History of India . r we to depend entirely upon them, our insight intolife in the Moghul empire in the seventeenth centurywould be shallow. Fortunately we have other wit-nesses. Europeans of various nations, qualified in manyrespects to observe with penetration and record withaccuracy, visited India in the period of Moghul suprem-acy, and their observations complete and correct withsingular minuteness the narratives of native Fates were unusually propitious when theyordained that the Satumian Age of Moghul powershould coincide with the new epoch in European inter-co
History of India . r we to depend entirely upon them, our insight intolife in the Moghul empire in the seventeenth centurywould be shallow. Fortunately we have other wit-nesses. Europeans of various nations, qualified in manyrespects to observe with penetration and record withaccuracy, visited India in the period of Moghul suprem-acy, and their observations complete and correct withsingular minuteness the narratives of native Fates were unusually propitious when theyordained that the Satumian Age of Moghul powershould coincide with the new epoch in European inter-course with the East. Up to the closing years of the 54 THE GEEAT MOGHUL sixteenth century, a single European nation had heldthe monopoly of commerce in the East Indies. WhenVasco da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope andlanded at Calicut in 1498, the trade with India andthe Par East passed into a Portuguese channel. Theold routes had been in the hands of Mohammedantraders, who shipped their goods by the Persian Gulf. A EDDGEEOW, CALCnTTA. and the Red Sea, and so overland to Syrian ana Egyp-tian ports, whence the merchandise found its way toEurope in Venetian bottoms. These routes were tappedat their source when Portugal acquired the commandof the Indian Ocean. In the hands of such heroes asPacheco, Almeida, and Albuquerque, the control ofPortugal over the whole of the commerce with the EastIndies, Spice Islands, and China was assured. Arabtraders and Egyptian navies sought in vain to oust theinvaders of their ancient privileges. From the Capeof Good Hope to China the extended coast-line wasarmed with a chain of Portuguese fortresses, and noship could sail without a Portuguese passport. PORTUGUESE, DUTCH, AIJD ENGLISH 65 But the age of heroes for Portuguese India passedaway, and there were still no signs of a consolidatedPortuguese empire in the East. Albuquerque haddreamed of such an empire, in the spirit of a Dupleixor a Clive, and he had exhausted his little nation bythe const
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