Holy War How Vasco Da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations

Author Nigel Cliff has, in my opinion, written an extraordinarily good, attention-riveting book of both history as well as intercultural and interreligious interaction. But its title and subtitle are long, argumentative and a bit obscure. I refer to HOLY WAR: HOW VASCO DA GAMA'S EPIC VOYAGES TURNED THE TIDE IN A CENTURIES-OLDCLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS (2011, HarperCollins). {FYI: as I write in mid-August 2012, we are mere days before HarperCollins reissues this book with a new title for the U.K.: THE LAST CRUSADE: THE EPIC VOYAGES OF VASCO DA GAMA. As titles go, I personally find its newly found brevity an improvement. END FYI} *** A glance at the book's table of contents and its 19 Chapters will remind you of the historical novels of Sir Walter Scott and their often long explanatory backgrounder introductions. Or to take a more recent author: of James A. Michener and his epic treatments of Hawaii and other locales, their geology, their millennia of history and the people who built them. HOLY WAR is similarly grand, minutely explanatory, covering centuries and is perhaps twice or thrice as long as a G.K. Chesterton or Ernest Hemingway would have told the same story. ***If today's children are taught history the way I was in grade school over 70 years ago, they will have heard at least a little something of the great 15th and 16th Century voyages of Christopher Columbus for Spain and of Portugal's earlier Prince Henry the Navigator with his many expeditions by sea farther and farther south along the west coast of Africa. And youngsters will remember that Vasco Da Gama in 1498 sailed around Africa to India. And recall that Portuguese Ferdinand Magellan and his crew circled the globe 1519 - 1522. What more should they and we learn and why? *** English author Nigel Cliff (born 1969 in Manchester) lays out his rationale for HOLY WAR both in his book and in his very informative website at http://www.nigelcliff.com/ It looks as if Nigel Cliff's first book, THE SHAKESPEARE RIOTS (in New York!) is going to be made into a film. An author to keep our eyes on! *** Nigel Cliff sees the voyages of Vasco Da Gama as key episodes, even turning points in an ongoing clash of civilizations. The civilizations in question are not India or the Spice Islands or China or Japan or other areas first visited by Da Gama and other Portuguese explorers, conquerors and rulers -- but rather militant, imperialistic, all-conquering Islam and an initially routed then stubbornly defensive Christianity, especially of the Roman Catholic Iberian (Portuguese, Spanish) variety. A Portuguese King sent Da Gama to India for one main reason: to outflank Islamic power, to cut it off from the Eastern spice trade, to drive Islam out of the Red Sea, to capture Egypt and to free the Holy Land. There were other motivations: to establish contact with the fabled Christian King Prester John and to fight beside him against Islam, to find Eastern spices at their Eastern sources and no longer depend on high-priced Muslim middlemen. *** The religious dimension, according to Cliff, is far from being a side show. Fascination with the East as source of salvation and enlightenment is Biblical. To give context to the two voyages of da Gama, the author devotes his first eight chapters to historical background: from the Eastern Roman Empire through the life and crusades of Mohammad and centuries of armed conflict when civilizations clashed in North Africa and in Europe by land and by sea. Freed of Muslim occupiers centuries before Spain, Portugal went on the crusading offensive by capturing Ceuta on the African coast opposite Gibraltar and by rounding the African coast and entering the Indian Ocean. Accommodation with Muslims was never once sought by Portugal. It was war at sea, war by land. Hindu rulers -- originally briefly misidentified as exotic Christians -- were pressured to drive out all Muslim traders from their centuries old warehouses and trading stations. *** As for the Indies with their spices, Da Gama found the real thing that both he and Columbus sought but which Columbus did not find. *** The inside covers of HOLY WAR give maps of early Portuguese voyages (including the accidental discovery of Brazil by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500). The author provides other maps, paintings and contemporary drawings of places and peoples discovered by Portugal. Read HOLY WAR to the end and enjoy its NOTES (pp. 424 - 511), its SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY (512 - 526) and admirable INDEX (527 - 547). Then award yourself a grade of A-Plus in the equivalent of a year-long graduate seminar in Christian-Islamic-Far Eastern warfare, trade and cultural misunderstanding that shaped the modern world and whose effects are still with us in August 2012. -OOO-