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    Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
    Unavailable
    Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
    Unavailable
    Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
    Ebook730 pages12 hours

    Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations

    By Nigel Cliff

    4.5/5

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    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    A sweeping historical epic and a radical new interpretation of Vasco da Gama’s groundbreaking voyages, seen as a turning point in the struggle between Christianity and Islam

    In 1498 a young captain sailed from Portugal, circumnavigated Africa, crossed the Indian Ocean, and discovered the sea route to the Indies and, with it, access to the fabled wealth of the East. It was the longest voyage known to history. The little ships were pushed beyond their limits, and their crews were racked by storms and devastated by disease. However, their greatest enemy was neither nature nor even the sheer dread of venturing into unknown worlds that existed on maps populated by coiled, toothy sea monsters. With bloodred Crusader crosses emblazoned on their sails, the explorers arrived in the heart of the Muslim East at a time when the old hostilities between Christianity and Islam had risen to a new level of intensity. In two voyages that spanned six years, Vasco da Gama would fight a running sea battle that would ultimately change the fate of three continents.

    An epic tale of spies, intrigue, and treachery; of bravado, brinkmanship, and confused and often comical collisions between cultures encountering one another for the first time; Holy War also offers a surprising new interpretation of the broad sweep of history. Identifying Vasco da Gama’s arrival in the East as a turning point in the centuries-old struggle between Islam and Christianity—one that continues to shape our world—Holy War reveals the unexpected truth that both Vasco da Gama and his archrival, Christopher Columbus, set sail with the clear purpose of launching a Crusade whose objective was to reach the Indies; seize control of its markets in spices, silks, and precious gems from Muslim traders; and claim for Portugal or Spain, respectively, all the territories they discovered. Vasco da Gama triumphed in his mission and drew a dividing line between the Muslim and Christian eras of history—what we in the West call the medieval and the modern ages. Now that the world is once again tipping back East, Holy War offers a key to understanding age-old religious and cultural rivalries resurgent today.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins
    Release dateSep 13, 2011
    ISBN9780062097101
    Unavailable
    Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations
    Author

    Nigel Cliff

    Nigel Cliff is a historian, biographer, and translator. His first book, The Shakespeare Riots, was a finalist for the National Award for Arts Writing and was chosen as one of the Washington Post’s best books of the year. His second book, The Last Crusade: The Epic Voyages of Vasco da Gama, was a New York Times Notable Book. His most recent book is a translation and edition of The Travels by Marco Polo. A former film and theater critic for the London Times and contributor to The Economist, he writes for a range of publications, including the New York Times Book Review. A Fellow of Harris Manchester College, Oxford, he lives in London.

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    Reviews for Holy War

    4.5/5

    9 ratings5 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Clear and readable with scholarly footnotes but a narrative style, this is excellent. The author adds evidence to the clear case that the world map was never a "blank" and describes the interactions between Europe and the "East" (which could be argued to include parts of Africa) that led into the development or European colonialism and the retreat of Islam. Not uncontroversial, but well supported and intriguing.
    • 4/5
      A history book that unfolds like a story. It tells you the basics of what you need to know regarding the founding of Portuguese and European ambitions in Indian, with Vasco Da Gama and his family at its core. This is a must read book for anyone who wants to know how European nations began the epic scramble for Empire, how Portugal became the oldest and longest lasting of these Empires, and how the Islamic and Venetian world was set on a path towards long economic decrepitude from its once illustrious position.
    • 5/5
      Good read. Another sad story of how the West "won" - at least for a time. Religion as a curse rather than a blessing. Seems like we haven't learned.
    • 3/5
      On his final voyage to India, Vasco da Gama, then a successful commander, publicly ordered the sailors in his employ, from common seaman to captain, not to smuggle women on board when they left Portugal. Anyone who did would be promptly and permanently put ashore to fend for themselves in the wilds of Africa, any woman found would be flogged. Still, three sailors hid women on board ship only to find that Vasco da Gama was a man of his word. It's these odd little footnotes to history that make reading history so much fun. Imagine hiding your lover on a ship facing thousands of miles at sea. Did they really think they'd get away with it? Da Gama is something of an also ran in American history classes. Since he didn't come to the Americas, we tend to overlook him in favor of those who did. Seems natural to me.Mr. Cliff makes a strong case for the importance of Da Gama's voyages and subsequent colonization of the Indian subcontinent. He argues that Portugal saw these expeditions as a final crusade, one last attempt to defeat Islam. Both Portugal and Spain drove the Islamic kingdoms out of their countries in the years proceeding the expeditions of Da Gama and Columbus. Mr. Cliff makes the case that Da Gama and his ilk were seen as one way to defeat the Islamic kingdoms of Northern Africa as well as a way to liberate the Christians they believed lived under the thumb of India's Islamic kings. Perhaps they may even have wanted to take Jerusalem from the East via the Arabian Sea. In another odd footnote to history, Mr. Cliff writes about how those on Da Gama's first voyage to India mistook the Hindu religion they found there for a form of Christianity made strange by centuries of isolation from the church in Rome. They were sorely disappointed once they realized their mistake.I'm not enough of an historian to say just how accurate Mr. Cliff's argument that Da Gama's voyages were part of the crusading spirit is, but he made a case strong enough to convince me. The voyages of Da Gama and Columbus do mark the point in time when Europe (Christendom) overtook the Islamic world in the competition for dominance. Mr. Cliff's account of this time makes for interesting reading.
    • 4/5
      Nigel Cliff?s Holy War is a reinterpretation of the explorations conducted by Vasco da Gama. Specifically, he tells the story of the deeply flawed, fanatically religious, but very brave but edacious men who first sailed around the Cape of Good Hope from Portugal to India, and in the process broke up the monopoly of the spice trade that the Islamic world had exercised over Europe. Cliff sets the stage for the main story by describing the early growth of Islam and the intolerance followers of Islam and Christianity had for one another. He observes, "The modern concept of Europe was born not from geography alone, nor simply from a shared religion. It slowly emerged among a patchwork of fractious peoples that found common purpose in their struggle with Islam.? To Cliff, the original motivation behind the Portuguese expansion was not so much trade and profit, as it was religion and a desire to rid the world of Islam. (Cliff's interpretation asks the reader to choose between fanaticism and greed as motivators, not exactly a happy outcome in either event.) To understand the remarkable events of the 15th and 16th centuries, modern readers must be aware of significant differences between current technology and our perception of the world and those of the people of that time. Navigation on the high seas was exceedingly difficult. Using Polaris, mariners could determine their latitude, but only in the Northern Hemisphere. More importantly, there was no known way of measuring longitude other than by estimating speed, direction, and time from a know starting point. The Americas remained undiscovered because sailors seldom ventured very far west from the European land mass. Indeed, the Portuguese discovered Brazil accidentally by straying farther west than they had intended while trying to find favorable winds to round Africa?s Cape of Good Hope! The peoples of Europe and of the Middle East were at constant loggerheads with one another owing to religious differences. Because of the difficulties of traveling through Muslim lands, Europeans had only very infrequent contact with East Asians, and knew very little about China and India, except that they were the source of that era?s ?gold? - spices. In the absence of refrigeration, food spoiled quickly and so spices (which grew in India and farther east, but not in Europe or the Islamic world) were relatively precious because they made food palatable. In the 15th century, the Christians of Portugal and Spain were engaged in a bitter struggle with the Muslim Moors, who had conquered much of the Iberian Peninsula in the 8th century. In 1415, King John of Portugal initiated an aggressive campaign against the Muslims and astonished his contemporaries by conquering Ceuta, an important trading port on the African side of the Pillars of Hercules, in a single day. Cliff argues that that victory ?left a legacy that would burden the ambitious young nation for centuries to come.? The Portuguese were determined to find Prester John, a legendary king of a great Christian power to the south or east of the Muslim lands. They hoped to link up with him by sailing around Africa. In fact, there was a predominantly Christian country, Ethiopia, south of the Islamic world with which the Europeans had lost contact. However, it was nowhere near as powerful as they fancied. The Portuguese began their southern quest in earnest in the 1440?s when their control of Ceuta proved to be a liability--the Muslims simply ignored it and traded with nearby Tangiers. Rounding Africa proved to be a daunting task: it took more than 50 years of exploring the west African coast before a small flotilla of three ships and about 160 men led by the intrepid Vasco da Gama actually made it to India in 1498. Da Gama?s mission was to win allies and wealth (including spices) that would enable Portugal to invade the Arab heartland and conquer Jerusalem. In the latter respect, he was unsuccessful, making more enemies than allies, and discovering that Islam had penetrated the African continent and even India much more than the Portuguese had believed. On the other hand, he was enormously successful in expanding European knowledge of geography and opening up a profitable trade in spices for Portugal. The Portuguese were fortunate in their timing because the most powerful Muslim country of that time, the Ottoman Empire, was more concerned with expanding into southeast Europe and Iran than protecting trading opportunities in India. Consequently, the Portuguese were able to build forts and establish semi-permanent trading stations in India - Goa being the most prominent. From these fortified locations, the Portuguese traded profitably with the Indians and raided Muslim shipping from the Red Sea and the Arabian Gulf. However, the crusader spirit petered out in the 16th century when Prester John proved nowhere to be found and the profits from the spice trade and piracy directed against Arab shipping provided a greater incentive than religious zeal.By 1600, the Portuguese monopoly of the seaway around Africa was ended as the English and the Dutch began to build strong navies and sought colonies in the East. Nevertheless, the long-term effects of the Portuguese expansion involved a significant shift of the balance of power between the Islamic world and Europe. Cliff summarizes: "As centuries of cribbed fantasies gave way to clearly charted facts, new mental as well geographical horizons opened up. Colonies were founded, churches sprang up in unheard-of places, and Islam?s supremacy no longer seemed unassailable. Vast wealth in natural resources?bullion, manpower, and of course spices?fell under Christian control, and at long last the West had the means to hold off and eventually repel the Ottoman challenge at its gates. But for that, the fate of much of Europe, the settlement of America, and the discovery of new worlds then unknown might have taken a very different path.? But as to the Portuguese motivation, Cliff concludes: "In the end, the religious certainty that drove Vasco da Gama and his fellow explorer halfway around the world was also their undoing. For all their astonishing achievements, the idea of a Last Crusade?a holy war to end all holy wars?was always a crazy dream.? Evaluation: This is a very enlightening and entertaining book. Cliff is a good raconteur, and his descriptions of the privations of the early explorers make riveting reading. Many ships were lost because of foul weather or just bad navigation, and the crews suffered horribly from scurvy. On the other hand, the Portuguese were far from sympathetic actors on the global stage; they were greedy and rapacious, often using their new-found superiority in naval artillery to slaughter Muslims or primitive Africans. Cliff asks that we understand Portuguese exploration as part of a "holy war" instead of a war for territory and land. He makes an interesting though not definitive case, but certainly provides much "spicy" food for thought. (JAB)