THE UNTOUCHABLES AND THE PAX BRITANNICA 77
*of the American Continent the objective of his voyage was reach India. Even this voyage of Columbus was not a sudden venture. It was a part of a plan of exploration of a sea route to India which he had received its first impetus from Prince Henry of Portugal, who was greatly interested in it and who in his reign of 42 years (1418—1460) helped it in every possible way.
What was the necessity for this quest for a direct sea route from Europe to India which impelled the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English to come out of their seclusion. The coming of the English to India was not an adventure of a singular race. It was a concerted effort and there was so much eagerness on the part of each European nation that within this concert there was a competition for reaching India first. Because the Portuguese came first it does not follow that the rest were idle or indifferent. The English and the Dutch were under the belief that there was a shorter route to India than that of the Cape of Good Hope and their delay in their coming to India was due to the fact that they were busy in finding out its possibilities. The French, though last to arrive, were second only to the Portuguese, their first voyage being to Sumatra in 1529.
What was the origin of this eagerness to reach the Indies ? Why did the Portuguese, Spaniards, English, French and Dutch vie with one another in centuries of strenuous effort to find a sea route to India. The object was to obtain luxuries and particularly spices—chillies, cloves, nutings etc., which could be had only from India and the East.
This seems rather strange—that all this run should be for spices. But the fact is that spices did play a very important part in this expansion of Europe.
How much spices were used and appreciated by the European peoples in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries can be seen, from the following data collected by Prof. Cheyney [1] :
“One of the chief luxuries of the Middle Ages was the edible spices. Wines and ale were constantly used spiced with various condiments. In Sir Thopa’s forest grew “notemuge to putte in ale”.
- First page containing the earlier portions of this MS is missing. The title of this essay also is nowhere found. The present title is given from the typed outline in the custody of People’s Education Society, Bombay—ed.
European Background of American History, p. 10-11.