Columbus v/s Vasco da Gama

In his book, A Splendid Exchange, William Bernstein says Columbus knew he shouldn’t even be trying to reach India by going west. After all:

“The feasibility of the westward route depended on its being short.”

While nobody had found a route by going west (and thus its length wasn’t known), simple maths told the tale. From the time of the Greeks, the earth’s circumference was known to be 25,000 miles. The eastward route from Lisbon to Malacca was 7,000 miles. Ergo, the westward route would be (at least) the difference of the two: 18,000 miles. Not only was this much longer, it was “incompatible with survival at sea” for the age.

 

So how did Columbus then convince his funders? He used the age-old technique of fudging the data. He took the least possible circumference of the earth and the maximum possible width of Eurasia. Lie often enough, and you start believing the lie yourself! It happened to Columbus:

“So thick-skulled was the discoverer of the New World that not until his third voyage would it slowly dawn on him that he had not reached Asia after all.”

 

Bernstein contrasts Columbus with the other great explorer, Vasco da Gama. Columbus had fudged even on the goal: he said he was aiming for the ill-defined term, the “Indies”. What on earth did that term mean?

“Did he mean Japan, Cathay, India proper?”

da Gama, on the other hand, did achieve his goal of finding a sea-route from Europe to India (by rounding Africa):

“Columbus… had done no such thing.”

In addition, da Gama had great navigational skills:

“His measured latitudes were never off by more than two degrees.”

While Columbus was “notorious for his navigational inaccuracy”!

“Placing, for example, Cuba at forty-two degrees north latitude – that is, even with Boston.”

 

While da Gama was the superior navigator, in terms of commercial benefit of their respective findings to their funding countries, Columbus won hands down. Columbus’ New World brought in unimaginable gold and silver via both outright stealing as well as mining from South America to Spain. Whereas da Gama’s success, while providing a route for Portugal, still meant the trading ports of Asia were controlled by Muslim diaspora and Asians.

 

Columbus didn’t bring in any religious angle (aka forcible conversion) with him (That came later, via those who followed him):

“Da Gama’s men… assumed that anyone who was not visibly Muslim must be a Christian.”

The Portuguese mistook chants of “Krishna” for prayers to Christ and took India to be a “largely Christian nation with exotic churches (Hindu temples)”.

 

Last, and most damagingly of all, da Gama would “rob, kidnap and murder” at the slightest provocation. Such behavior would prove very costly for Portugal: the image of the blood thirsty Portuguese was soon established all over Asia, and few would trade with them. This forced the Portuguese to be even more aggressive, to resort to piracy, and demand “passage money”. Inevitably though, the Portuguese lost the Asian trade opportunity since they “did not have the muscle” to enforce their will from the Red Sea and Persia to India to South East Asia. Trade works best when done voluntarily, not by pointing a sword or a cannon.