One Portuguese admiral tried to lock the entire Indian Ocean shut
Afonso de Albuquerque aimed to seal every sea route into the Indian Ocean, from the Red Sea and Persian Gulf to the Pacific, turning it into a closed Portuguese lake. Between 1509 and 1515 he seized Goa and Malacca and helped make Portugal arguably the first global empire.
Born around 1453 at Alhandra near Lisbon, the second son of a well-connected noble, he claimed remote descent from King Denis through an illegitimate line. He studied mathematics and Latin at the court of Afonso V and became friends with the future John II. As a young officer he fought at Tangier and Arzila in Morocco, joined the war against Castile, and in 1480 sailed to help Naples repel an Ottoman attack on Otranto. When John became king, Albuquerque served as his chief equerry. His younger brother Martim died beside him at Arzila in 1495.
The new king Manuel I, wary of his predecessor's friend, still sent him east in 1503. With his cousin Francisco he helped secure the ruler of Cochin against the Zamorin of Calicut, winning permission to build Portugal's first fort in India. In 1506 he sailed again, steering his own ship after losing his pilot, carrying a sealed order to take over from the first viceroy, Francisco de Almeida. The fleet took Socotra to choke Red Sea trade, though the base proved badly placed and was abandoned four years later.
His strategy served a threefold royal aim: fight Islam, spread Christianity and control the spice trade. He was the first Renaissance European to raid the Persian Gulf and led the first European fleet into the Red Sea. Contemporaries and later writers called him the Terrible, the Lion of the Seas and the Caesar of the East, and one assessment ranks him probably the greatest naval commander of his age.
In his final years he concentrated on government as the second governor of Portuguese India, and that administration helped the empire endure. His envoys opened contacts with the Ayutthaya kingdom in Siam, with Pegu in Myanmar, and with Timor and the Moluccas, and prepared the way for trade with Ming China. He also furthered ties with Ethiopia and Safavid Persia. He died in December 1515, having been made Duke of Goa.
Source: Afonso de Albuquerque
