These Stone Age sailors achieved an unparalleled oceanic breakout, traveling nearly 2000 miles to reach the Marquesas. independence from Portugal. Portugal had smashed Arabian , Indian and Malayan sea power in battles that made the Portuguese the dominant power in the region. Working their way eastward to get at the source of the spices that Europe craved, they had outflanked the Venetians in the Mediterranean, who had amassed enormous wealth through their control of this trade, as it had come into their hands through the Arabi ans, the great sailors of the Indian Oceans. The Venetians had bought spices cheap from the Arabians-whose ships had been sailing east to India fo r more than 1500 yearsand sold their cloves, cinnamon and nutmeg at many times their purchase price to all comers in Europe, including the merchants in Portugal's great international seaport of Lisbon . The Portuguese, the great sea traders of the Atlantic world , had pushed south around Africa after Bartolemeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in 1487, and then surged eastward , smashing the existing Arab trading system in eastern Africa, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean, pressing on to subdue the leading seaports of India and taking the great seaport of Malacca in the Malay Peninsula. Beyond that, in the South China Sea, lay their ultimate goals-the spices of Indones ia and the sophi sti cated wares of China, notabl y silks, porcelain and lacq uerware unmatched in the West. But here, in the Spice Islands, the Portuguese found themselves up againstdetern1ined opposition from local powers as well as the rival power of Spain entrenched in the Philippines immediately to the north . The Sultan ofTemate was simply delighted to meet Drake. And Drake for his part made it very clear that he sailed under another fl ag than the Portuguese, or for that matter the Spanish, who were in great strength in the Philippines immediately to the north . An informal agreement was struck that Drake would return one day with a fleet of English ships to protect
the Sultan from the European incursion and to open a lucrative trade in cloves. Unhappi ly for both parties, this agreement was never acted on. Drake fo und hi s hands full on returning to England in 1580, particularly in confronting the growin g threat from Spain. This imminentdanger reached a head in the seaborne invasion attempt of the Spanish Armada in 15 88, which Drake played a notable role in repelling. His attempts to get others to lead the promised fleet to the South China Sea coll apsed in the hands of leaders less resolute than he, and Philip of Spain, managing to secure the Portuguese throne in 1580, soon brought the combined powers of Spain and Portugal to bear against Ternate. The Sultanate fell in 1606, a year afterthe new Sultan had sent a fmal urgent appeal to Queen E lizabeth 's successor James I for the help that never can1e. In the next hundred years the Dutch seized most of Portugal's holdings in Indonesia, but not Ternate, which remained a Po1tuguese enclave until as late as 1975.
The Sleeping Dragon to the North What of the mighty power of China, on whose doorstep these imperial games were being played out? Chinese junks plied the South China Sea regularly, trading with the Spanish in the Phi lippine capital of Manila, where they exchanged their valuable wares for silver fro m the Spanish mines in the Americas. The Spanish galleon sailing from Acapulco in Mexico in its yearly round brought that silver into Manil a, where it was presented to Chinese emi ssaries who accepted it as a proper tribute to their emperor. In exchange they brought rich gifts to Manila to ass ure these barbarian s on the water outskirts of their kingdom of the wealth and benevolence of their emperor. And they continued the ir age-old trade w ith the Indonesians and with the Arabians, who, as we've seen earlier, served as middlemen for the passage of Chinese manufactures to India and the Middle East. Us ually the
Zheng Ho voyaged from the East China Sea to Java , India , Arabia and Africa in the early 1400s, just decades before European sailors rounded the Cape of Good Hope and swept into the Indian Ocean. Th e map has been adapted from The Oxford Atlas of Exploration (New York , 1997) , p. 32.
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Subsidiary ships of Zheng Ho"s expedition