Peace Like A River


It was a wide river, mistakable for a lake or even an ocean unless you'd been wading and knew its current. Somehow I'd crossed it... Now I saw the stream regrouped below, flowing on through what might've been vineyards, pastures, orhards... It flowed between and alongside the rivers of people; from here it was no more than a silver wire winding toward the city. - Leif Enger, Peace Like A River

Friday, July 22, 2005

to Arrakis!

This Spice book is fascinating. Portugal, in the person of Vasco da Gama,
was the first by sea across the Indian Ocean to the rich spice lands.
First Western European anyway. A rich trade had existed there for a long
time. (Spice was one of the main things Columbus was looking for, and the
fact he found little was rather irritating to Spain. Doubly so when
Portugal found the rich spice-filled east. Spain was a bit mollified
though by the incredible gold riches in the new world.)

Portugal proceeded to build an empire there through violence. In an
interesting 1494 treaty though, the Pope, who arbitrated such things then,
decided that Spain would have the lands west of a certain longitude (in
the west Atlantic) and Portugal would have things to the east.

As Turner says, this gave India to Portugal, though no one seemed to
consider that India belonged to the Indians.

However, given the very incomplete understanding of the true size of the
globe, it was not clear where the anti-meridian was. The line on the
other side of the globe that marked the boundary between what was Spain's
and what was Portugal's. Because the chronometer was still in the future,
even the meridian was a bit of a fiction, because no one knew for sure
where it was.

In fact, there was suspicion that, given they thought the Earth was much
smaller than it is, the rich spice islands of SE Asia actually belonged to
Spain.

This is a main reason why Magellan undertook his voyage. To discover the size of the globe so it could be determined what belonged to which country. (Magellan was Portugese, but Portugal didn't want to really support his voyage, apparently worried that the voyage would indeed show the spices belonged to Spain. So, Magellan went to Spain and got Spain to underwrite the voyage. The voyage was a tough one because Magellan thought the globe was smaller than it was, and planned accordingly, and had no idea of the size of the Pacific. He was not the first to think of sailing west to the Indies, Columbus obviously had the same thought. But Magellan did have the advantage of knowing America was in the way. He didn't know the route around America though, and so they spent a lot of time sailing up rivers and inlets, till they got to the tip of South America.)

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