Francisco de Almeida - Mission To The East

Mission To The East

In 1505 King Manuel I of Portugal appointed Almeida, then in his mid 50s, as the first viceroy of Portuguese India (Estado da Índia). With an armada of 22 ships, including 14 carracks and 6 caravels, Almeida departed from Lisbon on March 25, 1505. The armada carried a crew of 1,000 and 1,500 soldiers. The flagship was the carrack São Rafael captained by Fernão Soares. The mission's primary aims were to bring the spice trade under Portuguese control, to construct forts along the east African and Indian coasts, to further Portuguese spice trade through alliances with local chieftains, besides constructing trading posts.

Read more about this topic:  Francisco De Almeida

Famous quotes containing the words mission to, mission and/or east:

    We can come up with a working definition of life, which is what we did for the Viking mission to Mars. We said we could think in terms of a large molecule made up of carbon compounds that can replicate, or make copies of itself, and metabolize food and energy. So that’s the thought: macrocolecule, metabolism, replication.
    Cyril Ponnamperuma (b. 1923)

    ... [a] girl one day flared out and told the principal “the only mission opening before a girl in his school was to marry one of those candidates [for the ministry].” He said he didn’t know but it was. And when at last that same girl announced her desire and intention to go to college it was received with about the same incredulity and dismay as if a brass button on one of those candidate’s coats had propounded a new method for squaring the circle or trisecting the arc.
    Anna Julia Cooper (1859–1964)

    My impression about the Panama Canal is that the great revolution it is going to introduce in the trade of the world is in the trade between the east and the west coast of the United States.
    William Howard Taft (1857–1930)