in 1513, and the implications for ship-
ping were immediately realised. Heavily laden galleons needed
only slip into this wide, fast-flowing river-within-an-ocean
to be readily carried north to where they could pick up the
westerly winds to sail back to Europe.
Navigators also learned to be wary of regions around the
world where the surface winds are light and variable, such
as the zone along the equator within the rising arm of the
Hadley cells – a potentially treacherous zone known to sailors
as the doldrums.Global conveyor belts
As navigators decoded these global patterns of alternating
bands of prevailing winds and wheeling ocean currents, they
realised that they could use them as a great interlinked system
of conveyor belts to carry them where they wanted to go. Euro-
pean sailors reached across the great expanses of the world’s
oceans, established long-range maritime trade routes, and con-trolled and protected all of these overseas interests with their
powerful gunpowder weapons.
By doing so, Portugal and Spain created a new kind of
empire – one made powerful and wealthy not through posses-
sion of large areas of land territory but by the strategic control of
sprawling oceanic trade networks on the other side of the world:
empires of water. And where the Spanish and Portuguese led
the way, the Dutch, British and French followed. The rivalry
between these marine trading powers triggered colonial wars
around the world as they attempted to eject each other from
strategic ports and forts, to control chokepoints and dominate
the critical sea passages. Europe was no longer a backwards
extremity of Eurasia, but had extended itself to dictate affairs
around the world – for better or for worse.
After the course from Europe to India around the southern
tip of Africa had been pioneered by Vasco da Gama, the Portu-
guese began sending annual expeditions along this long mari-
time route. Indeed, the very first fleet that followed da Gama’s
route to India took such a wide loop through the south Atlantic
that they stumbled on the Brazilian coastline.
By 1520, the Portuguese had asserted their dominance across
the Indian Ocean and the so-called Spice Islands (now Maluku,
an archipelago within Indonesia) with their large, cannon-
wielding ships and fortress-building techniques – experience
gained from centuries of incessant warfare in Europe – and grew
hugely wealthy by monopolising this trade. Portugal also estab-
lished trading centres in Macau and Nagasaki to conduct
business directly with the Chinese and Japanese. The Strait of
Malacca, between the Malay peninsula and the long island of
Sumatra (also now part of Indonesia), became a crucial mari-
time chokepoint, serving as the gateway into the archipelagos
of south-east Asia; the Portuguese colony of Malacca (now Mel-
aka) thus became the primary port controlling maritime traffic
through the Strait.
The impact of their discovery was longer-lasting than
the wealth it generated. Even after the trade dominance of the
Portuguese empire waned and Brazil declared independenceStrange new worlds
Christopher Columbus encounters the inhabitants of the Caribbean island
of Hispaniola in 1492, after riding easterly trade winds across the AtlanticPortugal and Spain
created a new kind of
empire through the
strategic control of
oceanic trade networks:
empires of water
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