Heaton 000001

The issue was not destined to be settled by economic factors alone, with victory going to the competitor who could supply Europe with spices at the lowest price. Portugal went east as crusader and trader, determined to get a monopoly of the westward flow of goods and also to wage the holy war on new battlefields. To establish the monopoly she must gain control of the producing regions and exporting harbors, close the entrances to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, and wipe out any Arab or Egyptian ships that came in sight. For the crusade she must provide a considerable army and navy for combined operations and draw on Abyssinia for material and men. For about two decades she acted with vigor. In 1502 Vasco da Gama broke up Arab-Egyptian shipping so thoroughly that in 1504 scarcely any spices reached the Levantine ports or Mediterranean Europe. From 1506 to 1516 Albuquerque, commander of the fleet and after 1509 governor general of the Portuguese Indies, was untiring, aggressive, and triumphant. He captured Ormuz in 1507, thus blockading the Persian Gulf. He strung a chain of outposts from East Africa to China. He laid plans to capture Aden, establish a base inside the Red Sea, burn the Egyptian navy in harbor, and destroy the Moslem holy city of Mecca. He even suggested that engineers be brought from Europe to divert the upper Nile from its course, thus turning Egypt into a desert. Though Albuquerque died before he could seal up the Red Sea, he did reduce and render fitful the traffic from India and points east to Alexandria and Aleppo. Portugal became for a time the leading, and in some years the only, recipient of East Indian produce. Her ships, laden with some European goods and well stocked with gold from Africa, went out regularly, returning to Lisbon with cargoes that were sent on to Antwerp to be sold. The king claimed a royal monopoly of the trade in pepper, his factors and agents tried to keep the price as high as possible, and he seemed to be richly rewarded for the enterprise of his ancestors. is probable, however, that much of the royal profit was swallowed up in the cost of sustaining the forces needed in the Orient to suppress rivals. It is certain that those rivals were not permanently or completely suppressed. The Turks, who had gone on from capturing Constantinople in 1453 to conquer Syria in 1516 and Egypt in 1517, were eager to revive the old trade routes because of the revenue to be collected from them. Their eagerness was shared by the Venetians, by the French, who were competing more and more with the Italians in the Levant, and by the Arabs. After about 1520 the Portuguese blockade grew weaker, the administration became incompetent or corrupt, the Red Sea could not be closed tight, and Arab bribes brought freedom from restraint. By 1540 at latest, goods were flowing once more in considerable volume through Aleppo and Alexandria to Venice, Ragusa, Marseilles, and other ports. Professor Lane estimates that by 1560 Venice was receiving more pepper than she had done before the trade was interrupted; that shipments through the Red Sca equaled and sometimes exceeded the Lisbon imports; and that the European consumption of pepper increased greatly —perhaps even doubled- between 1500 and 1560. It has been suggested that Portugal's appropriation of the African gold supply had reduced the Italians' ability to pay for what they wanted in the Levant. If that diversion of precious metal was a serious blow, the damage was repaired by the mounting supplies of silver coming from mid-European mines and then by the influx from America.