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A review by angrywombat
Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire by Roger Crowley
5.0
OK, I was flabbergasted by this! Roger Crowley has written a book totally unlike the dry history books I remember from high school and university.
This was a narrative recreated from primary sources about the 30-odd years of Portugal (a poor country at the ass end of europe) working out how to get into the indian ocean, and then exploiting it ruthlessly - but only thanks to a few cunning and intelligent men who worked out that the "medieval tactics" of europe would not work in the cosmopolitan world of the indian ocean.
I had never been exposed to this history before, and it was a real eye-opener. It gives lots of exposure to the various personalities of the time period, how they behaved, and the difficulties they encountered. It is a terrible account of some extreme atrocities (cities burned to the ground, women and children abducted, etc) but nonetheless amazing how a small group of portugese (in half rotten ships and only numbering in the thousands) were able to create an mercantile empire in such a short period of time - breaking the hold of Venice on the spice trade and destroying a muslim stranglehold on Indian-ocean trade.
This book was a mind-blowing revelation. These events instigated european colonialism throughout the world...
This was a narrative recreated from primary sources about the 30-odd years of Portugal (a poor country at the ass end of europe) working out how to get into the indian ocean, and then exploiting it ruthlessly - but only thanks to a few cunning and intelligent men who worked out that the "medieval tactics" of europe would not work in the cosmopolitan world of the indian ocean.
I had never been exposed to this history before, and it was a real eye-opener. It gives lots of exposure to the various personalities of the time period, how they behaved, and the difficulties they encountered. It is a terrible account of some extreme atrocities (cities burned to the ground, women and children abducted, etc) but nonetheless amazing how a small group of portugese (in half rotten ships and only numbering in the thousands) were able to create an mercantile empire in such a short period of time - breaking the hold of Venice on the spice trade and destroying a muslim stranglehold on Indian-ocean trade.
This book was a mind-blowing revelation. These events instigated european colonialism throughout the world...