Vasco da Gama Reaches India: Global Trade Opens
Vasco da Gama anchored off the coast of Calicut (modern Kozhikode), India, on May 20, 1498, completing the first direct sea voyage from Europe to Asia around the Cape of Good Hope. The journey from Lisbon had taken ten months and covered 13,000 miles. Da Gama's arrival was not warmly received: the local Zamorin ruler was unimpressed by the cheap trade goods the Portuguese offered, and Arab merchants who controlled the existing spice trade tried to block the newcomers. Da Gama returned to Portugal with enough pepper and cinnamon to cover the cost of the expedition sixty times over. The sea route to India bypassed the Venetian-Ottoman monopoly on the spice trade, shifting commercial power from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic and launching the Portuguese maritime empire.
May 20, 1498
528 years ago
Key Figures & Places
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