Synopses & Reviews
Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER II THE PORTUGUESE ASCENDENCY It is not our purpose to include in this narrative the vicissitudes of Portuguese expansion in the East Indies. It is the African colonization which we are to consider. The voyages of the Portuguese navigators, however, extended everywhere. The flag of King John and Eraanuel was seen in India. Thither, in the beginning of the sixteenth century the imperial plan was stretched. In 1503, Alfonso du Albuquerque, surnamed the Portuguese Mars, was commissioned as Viceroy of India. In that capacity he sailed with a fleet of twenty ships and made his way by the recently discovered all- water route to the coast of Malabar. Albuquerque made a descent on the Indian city of Goa. This important place he invested and captured from the native rulers. He carried with him a crew and a colony numbering twelve hundred men. A native prophecy had indicated a downfall of the city at this date, and Albuquerque was easily able to avail himself of the superstition and to make a triumphal entry. Goa soon became the emporium of India. Portuguese institutions were established, not only there, but on the whole of the Malabar coast?at Ormuz, in Ceylon, in the Sunda islands, and on the peninsula of Malacca. Prosperous commercial centers were soon developed under the patronage of the mother kingdom. For a while Portugal gave promise of becoming the great colonizing and governing state of the world. Her success at this epoch, in gaining for herself the greater and better part of South America, was as phenomenal asthat on the western borders of India. There was a time in the sixteenth century when the Portuguese empire extended as an immense continental and insular dominion from the Malaccan peninsula to the head tributaries of the river Amazon. Only one thing the p...
Synopsis
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