EASTWARD HO! 89promised huge profits. A hundredweight of pepper could be had in
Calicut for three ducats. After passing through the hands of a half-
dozen intermediaries and paying substantial fees and bribes to kings,
sheikhs, and officials along the way, it sold in Venice for 80. Against
that kind of gain, what was the cost of outfitting a fleet? And what the
value of seamen's lives?
This was Portugal's revenge. King Manuel wrote his fellow mon-
archs, Ferdinand and Isabella ("Most high and excellent Prince and
Princess, most potent Lord and Lady!"), to tell them about "large
cities, large buildings and rivers, and great populations"—no naked
savages here—and to brag of spices, precious stones, and "mines of
gold." Nothing of scurvy and death, nothing of Muslim merchants and
commercial disappointment. Here was the kind of place that Colum
bus had been looking for and did not find. Stick that in your craw.
In early 1500, less than six months after da Gama's triumphal return,
the Portuguese sent out a second fleet to the Indies—thirteen ships this
time and one thousand two hundred men, including soldiers—under
the command of Pedro Alvares Cabrai. They sent him to make money
and told him not to look for trouble; but if a hostile vessel should try
to do him harm, he was not to let it come near, but rather to stand off
and blow it out of the water.
Nothing better illustrates awareness of superiority. For it is well
known that those who possess stronger arms can kill from a distance at
no risk to themselves; whereas those in a position of weakness must
close and rely on personal valor and strength to gain a victory. Cabral's
instructions signaled a new balance of world power. The Asians, so
much more numerous than the Portuguese, also richer and in many
ways more civilized, would not have understood this, could not have
imagined it. Yet there it was: Europe could now plant itself anywhere on
the surface of the globe within reach of naval cannon*
The Portuguese went at their task with method that would have
warmed the heart of Prince Henry. Here were curiosity and appetite ra-
- This decisive superiority of European armament in 1500, along with other tech
nological advantages already discussed, sticks in the craw of scholars who want to be
lieve that European global hegemony was a lucky accident. As one iconoclast has
proclaimed: "My 1400-1800 book 'shows' that Asia was way ahead of Europe till
1800 and that Europe joined/climbed up on Asia using American money. The 'ex
pansion' of Europe and its progress/advantage over Asia from 1500 is a Eurocentric
myth." Andre Gunder Frank, University of Toronto, on the Internet, H-World
©msu.edu, 7 June 1996.