Da Gama reaches India
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In 1498 Vasco da Gama became the first European to reach India by sea, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope. He left Lisbon in July 1497 with four ships and a crew of about 170 men, hugged the coast of Africa, then struck out across the Indian Ocean with the help of the monsoon and a pilot from Malindi. He anchored at Calicut on the Malabar coast on 20 May 1498 and was received by the local ruler, though the spices he brought home were of poor quality and the Portuguese got little at first. Only about a third of his men survived the return voyage, which took fifteen months. The voyage ended the Venetian and Muslim monopoly on the Asian spice trade and made Portugal the first global maritime empire: forts at Mozambique, Mombasa, Goa and Hormuz gave it control of the route. Da Gama returned in 1502 with a fleet and bombarded Calicut to force a trading concession, and in 1524 he died in Cochin as viceroy of India. The sea route changed European diets, prices and politics, and it drew the Indian Ocean into a single competitive system in which Asian and European merchants operated side by side for three centuries.