Lords of the Navigation: How the Portuguese launched the age of discovery and the first global empire

As remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions but far more wide-ranging, the extraordinary hundred-year burst of Portuguese voyaging and discovery is one of the tipping points of history: the moment that the world went global. Within this time span, a tiny country, whose population did not exceed a million, created a maritime empire that stretched from Brazil to Nagasaki.  Lords of the Navigation tells this story.

Take-off was achieved in the 1490s when Portuguese navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds and launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India in 1497. The voyage involved the longest open-sea crossing in European history. Its success shook the established mercantile order in the Mediterranean.

In the wake of Da Gama, Portuguese navigators vaulted the globe. They touched Brazil in 1500, formerly founded an Indian empire in 1504 and ringed the Indian Ocean in forts and bases. Portugal was the imperial pathfinder, the template for a wave of successors. Its empire connected the world and created a framework for profound interactions. It left a huge and long-lasting influence on the culture, food, flora, art, history and language of the globe. It marked the start of 500 years of domination by the West which is only reversing now.

Lords of the Navigation brings this remarkable but little-known history to a wide readership. It is a rich narrative of navigation, trade and technology, money and religious zealotry, political diplomacy and espionage, sea battles and shipwrecks, endurance, courage and brutality – drawn from a wealth of first hand accounts.

Book Author

Roger Crowley was born in 1951 and educated at Cambridge University. As the child of a naval family, early experiences of life in Malta gave him a deep interest in the history and culture of the Mediterranean world. After finishing school he spent his summers pottering in Greece; after university the Mediterranean bug took a more serious turn with a year spent on and off teaching English in Istanbul, exploring the city and walking across Anatolia with friends and donkeys. In recent years he has made return trips to the Greek-speaking world, including two visits to Mount Athos, spiritual hom...
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