|
COPYRIGHT 2003 Modern Humanities Research Association
Five hundred years after Vasco da Gama's voyage to India it can easily be said that what we really know about it is more the result of a reappreciation of general information about the Carreira da India, than the reflection of precise data about the voyage itself. (1) It can also be said that Portuguese maritime history is, now, well documented for the period that covers the late sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth century, due to a massive amount of documentation that covers most aspects of maritime enterprise, such as the characteristics of ships, the salaries of the crew, the routes taken and life on board ship.
A sort of contradiction arises from the fact that traditional historiography would clearly prefer the opposite: the early voyages being the subject of study concerned with the so-called glorious era of the Portuguese maritime enterprise, with the missing data generally obtained through a simplistic retrospective projection of known information. On the other hand, when the information is really obtainable, let us say, from c. 1580 onwards, we enter the dark side of Portuguese maritime history from the same point of view: joined with Spain, the country would have collapsed if it had had to face Spanish challengers to the maritime routes, and the Dutch and the English would have succeeded in challenging Portuguese supremacy of the maritime route to India. The Portuguese navy would then have collapsed and almost over night the country would have seen its empire become a shadow of what it was--according to some. Such a perspective is crystalized in one sentence by Oliveira Martins: 'Portugal acaba; os Lusiadas sao um epitafio'. (2)
Loss is not, by itself, an appealing subject. Making the effort to re-examine documents and conclusions, it is always easier to look back to earlier times when the naval and maritime supremacy of Portugal could not be questioned. Vasco da Gama's voyage can be identified with one of those moments that dramatically changed the events of history. It was a turning point. This was definitely not the case with expeditions of the late sixteenth century, when ships sailed the seas as they had always done, but now with the expectation of the obstacles that predicted the end of an era.
The evidence is not as obvious or impressive as one would like. As a technique of approach the pictorial drama provides an easy and convenient solution. The margin for sustainable hypothesis is also large because there is little to disprove it; the hypothesis thus becoming a sort of 'historical fact'.
The myths surrounding Vasco da Gama himself and his voyage were mainly created in the late nineteenth century, more than a century ago. (3) At this time a group of scholars devoted to maritime history began to study this particular subject, both through intensive work in the archives, and by writing monographs on the history of maritime voyages. At this time Portugal was facing a very serious political trauma, being unable to sustain its projects of expansion in Africa in the face of British colonialism. (4) Maritime history was the mirror the country needed to reflect its past as well as the future.
Unable to find the precise information they wanted led these historians to conclude that things must have been similar in the late sixteenth century to what came later: Gama's voyage was then understood as the result of a long period of experimentation, both from the viewpoint of previous maritime voyages of exploration, and...
Read the full article for free courtesy of your local library.
|
Bookmark this article
Print this article
Link to this article
Email this article
Digg It!
Add to del.icio.us
RSS
