The Cape Route (Carreira da Índia)
The sea route from Europe around the Cape of Good Hope to India, opened by Vasco da Gama in 1498 and the main link between Europe and Asia until the Suez Canal.
Places Along the Cape Route (Carreira da Índia)
Commercial Genesis & Spatial Network
Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa in 1488, and ten years later Vasco da Gama followed with a fleet that reached Calicut with the help of a pilot taken on at Malindi. The Portuguese crown then sent an annual fleet, the Carreira da Índia. Ships left Lisbon in early spring, swung far out into the South Atlantic to pick up the westerlies, rounded the Cape, and used the summer monsoon to cross from East Africa to India. The Dutch and English East India Companies followed the same route in the seventeenth century. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 made it the long way round.
Economic Impact & Cultural Diffusion
Broke the Venetian and Mamluk hold on the spice trade and shifted the centre of European commerce from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic.
Logistics, Caravanserais & Overland Hazards
- ▲A round voyage took about a year and a half and depended on catching the monsoon
- ▲Scurvy killed a large share of crews on the outward passage
- ▲Storms off the Cape and the reefs of the Mozambique Channel wrecked many ships
- ▲Departures from Lisbon and from India were fixed to narrow seasonal windows
Custodial Empires & Polities
Sovereign states that safeguarded, taxed, or maintained garrisons along this route: