Bartolomeu Dias and the Opening of the Indian Ocean Trade Route to India, 1487-88
Overview
The Portuguese Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500) lies at a crossroad in the history of exploration. For more than 50 years before he set sail to what would become the Cape of Good Hope, Portugal had explored to its own profit along most of the western coast of Africa. When Dias reached the Cape in 1487, he triggered a completely new series of explorations in the Indian Ocean. His achievement should thus be seen as the end of one epoch in the history of European exploration and colonization of the world and the beginning of another.
Background
By going beyond the southern tip of Africa, Bartolomeu Dias fulfilled a hope of many centuries—circumnavigating that great continent. His exploit, however, was not something that came out of the blue, the result of a lone buccaneer's ship in search of great treasures. Rather, itwas part of a grand orchestrated strategy that would give Portugal complete control of the eastward trading routes to India before the turn of the sixteenth century. What Dias actually accomplished was to lead the tiny Iberic nation to the threshold of the Indian Ocean—which was crossed ten years later by his countryman Vasco da Gama (c.
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