The Portuguese Empire in the East.

Vasco da Gama had traded succcssfully with the natives at Calicut, bringing name a cargo of spices and rubies, and he had acquired valuable information about the coasts of India, Ceylon, Malacca and Sumatra.. But his Moslem rivals, incensed at the idea of Portuguese competition, had intrigued with the natives, and at one point he and his men had barely escaped assassination. It was clear that some stronghold would have to be established, and an armed force to protect Portuguese interests.

The Portuguese captured Cochin and Cannanore, and determined to dislodge the Arabs from Calicut and to establish a new trading statinn on the Malabar coast. There was some idea, too, of seizing the Arabian ports of Hormuz and Aden and so to gain control of the Red Sea. in 1510 Coa was captured; this became the centre of Portuguese domination, and a thriving port. The following year, 1511, Malacca was seized by Albuquerque, who between 1509 and 1515 built up an eastern empire for Portugal.

Albuquerque had practically cleared the Indian Ocean of Turkish and Arab ships; it was his plan to dominate the Red Sea also. He wanted to capture Jerusalem, and he had an idea of establishing himself also upon the Upper Nile and cutting a canal through the mountains to divert the river into the Red Sea. He failed to capture Aden in 1513, and this prevented him from carrying out his more ambitious schemes, but he did gain possession of Hormuz and set up a factory there.

The Portuguese now (1515) controlled the eastern trade routes, and soon acquired control of the whole eastern trade. Overland, the route lay from India to Persia, through Mesopotamia to Aleppo and thence to Beyrut on the Mediterranean coast, but it was quicker and easier to ship goods to Hormuz, and in practice most merchandise was sent to Europe this way.
Albuquerque was typical of his time in his forcefulness and efficiency, blended with some brutality and a strong streak of piety. When he captured Malacca it is typical of the man, and what he represented, that his first actions were to build a fortress, a mint, and a church dedicated to the Virgin.

Spain in the New World.

As soon as Columbus' discovery was reported in Europe, the Pope Alexander VI. (1492-1503) drew an arbitrary line dividing the new lands between Spain and Portugal, to the exclusion of all other nations. As far as a line drawn 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, everything was to belong to Portugal, west of that line, to Spain. This meant that Spain had practically a monopoly of America, and, fortified with this authority, she began to build up a new Empire.

Even in the days of Columbus there had been friction between the Spaniards and the natives, and time did nothing to heal this antagonism, while the Spaniards were anything but conciliatory in their behaviour. Their cupidity had been aroused by traces of a mysterious people in the hinterland of Mexico who seemed to have access to gold and jewels. In 1519 an expedition was fitted out in Cuba, and put under the leadership of Hernando Cortes. He was commissioned to explore Mexico, and for three months he led his men through forest and mountain until he reached the wonderful golden city of Mexico. By treachery and guile Cortes won from Montezuma, the ruler of this land, his treasures of gold and jewels, and reduced the native Aztecs to misery and degradation.

Eleven years later, Peru, with its gold and silver mines and precious stones, was won for Spain by Pizarro. He persuaded the innocent natives to accept the Spaniards as gods after he had conquered their host, and murdered the king they had tried to ransom with a roomful of treasure. Pizarro took both the ransom and the homage, and refused to spare the unfortunate king; it was in this spirit, that the Spaniards achieved their conquests in the new world, but their perfidy should not blind posterity to their wonderful courage in surmounting difficulties, and the resolution which enabled a handful of strangers to overcome a great host defending their native land.

By this time, Central America, and the islands, and the Gulf of Mexico, were becoming well known, and finding their way on to maps of the "New World." The Pacific had been sighted in 1516; it was the Spaniard Vasco Nunez de Balboa, and not, as Keats thought, "stout Cortes," who stood "silent upon a Peak in Darien." Florida, and the mouth of the Mississippi had been explored, and a brave Spaniard named Orellana had succeeded in forcing his way across South America, crossing the Andes, and sailing more than 2,000 miles down the Amazon and its tributaries. Spain was firmly established in America, and shiploads of treasure were beginning to find there way into European countries, excluded by the Bull 1493 from sharing in the booty.