OPENING THE OCEAN ROUTES
1. PORTUGAL AND THE NEW ROUTE TO INDIA
From the days of the Phnicians to the close of the 15th century,
all trade between Europe and Asia crossed the land barrier east of
the Mediterranean. Delivered by Mohammedan vessels at the head of
the Persian Gulf or the ports of the Red Sea, merchandise followed
thence the caravan routes across Arabia or Egypt to the Mediterranean,
quadrupling in value in the transit. Intercourse between East and
West, active under the Romans, was again stimulated by the crusades
and by Venetian traders, until in the 14th and the 15th centuries
the dyes, spices, perfumes, cottons, muslins, silks, and jewels
of the Orient were in demand throughout the western world. This
assurance of a ready market and large profits, combined with the
capture of Constantinople by the Turks (1453), their piratical
attacks in the Mediterranean which continued unchecked until Lepanto,
and their final barring of all trade routes through the Levant,
revived among nations of western Europe the old legends of all-water
routes to Asia, either around Africa or directly westward across
the unknown sea.
With the opening of ocean routes and the discovery of America,
a rivalry in world trade and colonial expansion set in which has
continued increasingly down to the present time, forming a dominant
element in the foreign policies of maritime nations and a primary
motive for the possession and use of navies. The development of
overseas trade, involving the factors of merchant shipping, navies,
and control of the seas, is thus an integral part of the history
of sea power. The great voyages of discovery are also not to be
disregarded, supplying as they did the basis for colonial claims,
and illustrating at the same time the progress of nautical science
and geographical knowledge.
[Illustration: CROSS-STAFF]
The art of navigation, though still crude, had by the 15th century
so advanced that the sailor was no longer compelled to skirt the
shore, with only rare ventures across open stretches of sea. The
use of the compass, originating in China, had been learned from the
Arabs by the crusaders, and is first mentioned in Europe towards
the close of the 12th century. An Italian in England, describing a
visit to the philosopher Roger Bacon in 1258, writes as follows:
"Among other things he showed me an ugly black stone called a magnet
... upon which, if a needle be rubbed and afterward fastened to
a straw so that it shall float upon the water, the needle will
instantly turn toward the pole-star; though the night be never so
dark, yet shall the mariner be able by the help of this needle to
steer his course aright. But no master-mariner," he adds, "dares
to use it lest he should fall under the imputation of being a
magician."[1] By the end of the 13th century the compass was coming
into general use; and when Columbus sailed he had an instrument
divided as in later times into 360 degrees and 32 points, as well as
a quadrant, sea-astrolabe, and other nautical devices. The astrolabe,
an instrument for determining latitude by measuring the altitude of
the sun or other heavenly body, was suspended from the finger by a
ring and held upright at noon till the shadow of the sun passed the
sights. The cross-staff, more frequently used for the same purpose
by sailors of the time, was a simpler affair less affected by the
ship's roll; it was held with the lower end of the cross-piece
level with the horizon and the upper adjusted to a point on a line
between the eye of the observer and the sun at the zenith. By these
various means the sailor could steer a fixed course and determine
latitude. He had, however, as yet no trustworthy means of reckoning
longitude and no accurate gauge of distance traveled. The log-line
was not invented until the 17th century, and accurate chronometers
for determining longitude did not come into use until still later.
A common practice of navigators, adopted by Columbus, was to steer
first north or south along the coast and then due west on the parallel
thought to lead to the destination sought.
[Footnote 1: Dante's tutor Brunetto Latini, quoted in THE DISCOVERY
OF AMERICA, Fiske, Vol. I, p. 314.]
[Illustration: THE KNOWN AND UNKNOWN WORLD IN 1450, SHOWING THE
VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS, VASCO DE GAMA, MAGELLAN, AND DRAKE]
With the revival of classical learning in the Renaissance, geographical
theories also became less wildly imaginative than in the medieval
period, the charts of which, though beautifully colored and highly
decorated with fauna and flora, show no such accurate knowledge
even of the old world as do those of the great geographer Ptolemy,
who lived a thousand years before. Ptolemy (200 A.D.), in company
with the majority of learned men since Aristotle, had declared
the earth to be round and had even estimated its circumference
with substantial accuracy, though he had misled later students
by picturing the Indian Ocean as completely surrounded by Africa,
which he conceived to extend indefinitely southward and join Asia
on the southeast, leaving no sea-route open from the Atlantic. There
was another body of opinion of long standing, however, which outlined
Africa much as it actually is. Friar Roger Bacon, whose interest
in the compass has already been mentioned, collected statements of
classical authorities and other evidence to show that Asia could
be reached by sailing directly westward, and that the distance was
not great; and this material was published in Paris in a popular
_Imago Mundi_ of 1410. In general, the best geographical knowledge
of the period, though it underestimated the distance from Europe
westward to Asia and was completely ignorant of the vast continents
lying between, gave support to the theories which the voyages of
Diaz, Vasco da Gama, and Columbus magnificently proved true.
When the best sailors of the time were Italians, and when astronomical
and other scientific knowledge of use in navigation was largely
monopolized by Arabs and Jews, it seems strange that the isolated
and hitherto insignificant country of Portugal should have taken,
and for a century or more maintained primacy in the great epoch
of geographical discovery. The fact is explained, not so much by
her proximity to the African coast and the outlying islands in the
Atlantic, as by the energetic and well-directed patronage which
Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460) extended to voyages of
exploration and to the development of every branch of nautical
art. The third son of John the Great of Portugal, and a nephew on
his mother's side of Henry IV of England, the prince in 1415 led
an armada to the capture of Ceuta from the Moors, and thereafter,
as governor of the conquered territory and of the southern province
of Portugal, settled at Saigres near Cape St. Vincent. On this
promontory, almost at the western verge of the known world, Henry
founded a city, Villa do Iffante, erected an observatory on the
cliff, and gathered round him the best sailors, geographers and
astronomers of his age.
[Illustration: PORTUGUESE VOYAGES AND POSSESSIONS]
Under this intelligent stimulus, Portuguese navigators within a
century rounded the Cape of Good Hope, opened the sea route to
the Indies, discovered Brazil, circumnavigated the globe, and made
Portugal the richest nation in Europe, with a great colonial empire
and claims to dominion over half the seas of the world. Portuguese
ships carried her flag from Labrador (which reveals its discoverers
in its name) and Nova Zembla to the Malay Archipelago and Japan.
It is characteristic of the crusading spirit of the age that Prince
Henry's first ventures down the African coast were in pursuance of
a vague plan to ascend one of the African rivers and unite with
the legendary Christian monarch Prester John (Presbyter or Bishop
John, whose realm was then supposed to be located in Abyssinia) in
a campaign against the Turk. But crusading zeal changed to dreams
of wealth when his ships returned from the Senegal coast between
1440 and 1445 with elephants' tusks, gold, and negro slaves. The
Gold Coast was already reached; the fabled dangers of equatorial
waters--serpent rocks, whirlpools, liquid sun's rays and boiling
rivers--were soon proved unreal; and before 1480 the coast well
beyond the Congo was known.
The continental limits of Africa to southward, long clearly surmised,
were verified by the voyage of Bartolomeo Diaz, in 1487. Diaz rounded
the cape, sailed northward some 200 miles, and then, troubled by
food shortage and heavy weather, turned backward. But he had blazed
the trail. The cape he called _Tormentoso_ (tempestuous) was renamed
by his sovereign, João II, Cape _Bon Esperanto_--the Cape of Goad
Hope. The Florentine professor Politian wrote to congratulate the
king upon opening to Christianity "new lands, new seas, new worlds,
dragged from secular darkness into the light of day."
It was not until ten years later that Vasco da Gama set out to
complete the work of Diaz and establish contact between east and
west. The contour of the African coast was now so well understood
and the art of navigation so advanced that Vasco could steer a
direct course across the open sea from the Cape Verde Islands to
the southern extremity of Africa, a distance of 3770 miles (more
than a thousand miles greater than that of Columbus' voyage from
the Canaries to the Bahamas), which he covered in one hundred days.
After touching at Mozambique, he caught the steady monsoon winds
for Calicut, on the western coast of the peninsula of India, then a
great _entrepôt_ where Mohammedan and Chinese fleets met each year
to exchange wares. Thwarted here by the intrigues of Mohammedan
traders, who were quick to realize the danger threatening their
commercial monopoly, he moved on to Cannanore, a port further north
along the coast, took cargo, and set sail for home, reaching the
Azores in August of 1499, with 55 of his original complement of
148 men. They came back, in the picturesque words of the Admiral,
"With the pumps in their hands and the Virgin Mary in their mouths,"
completing a total voyage of 13,000 miles. The profits are said
to have been sixty-fold.
The ease with which in the next two decades Portugal extended and
consolidated her conquest of eastern trade is readily accounted
for. She was dependent indeed solely upon sea communications, over
a distance so great as to make the task seem almost impossible.
But the craft of the east were frail in construction and built for
commerce rather than for warfare. The Chinese junks that came to
India are described as immense in size, with large cabins for the
officers and their families, vegetable gardens growing on board,
and crews of as many as a thousand men; but they had sails of matted
reed that could not be lowered, and their timbers were loosely
fastened together with pegs and withes. The Arab ships, according
to Marco Polo, were also built without the use of nails. Like the
Portuguese themselves, the Arab or Mohammedan merchants belonged
to a race of alien invaders, little liked by the native princes
who retained petty sovereignties along the coast. But the real
secret of Portuguese success lay in the fact that their rivals were
traders rather than fighters, who had enjoyed a peaceful monopoly for
centuries, and who could expect little aid from their own countries
harassed by the Turk. The Portuguese on the other hand inherited
the traditions of Mediterranean seamanship and warfare, and, above
all, were engaged in a great national enterprise, led by the best
men in the land, with enthusiastic government support.
After Vasco's return, fleets were sent out each year, to open the
Indian ports by either force or diplomacy, destroy Moslem merchant
vessels, and establish factories and garrisons. In 1505 Francisco de
Almeida set sail with the largest fleet as yet fitted out (sixteen
ships and sixteen caravels), an appointment as Viceroy of Cochin,
Cannanore, and Quilon, and supreme authority from the Cape to the
Malay Peninsula. Almeida in the next four years defeated the Mohammedan
traders, who with the aid of Egypt had by this time organized to
protect themselves, in a series of naval engagements, culminating
on February 3, 1509, in the decisive battle of Diu.
Mir Hussain, Admiral of the Gran Soldan of Egypt and commander in
chief of the Mohammedan fleet in this battle, anchored his main
force of more than a hundred ships in the mouth of the channel
between the island of Diu and the mainland, designing to fall back
before the Portuguese attack towards the island, where he could
secure the aid of shore batteries and a swarm of 300 or more foists
and other small craft in the harbor. Almeida had only 19 ships
and 1300 men, but against his vigorous attack the flimsy vessels
of the east were of little value. The battle was fought at close
quarters in the old Mediterranean style, with saber, cutlass, and
culverin; ramming, grappling, and boarding. Before nightfall Almeida
had won. This victory ensured Portugal's commercial control in
the eastern seas.
Alfonso d'Albuquerque, greatest of the Portuguese conquistadores,
succeeded Almeida in 1509. Establishing headquarters in a central
position at Goa, he sent a fleet eastward to Malacca, where he set
up a fort and factory, and later fitted out expeditions against
Ormuz and Aden, the two strongholds protecting respectively the
entrances to the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. The attack on Aden
failed, but Ormuz fell in 1515. Albuquerque died in the same year
and was buried in his capital at Goa. His successor opened trade and
founded factories in Ceylon. In 1526 a trading post was established
at Hugli, near the mouth of the Ganges. Ormuz became a center for
the Persian trade, Malacca for trade with Java, Sumatra, and the
Spice Islands. A Portuguese envoy, Fernam de Andrada, reached Canton
in 1517--in the first European ship to enter Chinese waters--and
Pekin three years later. Another adventurer named Mendez Pinto spent
years in China and in 1548 established a factory near Yokohama,
Japan. Brazil, where a squadron under Cabral had touched as early
as 1502, was by 1550 a prosperous colony, and in later centuries
a chief source of wealth. Mozambique, Mombassa, and Malindi, on
the southeastern coast of Africa, were taken and fortified as
intermediate bases to protect the route to Asia. The muslins of
Bengal, the calicoes of Calicut, the spices from the islands, the
pepper of Malabar, the teas and silks of China and Japan, now found
their way by direct ocean passage to the Lisbon quays.
A few strips along the African coast, tenuously held by sufferance
of the great powers, and bits of territory at Goa, Daman, and Diu
in India, are the twentieth century remnants of Portugal's colonial
empire. The greater part of it fell away between 1580 and 1640, when
Portugal was under Spanish rule. But her own system of colonial
administration, or rather exploitation, was if possible worse than
Spain's. Her scanty resources of man power were exhausted in colonial
warfare. The expulsion of Protestants and Jews deprived her of
elements in her population that might have known how to utilize
wealth from the colonies to build up home trade and industries.
Her situation was too distant from the European markets; and the
raw materials landed at Lisbon were transshipped in Dutch bottoms
for Amsterdam and Antwerp, which became the true centers of
manufacturing and exchange. Cervantes, in 1607, could still speak
of Lisbon as the greatest city in Europe,[1] but her greatness was
already decaying; and her fate was sealed when Philip of Spain
closed her ports to Dutch shipping, and Dutch ships themselves
set sail for the east.
[Footnote 1: PERSILES AND SIGISMUDA, III, i.]
But the period of Portugal's maritime ascendancy cannot be left
without recording, even if in barest outline, the circumnavigation
of the globe by Fernão da Magalhães, or Magellan, who, though he
made this last voyage of his under the Spanish flag, was Portuguese
by birth and had proved his courage and iron resolution under Almeida
and Albuquerque in Portugal's eastern campaigns. Seeking a westward
passage to the Spice Islands, the five vessels of 75 to 100 tons
composing his squadron cleared the mouth of the Guadalquivir on
September 20, 1519. They established winter quarters in the last
of March at Port St. Julian on the coast of Patagonia. Here, on
Easter Sunday, three of his Spanish captains mutinied. Magellan
promptly threw a boat's crew armed with cutlasses aboard one of
the mutinous ships, killed the leader, and overcame the unruly
element in the crew. The two other ships he forced to surrender
within 24 hours. One of the guilty captains was beheaded and the
other marooned on the coast when the expedition left in September.
Five weeks were now spent in the labyrinths of the strait which has
since borne the leader's name. "When the capitayne Magalianes,"
so runs the contemporary English translation of the story of the
voyage, "was past the strayght and sawe the way open to the other
mayne sea, he was so gladde thereof that for joy the teares fell
from his eyes."
He had sworn he would go on if he had to eat the leather from the
ships' yards. With three vessels--one had been shipwrecked in the
preceding winter and the other deserted in the straits--they set out
across the vast unknown expanse of the Pacific. "In three monethes
and xx dayes they sailed foure thousande leagues in one goulfe
by the sayde sea called Pacificum.... And havying in this tyme
consumed all their bysket and other vyttayles, they fell into such
necessitie that they were in forced to eate the pouder that remayned
thereof being now full of woormes.... Theyre freshe water was also
putryfyed and become yellow. They dyd eate skynnes and pieces of
lether which were foulded about certeyne great ropes of the shyps."
On March 6, 1521, they reached the Ladrones, and ten days later, the
Philippines, even these islands having never before been visited by
Europeans. Here the leader was killed in a conflict with the natives.
One ship was now abandoned, and another was later captured by the
Portuguese. Of the five ships that had left Spain with 280 men,
a single vessel, "with tackle worn and weather-beaten yards," and 18
gaunt survivors reached home. "It has not," writes the historian
John Fiske of this voyage, "the unique historic position of the
first voyage of Columbus, which brought together two streams of
human life that had been disjoined since the glacial period. But
as an achievement in ocean navigation that voyage of Columbus sinks
into insignificance beside it.... When we consider the frailness
of the ships, the immeasurable extent of the unknown, the mutinies
that were prevented or quelled, and the hardships that were endured,
we can have no hesitation in speaking of Magellan as the prince
of navigators."[1]
[Footnote 1: THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, Vol. II, p. 210.]
2. SPAIN AND THE NEW WORLD
It is generally taken for granted that the great movement of the
Renaissance, which spread through western Europe in the 15th and
the 16th centuries, quickening men's interest in the world about
them rather than the world to come, and inspiring them with an
eagerness and a confident belief in their own power to explore
its hidden secrets, was among the forces which brought about the
great geographical discoveries of the period. Its influence in
this direction is evident enough in England and elsewhere later on;
but, judging by the difficulties of Columbus in securing support,
it was not in his time potent with those in control of government
policy and government funds. The Italian navigator John Cabot and
his son Sebastian made their voyages from England in 1498 and 1500
with very feeble support from Henry VII, though it was upon their
discoveries that England later based her American claims. Even in
Spain there seems to have been little eagerness to emulate the
methods by which her neighbor Portugal had so rapidly risen to
wealth and power.
But the influence of revived classical information on geographical
matters was keenly felt; and the idea of a direct westerly passage
to India was suggested, not only by Portugal's monopoly of the
Cape route, but by classical authority, generally accepted by the
best geographers of the time. The _Imago Mundi_ of 1410, already
mentioned, embodying Roger Bacon's arguments that the Atlantic washed
the shores of Asia and that the voyage thither was not long, was a
book carefully studied by Columbus. Paul Toscanelli, a Florentine
physicist and astronomer, adopting and developing this theory, sent
in 1474 to Alfonso V of Portugal a map of the world in which he
demonstrated the possibilities of the western route. The distance
round the earth at the equator he estimated almost exactly to be
24,780 statute miles, and in the latitude of Lisbon 19,500 miles;
but he so exaggerated the extent of Europe and Asia as to reduce
the distance between them by an Atlantic voyage to about 6500 miles,
putting the east coast of China in about the longitude of Oregon.
This distance he still further shortened by locating Cipango (Japan)
far to the eastward of Asia, in about the latitude of the Canary
Islands and distant from them only 3250 miles.
With all these opinions Columbus was familiar, for the list of his
library and the annotations still preserved in his own handwriting,
show that he was not an ignorant sailor, nor yet a wild visionary,
but prepared by closest study for the task to which he gave his
later years. His earlier career, on the other hand, had supplied
him with abundant practical knowledge. Born in Genoa, a mother
city of great seamen, probably in the year 1436, he had received
a fair education in Latin, geography, astronomy, drafting, and
other subjects useful to the master-mariner of those days. He had
sailed the Mediterranean, and prior to his great adventure, had
been as far north as Iceland, and on many voyages down the African
coast. Following his brother Bartholomew, who was a map-maker in
the Portuguese service, he came about 1470 to Lisbon, even then a
center of geographical knowledge and maritime activity. Probably
as early as this time the idea of a western voyage was in his mind.
Skepticism may account for Portugal's failure to listen to his
proposals; and her interest was already centered in the route around
Africa under her exclusive control. The tale of his years of search
for assistance is well known. Indeed, while the fame of Columbus
rests rightly enough upon his discovery of a new world, of whose
existence he had never dreamed and which he never admitted in his
lifetime, his greatness is best shown by his faith in his vision,
and the steadfast energy and fortitude with which he pushed towards
its practical accomplishment, during years of vain supplication, and
amid the trials of the voyage itself. He had actually left Granada,
when Isabella of Spain at last agreed to support his venture. In
the contract later drawn up he drove a good bargain, contingent
always upon success; he was to be admiral and viceroy of islands
and continents discovered and their surrounding waters, with control
of trading privileges and a tenth part of the wealth of all kinds
derived.
With the explorations of Columbus on his first and his three later
voyages (in 1496, 1498, and 1502) we are less concerned than with
the first voyage itself as an illustration of the problems and
dangers faced by the navigator of the time, and with the effect of
the discovery of the new world upon Spain's rise as a sea power.
The three caravels in which he sailed were typical craft of the
period. The _Santa Maria_, the largest, was like the other two, a
single-decked, lateen-rigged, three-masted vessel, with a length
of about 90 feet, beam of about 20 feet, and a maximum speed of
perhaps 6-1/2 knots. She was of 100 tons burden and carried 52
men. The _Pinta_ was somewhat smaller. The _Niña_ (Baby) was a
tiny, half-decked vessel of 40 tons. Heavily timbered and seaworthy
enough, the three caravels were short provisioned and manned in
part from the rakings of the Palos jail.
Leaving Palos August 3, 1492, Columbus went first to the Canaries,
and thence turned his prow directly westward, believing that he
was on the parallel that touched the northern end of Japan. By
a reckoning even more optimistic than Toscanelli's, he estimated
the distance thither to be only 2500 miles. Thence he would sail
to Quinsay (Hang Chow), the ancient capital of China, and deliver
the letter he carried to the Khan of Cathay. The northeast trade
winds bore them steadily westward, raising in the minds of the
already fear-stricken sailors the certainty that against these
head winds they could never beat back. At last they entered the
vast expanse of the Sargasso Sea, six times as large as France,
where they lay for a week almost becalmed, amid tangled masses of
floating seaweeds. To add to their perplexities, they had passed
the line of no variation, and the needle now swung to the left of the
pole-star instead of the right. On the last day of the outward voyage
they were 2300 miles to the westward according to the information
Columbus shared with his officers and men; according to his secret
log they were 2700 miles from the Canaries, and well beyond the
paint where he had expected to strike the islands of the Asiatic
coast. The mutinous and panic-stricken spirit of his subordinates,
the uncertainty of Columbus himself, turned to rejoicing when at
2:00 A.M. of Friday, October 12, a sailor on the _Pinta_ sighted
the little island of the Bahamas, which, since the time of the
Vikings, was the first land sighted by white men in the new world.
[Illustration: FLAGSHIP OF COLUMBUS]
The three vessels cruised southward, in the belief, expressed by
the name Indian which they gave the natives, that they were in
the archipelago east of Asia. Skirting the northern coast of Cuba
and Hayti, they sought for traces of gold, and information as to
the way to the mainland. The _Santa Maria_ was wrecked on Christmas
Day; the _Pinta_ became separated; Columbus returned in the
little _Ninã_, putting in first at the Tagus, and reaching Palos
on March 15, 1493.
Though his voyage gave no immediate prospect of immense profits,
yet it was the general belief that he had reached Asia, and by a
route three times as short as that by the Cape of Good Hope. The
Spanish court celebrated his return with rejoicing. Appealing to
the Pope, at this time the Spaniard Rodrigo Bargia, King Ferdinand
lost no time in securing holy sanction for his gains. A Papal bull
of May 3, 1493, conferred upon Spain title to all lands discovered
or yet to be discovered in the western ocean. Another on the day
following divided the claims of Spain and Portugal by a line running
north and south "100 leagues west of the Azores and the Cape Verde
Islands" (an obscure statement in view of the fact that the Cape
Verdes lie considerably to the westward of the other group), and
granted to Spain a monopoly of commerce in the waters "west and
south" (again an obscure phrase) of this line, so that no other
nation could trade without license from the power in control. This
was the extraordinary Papal decree dividing the waters of the world.
Small wander that the French king, Francis I, remarked that he
refused to recognize the title of the claimants till they could
produce the will of Father Adam, making them universal heirs; or
that Elizabeth, when a century later England became interested
in world trade, disputed a division contrary not only to common
sense and treaties but to "the law of nations." The Papal decree,
intended merely to settle the differences of the two Catholic states,
gave rise to endless disputes and preposterous claims.
The treaty of Tordesillas (1494) between Spain and Portugal fixed
the line of demarcation more definitely, 370 miles west of the
Cape Verde Islands, giving Portugal the Brazilian coast, and by
an additional clause it made illegitimate trade a crime punishable
by death. Another agreement in 1529 extended the line around to
the Eastern Hemisphere, 17 degrees east of the Moluccas, which, if
Spain had abided by it, would have excluded her from the Philippines.
After Portugal fell under Spanish rule in 1580, Spain could claim
dominion over all the southern seas.
[Illustration: CHART OF A.D. 1589
Showing Papal line of Demarcation]
The enthusiasm and confident expectation with which Spain set out
to exploit the discoveries of Columbus's first voyage changed to
disappointment when subsequent explorations revealed lands of
continental dimensions to be sure, but populated by ignorant savages,
with no thoroughfare to the ancient civilization and wealth of
the East, and no promise of a solid, lucrative commerce such as
Portugal had gained. Mines were opened in the West Indies, but it
was not until the conquest of Mexico by Cortez (1519-1521) laid open
the accumulated wealth of seven centuries that Spain had definite
assurance of the treasure which was to pour out of America in a
steadily increasing stream. The first two vessels laden with Mexican
treasure returned in 1523. Ten years later the exploration and
conquest of Peru by Pizarro trebled the influx of silver and gold.
The silver mines of Europe were abandoned. The Emperor Charles, as
Francis I said, could fight his European campaigns on the wealth
of the Indies alone.
But between Spain and her "sinews of war" lay 3000 miles of ocean.
To hold the colonies themselves, to guard the plate fleets against
French, Dutch, and English raiders, to protect her own coastline
and maintain communications with her possessions in Italy and the
Low Countries, to wage war against the Turk in the Mediterranean,
Spain felt the need of a navy. Indeed, in view of these varied
motives for maritime strength, it is surprising that Spain depended
so largely on impressed merchant vessels, and had made only the
beginnings of a royal navy at the time of the Grand Armada.[1]
Not primarily a nation of traders or sailors, she had, by grudging
assistance to the greatest of sea explorers, fallen into a rich
colonial empire, to secure and make the most of which called for
sea power.
[Footnote 1: "For the kings of England have for many years been
at the charge to build and furnish a navy of powerful ships for
their own defense, and for the wars only; whereas the French, the
Spaniards, the Portugals, and the Hollanders (till of late) have
had no proper fleet belonging to their princes or state." Sir Walter
Raleigh, A DISCOURSE OF THE INVENTION OF SHIPS.]
It is possible, however, to lay undue stress on the factor just
mentioned in accounting for both the rise and the decay of Spain.
Her ascendancy in Europe in the 16th century was due chiefly to
the immense territories united with her under Charles the Fifth
(1500-1558), who inherited Spain, Burgundy, and the Low Countries,
and added Austria with her German and Italian provinces by his
accession to the imperial throne. Under Charles's powerful leadership
Spain became the greatest nation in Europe; but at the same time her
resources in men and wealth were exhausted in the almost constant
warfare of his long reign. The treasures of America flowed through
the land like water, in the expressive figure of a German historian,
"not fertilizing it but laying it waste, and leaving sharper dearth
behind."[2] The revenues of the plate fleet were pledged to German
or Genoese bankers even before they reached the country, and were
expended in the purchase of foreign luxuries or in waging imperial
wars, rather than in the encouragement of home agriculture, trade,
and industry. While the vast possessions of church and nobility
escaped taxation, the people were burdened with levies on the movement
and sale of commodities and on the common necessities of life.
Prohibition of imports to keep gold in the country was ineffectual,
for without the supplies brought in by Dutch merchantmen Spain would
have starved, and Philip II often had to connive in violations
of his own restrictions. Prohibition of exports to keep prices
down was an equally Quixotic measure, the chief effect of which
was to kill trade. Spain could not supply the needs of her own
colonies, and in fact illustrates the truth that a nation cannot,
in the end, profit greatly by colonies unless it develops industries
to utilize their raw materials and supply their demands.
[Footnote 2: DAS ZEITALTER DER FUGGER, Vol. II, p. 150.]
For some time before the Armada Spain was on the downward path,
as a result of the conditions mentioned. On the other hand, while
the Armada relieved England of a terrible danger and dashed Spain's
hope of domination in the north, it was not of itself a fatal blow.
The war still continued, with other Spanish expeditions organized on
a grand scale, and ended in 1604, so far as England was concerned,
with that country's renunciation of trade to the Indies and aid
to the Dutch.
But even if Spain's rise and decline were not primarily a result
of sea power, still, taking the term to include the extension of
shipping and maritime trade as well as the employment of naval
forces in strictly military operations, there are lessons to be
drawn from the use or neglect of sea power by both sides in Spain's
long drawn-out struggle with Holland and England.
REFERENCES
_General_
THE EXPANSION OF EUROPE, a History of the Foundations of the
Modern World, by Prof. W. C. Abbot, 1918.
THE STORY OF GEOGRAPHICAL DISCOVERY, J. Jacobs, 1913.
SHIPS AND THEIR WAYS OF OTHER DAYS, E. Keble Chatterton, 1906.
THE DAWN OF NAVIGATION, Thomas G. Ford, U. S. Naval Institute
Proceedings, Vol. XXXIII., 1-3.
THE DAWN OF MODERN GEOGRAPHY, 2 vols., C. Raymond Beazley, 1904.
_Portugal_
PRINCE HENRY THE NAVIGATOR, C. Raymond Beazley, 1895.
VASCO DA GAMA AND HIS SUCCESSORS, 1460-1580, K. G. Jayne, 1910.
RISE OF PORTUGUESE POWER IN INDIA, R. S. Whiteway, 1910.
CAMBRIDGE MODERN HISTORY, Vol. I., Ch. I.
HISTORY OF THE INDIAN NAVY, Lieut. C. R. Low, 1877.
_Spain_
THE DISCOVERY OF AMERICA, John Fiske, 1893.
SPAIN IN AMERICA, E. G. Bourne, American Nation Series, 1909.
SPAIN, Martin Hume, Cam. Modern Hist. Series, 1898.