Chapter

Summary

Let’s now sail from the Red Sea to the Arabian Sea, to the Malabar Coast in the sixteenth century. Reaching the ports of India, especially Malabar, the land of fabled spices, was the dream of Iberian explorers, including Vasco da Gama, Cristopher Columbus and Ferdinand Magellan. They all wanted to undercut the monopoly of Arabs and Italians between the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean. Gama’s fleet filled with sailors and prisoners from the Habsburg domains succeeded in traveling around Africa to Asia and arrive in the land of black pepper just before the turn of the fifteenth century.