Who, if not he, who was the first to enter the Indian Ocean, had every right to lead the fateful campaign? However, the new Portuguese king Manuel I in 1497 gave this order not to him, but to the young nobleman Vasco da Gama - not so much a navigator as a military and diplomat. It was becoming dangerous to delay the expedition to India - God knows what else the Genoese Spaniard was discovering across the Atlantic! And the expedition was organized - with the direct participation of Bartolomeu Dias. A year later, Spain and Portugal signed the so-called Tordesillas Treaty, which was based on this decision. On May 3, 1493, Pope Alexander VI made a Solomon decision: all the lands that the Portuguese discovered or will open east of the meridian, which runs in 100 leagues (one league was equal to about 3 miles or 4,828 km) west of the Cape Verde Islands, belong to them, and the territories west of this line - to the Spaniards. Only the head of the Catholic Church himself could resolve this dispute. The Spaniards declared the lands discovered by Columbus theirs and refused to recognize the territorial rights of Portugal. The return of Columbus with the news that he had opened the western route to India, naturally, worried the Portuguese: they questioned the rights granted to Portugal in 1452 by Pope Nicholas V to all the lands open to the south and east of Cape Bojador. The latter dragged on for a long time, but in 1492 they dispatched an expedition to the west. Perhaps João II was going to save Columbus with his project until better times, but he did not take into account one thing - the Genoese was not going to wait for the weather by the sea, fled Portugal and offered his services to the Spaniards. It is most likely that the Portuguese either preferred the "bird in hand" - already almost groped over the years to India around Africa, or they were better informed than Columbus and knew that India was not at all lying across the Atlantic Ocean. The reasons why the king nevertheless rejected the Genoese's project, now we can only guess. However, for some reason, the Portuguese were in no hurry to make this same throw.Ī little earlier, in 1483, Christopher Columbus offered the King of Portugal João II a different route to India - the western one, across the Atlantic.
This confidence was reinforced by the evidence obtained from the studies of Peruda Coviglian and Afonso de Paiva that there was a sea connection between East Africa and India (1490-1491).
The captains consulted and decided, if the wind permits, to return back to India ”(Vasco da Gama's travel diary).Īfter Bartolomeu Dias discovered the path around Africa to the Indian Ocean (1488), the Portuguese found themselves one march away from the coveted land of spices. We prayed to the patron saints of our ships. We have reached the point where all the bonds of discipline have disappeared. “… If this situation continued for two more weeks, there would be no people left to operate the ships.
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