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    Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
    Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
    Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire
    Audiobook13 hours

    Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

    Written by Roger Crowley

    Narrated by Jonathan Davis

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions but far more wide-ranging, the dynamic burst of Portuguese voyaging at the start of the sixteenth century is one of the tipping points of world history : the moment that the world went global. Within a short time span a tiny country, whose population did not exceed a million, created a maritime empire that stretched from Brazil to Nagasaki. Conquerors tells the almost forgotten story of how Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East - then set about creating the first long-range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary empire builders, with few resources but breathtaking ambition, attempted to seize the Indian Ocean, destroy Islam and take control of world trade. This is history at its most vivid - a epic tale of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and terrifying brutality. Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, it brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion the forces of globalisation. Portugal was the imperial pathfinder, the template for a wave of successors. Its empire connected the world and created a framework for profound interactions. It left a huge and long-lasting influence on the culture, food, flora, art, history and languages of the globe. It marked the start of 500 years of domination by the West which is only reversing now. Roger Crowley read English at Cambridge University and taught English in Istanbul, where he developed a strong interest in the history of Turkey. He is the author of CITY OF FORTUNE: How Venice Ruled the Seas and EMPIRES OF THE SEA: The Siege of Malta, the Battle of Lepanto, and the Contest for the Center of the World.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherRecorded Books, Inc.
    Release dateDec 1, 2015
    ISBN9781490693736
    Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

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    Reviews for Conquerors

    4/5

    72 ratings4 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Conquerors is mainly a history of Portuguese first contact with India and east Africa during the first 30 years or so in the late 1400s and early 1500s. They were the first Europeans to round the Cape of Good Hope and 'discover' India and points further east. I've never read anything about it before and found it totally enthralling, the sense of discovery and adventure. It's hard to like the Portuguese, one keeps wishing they get their comeuppance after so much senseless killing. Since Portugal was the first, it is foundational history to understanding all later European colonization globally. Having read it via audiobook I became confused by too many names and places, reading in the book would have been better. There are some amazing set piece battles which Crowley is very skilled with as usual. This is a very action filled period and one I'd like to read more about.
    • 3/5
      I am a big fan of Roger Crowley, primarily because his books make history so available--they're easy to read, entertaining, informative, and often contain those little details that enliven conversations or are remembered later long after one should have forgotten them. But I had a problem with Conquerors as I felt despite its no-holds-barred approach to revealing how barbarian the Portuguese were in their forays into the Pacific, it was still too Euro-centric and apologetic, and there is at least one event that I believe was incorrectly related.

      I'll begin with the latter point regarding historical accuracy: my question concerns the fall of Malacca, a great trading port on the coast of Malaysia in the early 1500s with traders from across the region living within the city. Crowley writes, "He [Albuquerque, one of the nastiest men in Portuguese history who had no qualms in decimating every living thing to spread terror and obedience into the hearts of Africans and Asians] gave the Chinese permission to sail away with gifts and blessings" (p. 263) before the attack on Malacca and the subsequent slaughter began. Presumably, because earlier, on page 258 he describes the "Chinese and the Hindu merchants [as] friendly" and notes that (p. 259) "He [Albuquerque again] was helped immensely by the amount of information leaking out of the city from ... the Chinese." However, most other scholars note that the Chinese traders residing in Malacca were slaughtered along with the other inhabitants. Timothy Brook writes in The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China, "When the Portuguese captured the major regional trading centre of Malacca in 1511, they butchered the large community of Chinese merchants living there. The Chinese memory of this massacre was long. Zhang Xie recalled it a century later in his survey of Southeast Asia with this understated but vivid comment: "Crocodiles...leopards...along with the Portuguese, [are known as] 'the three terrors of Malacca" (p. 122, quoted from Zhang Xie, Dongxi yang kao, p. 67). Historical accuracy is important as it is part of the soil out of which our beliefs about events and people grow. To understand Southeast Asia (and Asia) today, one needs to remember that historical memories can run deep.

      As for my first and far greater concern: Portugal is credited with the "globalisation of Asia". Its entry into the region with its shiploads of macho hidalgos bent on pillage and building their 'honourable' reputations is recorded in full detail by Crowley, who covers all the atrocities that mankind can imagine--massive slaughter, torture, chopping off of hands and ears, bashing babies' brains out on rock walls, hanging men for the slightest infraction, burning trapped innocents alive, need I go on? First of all, regional trade was already well established when the Portuguese sailed into the Pacific waters--Arab, Indian, Malay and Chinese traders had been trading in those waters--peacefully--for at least 1,000 years (witness the the 826 Arab dhow loaded with Chinese ceramics salvaged in 1998 400 miles south of Singapore in Indonesian waters), and the trade continued on through Alexandria via Venetian traders into Europe. There was no need to enter with swords swinging; Portugal (and every other European nation) could have entered into peaceful trade along with every other nation in those waters, drawn the same maps, refined its navigational tools, observed natural history and the beauty of the new world it found without the violence, but it didn't. And I therefore found troubling such seemingly innocent statements as (p. 320) "The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world and the received wisdom of ancient authority...by the empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history, and cultures that ushered in the early modern age" and "No one in the European arena had predicted that this tiny marginalised country would make a vaulting leap into the East, join up the hemispheres, and construct the first empire with a global reach" (p. 321). Yes, on one level they are truthful statements, and perhaps the "The Portuguese effectively enlarged the market: European spice consumption doubled during the course of the sixteenth century" (p. 321). Accomplishments.

      Such statements convey what can happen when a person or a group of people believe they hold the divine right to win--a battle, an election, a country, a people. Manuel I of Portugal, the king who believed he had the divine right to rule the Pacific region, who sent out such men as de Gama, Almeida and Albuquerque, believed he was such a man and the men he chose to lead his expeditions believed like him. But at what cost?

      This book reminded me why we need to read history.
    • 5/5
      Most of us have read and/or been taught quite a bit about Columbus and Magellan. Not nearly as many people are familiar with names such as Vasco de Gama and Afonso de Albuquerque. I'm guilty of knowing little about these explorers, despite my own Portuguese heritage. This book initially appealed to me because of that reason, and I'm so glad I read it.There is no doubt that Roger Crowley knows his topic. This is a comprehensive book, full of detail. But I never felt the content was weighed down by the facts. Crowley brings his subject to life. He doesn't simply tell us what happened, he shows it to us. I was right there on the ships, stepping out onto new land, and making friends with or fighting the natives.With this book, Crowley gives us a fascinating piece of history from the perspectives of men who ventured out to conquer the unknown.*I received an ebook copy from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.*
    • 5/5
      The historical importance and sheer size of the Portuguese overseas expansion and domination in the 15th and 16th centuries has been systematically omitted or overlooked by most scholars from other countries many of which were in its wake. Foreign minor explorers and adventurers who acted under the shadow of the Portuguese were often "a posteriori" overemphasized in order to artificially enhance other countries' historical importance. However History facts cannot be changed, only history books... This book is a factual account painstakingly taken from contemporaneous documents, letters and diaries of the discovery of the maritime path to India by the Portuguese and of the building of their huge Asian maritime empire which was short-lived but stood by itself as a reference for colonial dominance, carefully maintained and closely imitated by all the other European countries that followed. The consequences of this expansion echoes even today: it was the real beginning of world cultural and economic globalization but also of European colonialism. The colonial empires that followed had an easier task: every opposition had been alienated in the Asian coast and, more importantly, a sophisticated pattern of colonial organization and domination had already been invented by the Portuguese.This book tells a mostly dispassionate story with no nationalistic comments or unduly moral criticism. A record of the heroism, passion, dedication, daring, resourcefulness and chivalry of the Portuguese conquistadors but also of their ruthlessness, whims, cruelty, fanaticism and greed presented with a rawness which will certainly shock the unprepared casual reader.One should not forget however the time of these occurrences: it was the end of the renaissance period still "polluted" with retrograde medieval goals, values and preconceptions: religious intolerance and fanaticism, feudal dominance, instituted violence, early and frequent death, social injustice and chivalric nonsense. To the mix uncontrollable greed was added when confronted with the unlimited wealth of the fabled Orient in sharp contrast with a mostly miserable existence at home in a poor small country like Portugal. The contemporaneous Spanish conquistadors and English Tudor pirates acted with the same mindset and were sometimes even more ruthless and greedy. It's simply wrong to summarily judge them with our "omniscient" 21th century morale as if they were living today.Allowing for these premises one cannot avoid feeling wonder and awe for such an epic enterprise achieved by so few with so little in such a short time and with such immense long-term consequences.