Portuguese explorations continued after Prince Henry’s death in 1460, increasingly driven by the desire to find a sea route to the Spice Islands of the Indies and cut out the Arabic and Venetian middlemen.
Replica of a caravel
By the end of the sixteenth century Portugal became Europe’s first maritime empire.
The stream of trade from Asia had shifted south to the Indian Ocean when the Ming dynasty closed its northwest border in 1426, but that hadn’t affected the western end of the Silk Roads. Indian dhows shipped the luxury goods of the East to Jeddah on the Arabian shore, where they were ferried across the Red Sea and repacked onto camels that carried them to Damascus, Beirut, and Cairo. At Cairo, the merchandise was floated down the Nile to Alexandria, where Venetian merchants shipped it to the West. That was about to change.
Pope Alexander VI had already drawn a line 360 leagues west of the Azores, giving Spain the maritime rights to everything west of the line and Portugal the maritime rights to everything to the East, including a monopoly on nautical trade with India and the Spice Islands. The sea route would prove to be faster and less expensive than the old Silk Roads.
By the end of the sixteenth century, desert caravans would no longer bring silk and spices from the East, and Portugal would become Europe’s first maritime empire, with possessions that ranged from the west coast of Africa to the South China Sea.
AT THE END OF THE FIFTEENTH century, mankind stands poised for change on a worldwide scale. Armed with revolutionary ideas and weapons, hungry for the treasures of the East, and determined to convert Africans to Christianity, Portuguese mariners sail farther and farther east. Eager to compete and flushed with their triumph over the last Islamic kingdom of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella back a man with the radical idea of sailing west to reach the East. With the firepower of guns, the inspiration of the printed word, and the gold of the Spanish crown behind him, Christopher Columbus will sail across the ocean and discover a New World, launching an age of empire and exploration that would shift the axis of power from East to West.
MAPPING THE SEAS
At Prince Henry’s instruction, his mariners kept detailed logbooks and charts, which he used to create maps of the African coast, based on the portolans, or coast pilots, used by sailors in the Mediterranean. Henry introduced the use of unfamiliar nautical instruments borrowed from Islamic sailors—compass, astrolabe, and quadrant—and encouraged the design of a new, more maneuverable, type of ship, the caravel.
Using the caravel, Henry’s sailors discovered that the easiest way to return home from a southward voyage down the African coast was to sail westward into the Atlantic for several hundred miles to reach a portion of the ocean with favorable winds from the south and west instead of sailing north along the coast against contrary winds.
7
NEW WORLDS
HUMANS ARE IRREPRESSIBLE EXPLORERS, HAMPERED ONLY BY IMPASSABLE MOUNTAINS AND UNMAPPED OCEANS. ONE THOUSAND YEARS AGO, A BAND OF SEA-TRAVELING RAIDERS FROM SCANDINAVIA WERE THE FIRST TO SAIL FROM GREENLAND ACROSS THE NORTHERN ATLANTIC.
Landing at the place we now call Newfoundland, the Vikings encountered a tribe of native people, the Innu, who put up a fierce resistance, driving the Vikings out of their territory. It was a brief encounter. The old and new worlds did not meet again until Columbus made the next attempt five hundred years later.
In Columbus’s time, Europeans believed the Atlantic, known as the Ocean Sea, was a great expanse of water that surrounded the landmasses of Eurasia and Africa. Assuming the Earth was round, as most educated people of the time were already aware, it was only logical that if a ship left Europe and sailed west around the globe, it would reach the shores of Asia. Intent on finding new trade routes that would allow them to bypass the middlemen of Venice and Genoa—Spanish and Portuguese explorers discovered lands they only slowly realized were not Asia.
The Americas were a New World only to the Europeans who claimed to have “discovered” them. They were already inhabited by tens of millions of people. Some were still hunter-gathers, who relied on generations of traditions and wisdom for survival. Others belonged to civilizations as sophisticated and advanced as those in Europe. The meeting transformed both cultures. For the conquerors, untold riches awaited; for the Native Americans, devastation.
Christopher Columbus and his men reached Hispaniola after seventy days at sea. He had estimated they would reach the Indies in only four days.
In the heart of the Old World, the rise of the Ottoman Turks from a tiny principality in the foothills of Anatolia into a major power brought Christendom and Islam into conflict once again. In his fifty-three-day siege of the thousand-year-old walled city of Constantinople, Sultan Mehmet II forever changed the tools of war—and how cities were built.
Once the Old World’s desire for natural resources was paired with Portuguese and Spanish advances in shipbuilding, mapmaking, and sea navigation, isolation was no longer an option for native peoples of the Americas. Hostile confrontations between European conquerors and conquered peoples in the New World raged for the next four hundred years. At the beginning, neither side knew anything about the other. Both sides, initially, may have intended to trade. But any such plan soon turned to violence, depopulation, and plunder, with native peoples unable to withstand the deadly combination of European gunfire and European disease.
1001 CE. NORWEGIAN LEIF Eriksson “the Lucky,” credited as the first European to reach the shores of North America, led the first Viking expedition to the New World. Leif didn’t stay long, and after him, only a handful of other expeditions followed before the Vikings concluded that the risks presented by the New World’s native peoples outweighed the potential rewards.
With a growing population at home, the Vikings typically undertook vast sea journeys to amass wealth. Viking culture was based on war and fighting prowess; raiding increased a man’s stature in society, and both men and women were judged and respected based on their physical abilities. Their modus operandi was to carry out well-planned raids against targets that could be attacked, plundered, and abandoned quickly. Vikings stayed along the coast or on navigable rivers; they avoided overland marches. Their goal was to grab as much valuable booty as possible before their victims could raise an effective defense. Typical spoils included weapons, tools, clothing, jewelry, precious metals, and people who could be sold as slaves. Their ability to creep up on their opponents silently and without warning was what made the Vikings such successful raiders. However, they were about to meet a people who knew a thing or two about surprise.
The Innu and Beothuk peoples who inhabited Newfoundland and Labrador in the eleventh century were descended from the first Americans who arrived thirteen thousand years ago, when ice sheets connected Asia to the Americas. Their homeland, where they had lived for millennia, was a vast area of subarctic spruce and fir forest, lakes, rivers, and rocky barrens. They called the land Nitassinan. The Vikings called the lands they reached Markland and Vinland; today this territory is called Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.
The Innu lived as nomadic hunters. For most of the year, Nitassinan’s waterways were frozen, so the Innu would travel in small groups of two or three families on snowshoes, pulling toboggans. When the ice melted, they would row their canoes to the coast or a large inland lake to fish, trade, and meet friends and relatives. They hunted bear, beaver, and porcupine; caught fish; and gathered berries—but most of all they relied on the herds of caribou that migrated through their land every spring and autumn. The Innu got all they needed—food, clothing, shelter, tools, and weapons—from the caribou. These indigenous people proved to be more than an equal match to their Viking invaders. They were not prepared to give up their home.
DEFENSE OF THE INNU
1003 CE. THE VIKINGS LAND THEIR DRAGON BOATS on the shore of Vinland. Thorvald and his men are unaware that Innu hunters are watching them from the woods.
The Vikings stand between the Inuu and their canoes. When the Vikings turn away
and start toward the chill pine forests, the Innu crawl through the brush and then make a run to the canoes. Afraid they will be spotted, they take shelter under one of the canoes, where they crouch motionless and terrified, unsure whether these are men or pale-skinned monsters from the shamans’ tales.
Halfway between the forest and the shore, Thorvald and his men stop. One of them has caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye. He points to the skin-covered canoes. Thorvald nods and motions the men forward.
The Vikings surround the canoes. They don”t know whether there is something under the canoes, but they have their weapons in hand—just in case. As soon as the Vikings upturn the canoes, the Innu spring to their feet. Ready for a fight.
As fierce as the Vikings are, the Innu hold their own, wearing the trespassers down before escaping into the woods.
That night, as the Vikings sleep in tents around the fire, the Innu rush from the forest and attack the unprepared Vikings with bows and arrows. Thorvald is one of the first killed. Leaderless, the Vikings grab his body and retreat to their boats. They have had enough. The survivors—what is left of them—promptly leave for home.
THE VIKING EXPERIENCE IN North America was brief—and as brutal as any of their raids in the British Isles. The Vikings called the Native Americans they met skraelings, a derisive term roughly translated as “barbarian weaklings.” According to the Norse sagas, written two hundred years later, attempts at trade failed and were followed by violence. The marauding Norsemen did not hesitate to kill groups of Native Americans without warning. (On one occasion, they killed a group of sleeping Innu where they lay.) The native people fought back, though stone weapons were at a disadvantage against iron. Still, the Vikings were driven out of Vinland in the spring of 1014 and never went back. Vinland, protected by the Innu, was too much effort for too little profit.
AFTER ROME FELL IN THE FIFTH century, the Eastern Roman Empire lived on for several more centuries—as Byzantium. Under the rule of the emperor Zeno, Byzantium’s capital, Constantinople, claimed Rome’s legacy as the “center of the world.” Its rulers kept Rome’s administrative structure, but Greek replaced Latin as the official administrative and military language.
Located at the crossroads between Europe and the Near East, Constantinople was a major force for several centuries. As one of Europe’s biggest and most important trading centers, it linked the West with the riches of the East. Silks and spices traveled thousands of miles to reach Constantinople, where they would be traded. The most coveted spice was pepper. By the time it reached Constantinople, pepper was worth as much as gold.
Beginning with the first wave of Islamic expansion in the eighth century, Byzantium came under constant attack. The empire defended itself against Arabs, Bulgars, and Magyars. Then Christian Crusaders from the West sacked Constantinople in 1204. Each wave of invaders bit off a portion of the empire.
Map of Byzantine Empire, ca. 700 CE
Worn out by centuries of fighting, their wealth and defenses eaten away, Byzantium’s soldiers were not able to defend their empire against the new power that rose in the fourteen century—the Ottoman Turks. By 1361, the Ottomans had conquered most of the former Byzantine Empire and controlled the straits that connected the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Byzantine Empire was reduced to the city-state of Constantinople.
HAGIA SOPHIA
The Byzantine emperor Justinian ordered the construction of Hagia Sophia, the Church of Holy Wisdom, in 532 CE. Two churches had stood on the site previously; both had burned down, the second during an insurrection that almost cost Justinian his throne. With the revolt crushed, Justinian was determined to rebuild the church on an even grander scale. He asked provincial governors to remove the most beautiful parts of ancient monuments and send them to the new capital, along with the most skilled craftsmen and artisans. The emperor then appointed the greatest mathematical physicist of the time as architect, assisted by a renowned geometrician. Together, they devised a revolutionary way to erect a dome on a square base by transferring the weight from the dome to four massive supports using triangular stone pieces called “pendentives.”
When the structure was completed five years later, it was topped by a dome more than 100 feet across and 180 feet high that seemed to float above the open space of the interior. The building appeared so miraculous that later generations believed it was built with supernatural help.
After Byzantium’s conquest by the Ottomans, Mehmet II, who understood the value of symbolic gestures, transformed Hagia Sophia from the greatest church of Christendom into the foremost mosque of the Ottoman Empire. How? Simply by having the Friday prayer read there on June 1, 1453. Later sultans would complete the transformation by adding four minarets at the corners, reinforcing the structure with massive buttresses and covering its glorious mosaics with a coat of whitewash.
Hagia Sophia continued to be used as a mosque until 1931, when the Turkish government under Mustafa Atatürk converted it into a museum and a symbol of modern Turkish secularism.
When it faced the gravest threat to its security, Constantinople was well past the height of its glory. But it was still a stunning and grand place—full of churches, monasteries, gold, and gilt. It also retained huge importance as a Christian stronghold. The Ottomans had tried before to starve out the city’s faithful—and failed. Constantinople’s fortifications had held up to everything—until 1453, when Byzantine emperor Constantine XI met the brilliant Ottoman military leader, Sultan Mehmet II.
The Ottoman Empire under Mehmet was already vast but lacked a worthy capital. Ottomans controlled lands surrounding Constantinople, but the Turks had not been able to take the city itself. They pined for Constantinople and gave it the name “Red Apple”—a rich and luscious prize. Five Ottoman sieges had failed to pluck the fruit. Mehmet was determined to succeed. His motive was less religious than imperial. He wanted glory, land, power, and wealth.
Map of Ottoman Empire, 1453
Mehmet was fascinated by military history. He had the life of Alexander read to him daily. His ambition was to carry Islamic banners into Europe. He wanted nothing less than to be the World Conqueror—Alexander and Caesar rolled into one.
Mehmet was also a genius at logistical arrangements. He studied maps of Europe and Italian manuscripts on siege warfare and was thirsty for the latest technological developments. To prepare for conquest, he organized the manufacture of armor and siege equipment, tents, weapons, food, cannonballs, and gunpowder—and amassed thousands of horses, camels, and pack animals.
On April 14, 1452, Mehmet began his campaign to take Constantinople by building a castle on the European side of the narrowest point of the Bosphorus, on land that was still technically Byzantine. He not only designed the castle himself; he helped the workers build it. His new castle stood opposite an existing Ottoman castle on the Asian side, giving him absolute control over shipping in and out of the Black Sea. Mehmet named his new castle Rumelihisari, “the Strait Cutter.” He proved the accuracy of the name by sinking a Venetian ship that defied his order to stop and decapitating those crew members that survived. The days of relieving a besieged Constantinople by bringing troops and supplies by sea were over.
When the castle was completed in August 1452, Mehmet camped outside Constantinople’s walls for three days, studying the city’s fortifications. Heavily fortified walls, treacherous currents, and a massive chain that could be hooked across the mouth of the Golden Horn protected Constantinople from attack by sea. On the landward side, the city was protected by double walls four miles long and fortified with 192 towers and eleven gates. The outer wall was twenty-five feet high; the inner wall was forty feet high. Outside the walls, the city was further protected by a sixty-foot-wide moat that could be flooded in parts. The city’s only obvious weakness was a spot where a small river fed into the city through a conduit under the walls.
Aware that the city had successfully held off Ottoman attacks twice before, Mehmet brought the entire force
of the Ottoman Empire against the Byzantine capital. He recruited thousands of irregular forces to fight beside the Anatolian infantry and the elite forces known as “janissaries,” from across the empire and beyond its borders: Turks, Slavs, Hungarians, Kurds, Germans, Italians, and Greeks. Turkish craftsmen worked for months to equip the army with weapons and armor, including sixty new guns of various sizes. Engineers built battering rams and catapults. The Turkish fleet, some of it newly built for the purpose, patrolled the Sea of Marmara, keeping Byzantine ships in and reinforcements from the West out.
Most important, Mehmet hired the Hungarian master gunsmith Urban to cast guns. The year before, Urban had offered his services to the Byzantine emperor. Constantine turned him away, unable to afford the smith’s salary or the materials he needed. It was a costly mistake. Urban went next to Mehmet, who asked him if he could cast a cannon capable of breaching the walls of Constantinople. Urban replied that he could make a cannon that would bring down the walls of Babylon. Mehmet hired him, for four times more than he had asked in Constantinople.
Within three months, Urban had cast a large-caliber cannon for Rumelihisari. Impressed, Mehmet ordered Urban to cast a cannon twice as big to take down Constantinople’s legendary walls. The finished cannon was twenty-eight feet long. The walls of its bronze barrels were eight inches thick. It was so heavy that it took sixty oxen to haul it from the Ottoman capital of Edirne to Constantinople. When the cannon was first tested, the ball traveled a mile and sank six feet into the ground. City walls would never be safe again.
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