The Dispatches on War (Part VIII)

continued from The Road to a global Economy

The process of European colonization, which started in the 1400s, was a race for the mastery of commercial capitalism. It was a transitory age, which marked the passage of Europe from an agricultural to an industrialized society. The voyages of exploration that would characterize Europe’s emergence as a growing power, was also a testament to the increasing levels of wealth and technology in the continent. It would require huge sums of monies to fund these voyages and to make them an annual event. The money would not only be needed to build ships, but also equip them with a crew and the significance of this fact was that these voyages were mostly, if not entirely, financed with private capital. These voyages of discovery and exploration and finally colonization marked the cross-roads, where the interests of market capitalism; of individual entrepreneurs, the politics of the nation-states, religion and the role of the technology would jostle with one another to create a uniquely European identity on the world stage.

The legacy of Europe, which would be bequeathed to the rest of the world as a result of these voyages, would have a humble beginning. Some two years after the end of the Great Schism in Europe, in 1419, a school for learning the secrets of navigation was established under the patronage of Prince Henry of Portugal. The reason behind Prince Henry’s endowment was to break the Byzantine monopoly on trade of spices and to find an alternative route, which would by-pass the lands controlled by the Byzantine Empire. The taxes levied on the transit of trade, by Constantinople, was forcing the price of the spice to increase and with the increasing prices, the spice merchants of Europe were confronted with a limited market. Europe, as a whole, offered an untapped market for the trade of spice, but the high price of the commodity placed it out of the reach of the common people in Europe. Only the rich and the affluent could afford to buy spice but to the merchants of Europe, this limited customer demographic was just not profitable to cover the initial investment in buying the spice and then transporting it across Asia into Europe.

The need to make profit was demanding its own logic to find a cheaper method of trading spice and the most feasible conclusion was to, some how, circumvent the Muslim lands in Asia and thus, lower the price of spice by not paying taxes to them. The Europeans, who flocked to Prince Henry’s school, located in the southwest of Portugal, were aware of the existence of the works of Ptolemy, a Greek, on geography and his calculations of the earth’s circumference. It was a known European theoretical premise that the earth was round and the wisdom of Ptolemy was well known to the Arabs, who were one of the foremost and most accomplished geographers at the time. The purpose of the school of navigation in Portugal was to collate all the diverse and fragmentary bits of geographic knowledge, which could be gleaned from the Arabs, and to create a systematic understanding of the world, which would aid in European navigational skills. The information, thus collected, would be translated into the creation of accurate maps.

The major problem facing European sailors at the start of the fifteenth century was that they lacked reliable geographic data to undertake long voyages, but at the same time did not lack the technology to build ships. Europe, blessed as it was by an extensive network of inland waterways, already possessed the basic infrastructure of a ship building industry. This was further complimented by the medieval political practice, which mandated that all coastal cities had to provide a ship, with a crew, to the monarchs. Apart from instituting a naval tradition in Europe (which would have far reaching consequences), more importantly this activity ensured that there would be a cadre of experienced sailors and that the technology needed to make sea going ships would be readily available within Europe itself. Despite the presence of these natural advantages, the Europeans lacked the confidence to undertake long voyages and these would be gradually overcome, when the Europeans would gain the technology, from the Muslims, in making compasses and astrolabes. The Muslims would benefit and help in the growing European navigational expertise, because it would be the European exposure to the Muslim naval technology in the eastern Mediterranean, which would introduce the Europeans to the concept of an axial rudder.

Another invention, which would allow the Europeans to start planning voyages of a longer duration, was the perfection of the square rig which allowed the European ships to sail against the wind. By utilizing the technology of an axial rudder and fitting their sea going ships, with a square rig, the Europeans ships were becoming mobile and this mobility was also an added advantage in terms of naval warfare. Critically, from a commercial perspective, these ships were large enough to carry a respectable amount of cargo and from a profit’s point of view they were large enough to mount cannons for self-defense. The growing mastery of the Europeans was making it possible to venture away from Europe and seek the fabled sea route to the Indies. The only hurdle in this, still, was the absence of empirical geographic information, which would enable the Europeans to plan long sea journeys, with confidence.

The knowledge gained from the Muslims, to address these short comings, though invaluable, was limited. The Muslim knowledge was theoretically based on the works of Ptolemy and their practical knowledge and experience was based on their trade in the Indian Ocean and in the Far East and along the African coast. The European interest, in hopes of finding a sea route to India, was through sailing west and not east; because to the east, lay the Muslim influence and the idea was to ignore this influence altogether and not to compete with it. The European general knowledge of the unknown still rested on the information given by Ptolemy in his seminal work on geography and contained within that treatise was a map of the world. The map showed three continents; Asia, Africa and Europe and two oceans, but did not give any measurably accurate scale. This map provided the Europeans with the theoretical idea which stated that India could be reached by sailing west and it would be this idea, which Prince Henry and his band of sailors were determined to prove.

The marked European lack of reliable information meant that before any endeavor to sail westwards was seriously considered, Europe would have to gain the practical experience of sailing uncharted seas. The first priority was to instruct the Europeans in the art of navigating on the open seas and to learn and understand the wind patterns and how to use them. As the Europeans moved further out into the open sea, they soon realized that wind patterns differed near the shore and in the open sea and that winds blew in seasonal directions; alternating during summer and winter months. All this information was systematically being archived in Portugal and at the same time, based on these early limited sailing expeditions, Europe was creating accurate maps, with measured distances, and compass directions, and these maps slowly started to fill the vacuum in European empirical understanding of the world beyond European shores. Even as Europe was gaining in confidence in its sea going abilities, there was still a mythical fear of sailing west, because no one in Europe knew the exact distance to India or how long such a voyage would really last. On the other hand, there was always the nagging doubt that maybe the church was right and the world, despite everything, was flat and the thought of sailing to the edge of the world was not an inspiring one. It was one thing to argue about the circular nature of the world academically and it was a different matter to prove it by risking one’s own life.

It would be in this sense that the greatest contribution to the European voyages of discovery would be made by students of Prince Henry. Weighing caution over recklessness, the Portuguese decided to follow a safe path in reaching India via rounding the tip of Africa instead of sailing west. The immediate aim of the Portuguese explorers was not to reach India, but to discover the source of the African gold. Africa was the largest exporter of gold to Europe and this gold was brought by caravans from interior to the North African coast, where it was picked up by the Europeans for shipment to Europe. The price of the gold was determined by the Muslims, who had a monopoly on the gold trade and the price of gold, as sold in Europe, included the transit taxes paid to the Muslims. The Portuguese, especially Prince Henry, wanted to break this Muslim monopoly on gold and in the process, wished to expand the influence of Christianity. As the popes in Rome were always partial to gold, they were only too eager to give their blessings to the Portuguese ships sailing towards Africa.

The Portuguese expeditions to Africa ventured slowly and with dithering confidences. The Europeans had never sailed beyond the sight of the land for a long period and hence, they gradually explored, mapped and worked their way down the western coast of Africa. As always, the basic requirement of these voyages was to collect information and though the merchants of Europe were impatient in discovering the source of the African gold, Prince Henry favored an organized and structured methodology of gaining information. In a series of voyages, where by each expedition went further than the last one, the Portuguese sailors gained priceless seafaring experience and knowledge, but no gold. By the middle of 1400s, the Portuguese had navigated their way over the bulge of western Africa and had reached mouth of the Senegal River.

On returning back to Europe, the Portuguese did not bring the anticipated gold, but they brought a consignment of captured Africans, who were then sold in the port city of Lisbon as the first African slaves in Europe. The response was so overwhelming, that the Portuguese expeditions to Africa routinely returned with a cargo of Africans and the population of African slaves in Portugal increased manifold in less than a decade. The financial boon of profiting from selling human beings impressed upon the Portuguese the need to wrest this trade away from the Muslims, who were acting as middlemen capturing the slaves and bring them to Portuguese warehouses on the coast, and to monopolize this trade. The Portuguese became so proficient in the logistics of this trade, that each year nearly a thousand Africans were brought to the port of Lisbon and sold as slaves. Lisbon, thus, became the entry point of slaves into Europe and from Lisbon, the slaves were transited throughout Europe. The result of this unexpected, but profitable trade was that Portuguese started to organize the African slave trade and for this purposes, they established a series of settlements, which acted as refurbishing points for their ships along the western African coastline. The aim of these emerging colonies was to protect the Portuguese access to slaves and to prevent competitors, for example like Spain, from establishing a presence in Africa and hindering Portugal’s ability to trade human beings.

In the last decades of the 1400s, the Portuguese continued to creep further and further south along the African coast and by the 1470s, had discovered the source of gold in Africa and to the Europeans, this area would become to be known as the Gold Coast. The Portuguese expansion into Africa progressed slowly but steadily and soon, they had established a trading port on the mouth of the Zaire River and had diversified their trade to gold, humans, and ivory. The Portuguese dominions in Africa had started to bring it immense wealth and to protect this source of income, Portugal embarked on the fortification of its colonies. The wealth of the Portuguese African gold coast was attracting the gaze of other Europeans and Portugal, determined to protect its investment, would take over the administration of these regions. The first step toward the colonization of the non-European world had been successfully completed and thus, Portugal would emerge as the first European colonial power.

The original intention of finding a sea route to India continued, and as the fifteenth century drew to a close, the ships from Portugal had rounded the southern most tip of Africa and established contact, with the Muslims along the eastern coast of Africa. It would be the courtesy of Muslim traders on the eastern coast, from whom the Portuguese would learn of a route to India and with the help of the Muslims, the first Portuguese ship reached India. Once, the Portuguese presence was established in the Indian Ocean, Portuguese ambitions were fixated upon destroying the Muslim trade monopoly in the region and with the creation of a Portuguese colony in western India, Portugal wished to replace the Muslim influence in the greater Indian Ocean. Not satisfied, with having reached India, Portuguese ships consistently pushed eastwards towards China and Japan.

It was only inevitable that the increasing influence of Portugal would elicit a backlash from the Muslims against the growing powers of the Portuguese, but it would be the naval weapons technology of Portugal, which would help to defeat a combined fleet of Indian and Muslim ships and as a consequence, the Portuguese power was a well established reality in the Indian Ocean by the first decade of the sixteenth century. The hidden advantage of the Europeans, and in the case of Portuguese ships, was the cannons, with which the European ships were equipped. Though the cannons were of limited range and not too effective, their firepower was sufficient to destroy coastal fortifications and Muslim ships, which did not have the benefit of similar weaponry. The other advantage of European naval supremacy was that the firepower of the ships could be used, as a force multiplier, and helped to extend Portuguese influence over the coastal regions. Therefore, the Portuguese did not need recourse to vast reserves of a trained military manpower in order to wedge, and sustain, their influences in the coastal periphery of the Indian Ocean.

The unmistakable fact of Portuguese supremacy and dominion over the early stages of European colonization was deeply ingrained into the European reality by the end of the 1400s. One of the overlooked reasons for Christopher Columbus sailing west was the political dominance of Portugal over the sea routes along the African coast and its willingness to fight a European war to protect its trade routes. Spain, had it wished to challenge the Portuguese over the trade routes, would have quickly discovered the impossibility of the proposition. The year in which Columbus would set sail west, was also the year in which the twin Spanish monarchies of Castile and Aragon had successfully evicted the Moors from Granada and had unified Spain. Hence, the Spanish crown was only interested in consolidating its influence in Spain and not in fighting Portugal over sea routes to India. Furthermore, Columbus was well aware that the shortest sailing route to the India was in the west and not by sailing across the tip of Africa. Columbus realized by sailing to India, in the footsteps of the Portuguese, he would have to rely on Portuguese mercy. Given the extended duration of such a voyage, the need to be re-supplied en-route to India meant it would be the Portuguese who would determine the final success or failure of such an expedition.

Columbus was not motivated by a religious zeal or a political reason but solely by the motives of a personal greed for fame and glory. In hopes of seeking a patron to fund his voyages to the Indies, he had asked for Portuguese help, without any success. At the time of Columbus’ petition to Portugal, the Portuguese were on the cusp of reaching India and had no earthly wish to share their glory with a Genoese sailor of dubious qualities. Columbus’ appeal to the church and the Spanish crown, to finance such an enterprise, was turned down, because both were engaged in the process of inquisition; of bleeding out the heretics and non-believers from the kingdom of Spain and could not afford to spare the resources.

It is worth remembering that Columbus’ expedition, though blessed by an official sanction of Castile and Aragon, was a privately funded venture and the Spanish crown did not contribute a single ducat towards his voyage. Columbus would, finally, gain his financial patronage from a group of Jewish financiers and having secured a loan to buy and equip his ships, he would set sail for Indies from the Spanish port of Cueuta, in North Africa. Ironically, on the day Columbus would sail west, another ship carrying the Jews expelled from Spain, including Columbus’ Jewish patrons, would be sailing east for Turkey, where the Turkish sultan, Suleiman the Magnificent, had agreed to give them asylum from the moral retribution of the Spanish inquisition. It is highly doubtful that as Columbus gazed westwards and saw visions of hope and glory, he would have spared a few thoughts on the fate of his financial benefactors let alone how their investment was about to alter the course of history.

The reasons, which prompted the crown of Spain to give the permission to Columbus to claim the Indies under the banner of Castile and Aragon was a cynical calculation of political power. Ferdinand of Aragon, was skeptical of Columbus’ claims and of the need to fund such a voyage, because he was aware of just how close the Portuguese were on discovering a route to India and thus, doubted very much as to what could Spain possibly get from supporting Columbus. Isabella of Castile was more calculating than her husband and realized that Columbus’ voyages offered Spain no liability but only advantages. There was no rational guarantee that Columbus would succeed in his self-stated endeavor, but on the other hand, Columbus gaining new lands would mean an increase in the amount of taxation, which Spain would receive and taxes, were needed to fund the growing Spanish political ambitions in Europe. Spain had a political desire to dominate the Iberian Peninsula, and in this regard saw Portugal as a rival hindering its overall dominance of southwestern Europe. The political defeat of Portugal by Spain was predicated on the difficult fact that the Portuguese access to the African gold and the Asian spice trade, was giving its treasury vast sums of monies to fight and wage wars. Spain could not hope to financially compete with Portugal, but if Columbus was able to win Spain a niche in the Asian spice trade, it would enable Spain to afford the military means needed to compete with the Portuguese influence on the Iberian Peninsula.

Columbus did not discover the Indies, but he did discover traces of gold in the new continent of the Americas. The return of Columbus to Spain, with gold, was able to convince many in Spain to seek their fortunes in the newly discovered world. As soon as the stories of gold and untold riches reached Spain, individuals were marshalling monies need to equip voyages to the new world. Again, it has to be pointed out that all the expeditions, which went forth from Spain to the Americas, were private expeditions and did not have the financial backing of the Spanish monarchy. The kingdom of Spain, it seemed, was quite content to reap the riches from these newly found lands, but was not willing to spare any financial sums towards furthering these discoveries. Within a couple of generations, the kingdoms of the Incas and the Aztecs, were conquered by the Spanish in the name of God and greed, but in reality; these conquests were made more possible by the arrival of European diseases such as measles and small-pox, against which the people of the Americas had no immunity, than they were by any feat of Spanish arms.

However, the discovery a new continent laden with apparently rich reserves of gold and silver, nudged the Portuguese to seek their fortunes there and in the process, try to stop the growth of Spanish influence and wealth in European politics, particularly in the Iberian Peninsula. Unfortunately, for the Portuguese, the Treaty of Tordesilla of 1494 prevented them from exerting their political influence in the Americas. With completion of the political unification of Spain under Castile and Aragon in 1492, Portugal was growing weary of its large neighbor and wanted assurances that Spain would not threaten its African colonies. At the signing of the treaty in 1494, while the extent of the importance of the newly discovered continent was still lost on the Europeans, Portugal was able to convince the pope in Rome to divide the world into a Portuguese and a Spanish sphere of influence. Under the treaty it was decided that Africa would be under Portuguese influence and that the Americas would fall under the Spanish influence. It was also decided under the treaty that the Cape of Good Hope, in southern Africa would be a Portuguese passage and in return, Spain would get the right to dominate the routes across the Atlantic to the new world. Hence, by a quirk of political engineering, most of the newly discovered lands in the American continent fell under Spanish control, with the exception of the hump of South America, which was given to Portugal and Spain would, thus, become determined to restrict Portuguese influence to a limited geographic area in eastern South America.

The Treaty of Tordesilla had effectively divided the known world between Portugal and Spain, with the blessings of the pope in Rome, but it made no mention of how the Spanish and Portuguese influences would be demarcated beyond the Americas. The problem was, and with it an eventual confrontation would instigate itself, between Spain and Portugal in Asia, as the Spanish would work their way down the Atlantic side of South America and finally entered the Pacific Ocean. With the discovery of the Pacific Ocean, Spain had finally proven the thesis that India could be reached by sailing west and was now willing to push its influence into Asia, which was largely under Portuguese economic influence. The Portuguese, who were already entrenched along both the sides of the Malacca Straits, were apprehensive about this emerging Spanish power in Asia. With the creation of a Spanish colony in Asia, named Philippines in honor of the Spanish king Philip II, the competing Spanish and Portuguese interests were destined to clash in Asia in harmony with the increasing tensions, between them in Europe. The newly emerging reality of the wars in the colonies was that any European tension or conflict was likely to mutate itself into a colonial war, and in future, European conflicts would not remain isolated to Europe, but would also be fought in the colonies.

Spain was not interested in a colonial war with Portugal as it was finding the piracy of English ships, upon its galleons irksome and the fact that England was openly supporting the revolt in Spanish Netherlands against the power of Madrid. England was being ruled by Elizabeth I, a Protestant monarch, and was in support of the European Protestant rebellion against the power of the Catholic church and of Spain. Though, England was not a belligerent in the religious squabbles of Europe, it was providing diplomatic, moral and financial support to the Dutch revolt. The most disturbing fact about the English piracy, which seemed to incense Philip II, was the money being provided to the Dutch to resist Spanish power was generated from the sale of stolen Spanish gold. In the middle of the sixteenth century, the foremost concern on the Spanish political mind was to stem the rising tide of a religious revolt against Catholicism in Europe. Philip II was mindful that acts of appeasement, which his father had bestowed upon the Protestants, had weakened the Catholic power in Europe. Unlike his father, therefore, Philip II was eager to preside over a resurgent Catholic faith in Europe and he was convinced that the only way to end the Protestant revolt was by wielding a sword and not through political dialogue.

The key to ending the revolt in Spanish Netherlands, resided in the removal of English meddling in the affairs of the continent. The only way to achieve this goal was by physically invading England, but Spain did not have a navy for this purpose. Under Charles V – Philip II’s father, Spain had discontinued the practice of coastal cities providing a ship and Philip II was finding the re-establishment of a navy very expensive. It seemed as if Philip II was beset by a host of problems. Not only did he have to deal, with colonial problems with Portugal; the Protestant revolt in Mitteleuropa; English piracy, but he also had to deal with a revived Ottoman threat in the eastern Mediterranean Sea and a rising inflation, which was eating away the value of the Spanish gold reserves.

With the influx of gold ingots from South America into Europe, Spain and Europe would suffer one of its early bouts of inflation. The arrival of the South American gold, which seemed to flood the European gold markets, caused the price of gold to drop and coupled with the sale of captured Spanish gold, by the English, on the open market, the Europeans started to experience the economic imbalance caused by a surplus of bullion matched with a disinterested European demand. The European economy was also in a state of movement away from the agrarian farm economy to a commercial capitalistic one, but as it was not yet industrialized the result was the European levels of production remained constant and there not enough manufactured goods in Europe to soak up the financial liquidity, which was created by the import of the Spanish bullion into Europe. The inflationary pressures upon the Spanish gold reserves meant that Spain’s ability to finance wars was being limited, but it also implied that the increasing cost of military technology, when adjusted for inflation, was becoming too expensive. Due to this inflation, a financial gap was emerging between the amounts generated by Spain through taxation and what it was spending to fight the Protestants in Europe and growing reality was that Spain was fighting the Protestant reformation in Europe via deficit spending.

The situation became so critical that Spain despite all its sources of taxation and these included the tax on the Spanish gold and silver mines in South America; the crusade tax, the sales tax; the direct tax on its Castilian territory; the taxes imposed on the trading houses of Germany; the wealth tax on the Spanish nobility and the church tax, was finding that its expenditures were outpacing its financial resources. To finance a resurgent Catholicism in Europe, Philip II was forced to borrow to money from the House of Fuggers in Amsterdam to bridge the financial gap that existed between Spanish revenue generations and Spanish expenditures, but he would be forced to declare bankruptcy soon because the gold he had pledged to Fuggers, as a repayment for Spanish loans, was being steadily stolen by the English under the patronage of Elizabeth I. Hence, Spain could not repay its debt to Fuggers and with the bankruptcy of Spain, the House of Fuggers was also forced into a financial loss and collapse of the House of Fuggers, one of the oldest banking houses in Europe, would force Europe into an economic recession.

England, under Elizabeth I, was a late arrival to the colonial scene and realizing that there was not much left, was willing to resort to piracy in order to support the Protestants in Europe and to keep its own coffers filled with Spanish gold. The amusing historic sub-text to this English piracy is that it would financially create and sustain, what is known as the Elizabethan golden age in English history. With the rising financial crisis in Spain and its consequent implications on the ability of Spain to fight in Europe, Philip II finally decided to invade England. The invasion of England, however, would be delayed by nearly two decades, as Philip II was confronted by the expansionistic power of Ottoman Turkey, which was threatening Eastern Europe and more significantly, was slowing moving towards western Mediterranean Sea and thus, was threatening the coast of Spain itself. To the Spanish, whose defeat of the Moors was only a few generations old, the idea of Muslims threatening Spain took precedence over everything else in Europe. Finally, the Turkish threat would be removed, when a combined Spanish and Italian fleet would defeat the Turks in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571.

In the mean time, the English raids on Spanish galleons grew in intensity and the English captains grew so bold, that they had started to raid and plunder the coastal towns of Spain. Unable to tolerate this state of piracy anymore and eager to end English interference in European affairs, Philip II assembled a vast armada and set out to invade England. The Spanish armada never made it to England, because en-route to England it encountered a gale and as a result, a good portion of the lumbering Spanish galleons and man-of-wars capsized in the stormy waters of the English Channel. The ships that did reach the English coastline were badly mauled by the swift and highly maneuverable vessels of the English and Philip II was forced to call off the invasion. After the defeat of Spain, England would institute unrestricted piracy upon the high seas, with such ruthless efficiency that the flow of the gold coming to Spain would slow to a trickle and finally dry up altogether.

While Spain was adjusting to its loss of influence in Europe and the English nuisance of piracy was reaching the sublime levels of loot and plunder in the Atlantic Ocean, the greatest threat to the Portuguese monopoly of the spice trade was manifesting itself from the activities of the Dutch. The Dutch merchants had never reconciled themselves to the Portuguese control of the spice trade and were slowly whittling away at the Portuguese influence. The first major step, by the Dutch in ending the Portuguese monopoly, came with the establishment of a Dutch colony in South Africa. With the creation of a Dutch colony at the southern most tip of Africa, the Dutch were in a position to interdict the Portuguese ships transiting through the Cape of Good Hope. The Dutch interdiction of the Portuguese spice trade was a classical exposition in the use of naval power, because the Dutch never fought a major battle with Portugal over the issue of controlling the spice. The Dutch success lay in their ability to control the vital sea lanes, upon which the Portuguese traded spice. Towards this end, the Dutch would establish themselves in Ceylon and further east, in Java, and the islands at the gateway to the Straits of Malacca. Simply by strangling the Portuguese spice traffic and making it difficult for the Portuguese ships to transit Dutch controlled straits and passageways, the Dutch slowly substituted themselves as the middlemen in the spice trade and by the early seventeenth century, the spice trade was completely under Dutch control.

The ability of the Dutch to control the spice trade also meant that they had the influence to manipulate the prices of spice. To reap profits from the spice trade, in the last decade of the 1500s, the Dutch would raise the price of spice by a penny. This would create an immediate outrage in Europe, because of a confluence of certain factors, which gave the Dutch an unchallenged monopoly on the spice trade and its movement. The Dutch did not just charge their customers for the cost of the spice, but also for its transportation on Dutch ships. Gradually, the Dutch spice merchants had created a highly sophisticated control over the spice trade and the Dutch monopoly on spice meant that spice could only be transported on Dutch ships and not any other nations’ ship. Fearful of this Dutch monopoly over the spice trade, and mindful of their own shrinking profits, a small group of spice merchants in England decided to break this Dutch monopoly and to liberalize the spice trade. They decided to create a company, which would buy spices from India and offer it to the Europeans at competitive rates and thus, undermine the Dutch control over the spice trade. However, before embarking on their maiden voyage to India, these merchants got a royal charter from Queen Elizabeth I giving them the sole rights over the spice trade and thus, a year before the death of Elizabeth I in 1601 the East India Company was created to break the Dutch monopoly on the spice trade.

Due to this small group of English merchants gathering together in a tavern in London and on a piece of paper jotting down their declaration of intentions, the course of world history would be jarred once more. Just as the saying suggests that hurricanes usually announce themselves as a small breeze, this breeze originating in London would unleash a fierce storm upon the languid landscape of India, whose reverberations would continue to echo through the coming centuries. This is not the end of the story of the European voyages of domination in the name of God, glory and greed, but the start of another chapter in the struggle, which would pit the resilience of the island nation of England against the entrepreneurial genius of the merchants of Netherlands for the economic mastery of global commercial capitalism.