The glory of reaching the southern limits of Africa and actually entering the Indian Ocean belonged to a Portuguese – Bartholomew Diaz (c. But they got no further than the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa. In 1455, a Venetian sailor and a Genoese tried it again. The very first navigators to make an attempt at opening up the route round Africa were the men from Genoa in Italy. It was the nations of southern Europe which first began to try. The European country which could first reach the Indies by sea and thus monopolise the spice trade would be fortunate indeed. But for people of those days spices could make all the difference between a diet of salted food and something more interesting.Īt that time, the produce of the east was very expensive in Europe, for it arrived after a long journey, mostly over land. We either take these things for granted or, with our methods of feeding cattle in winter or keeping food in refrigerators, get on without them. It is difficult for us to imagine now how much Europeans at that time felt the need for such things as camphor, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, or nutmeg.
The riches of what was loosely called 'The Indies' were fabulous, particularly in the matter of spices. The journey would certainly be worth making. It was not even known that if a ship sailed down the west coast of Africa, it could find a way through to the Indian Ocean, although some geographers at that time had guessed that this might be so. America and Australia were undiscovered and very little had been found out about Asia and Africa. In the fifteenth century very little was known of the geography of our globe.
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