What the route replaced, and what it did not
Before the late fifteenth century, spices, silk and other Asian goods reached Europe through a chain of intermediaries. Some travelled by sea to the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf and onward by caravan and river, with Mediterranean merchants, notably those of Venice, handling the final stage. Others moved through Central Asian land routes. Many different traders took a share of the profit along the way, and the same pattern of ancient maritime commerce had existed in various forms for thousands of years.
The common story is that the passage round Africa simply “replaced” the overland trade. The reality was more gradual. The Portuguese did upset the existing system in the early sixteenth century, and for a time the flow through the Red Sea appeared to shrink, but it later revived, and Mediterranean trade in Asian goods continued throughout the century. What the Cape route did was add a competing path, controlled by Atlantic powers, which eventually became dominant, especially once the Dutch and English companies were organised.
The Portuguese breakthrough
Portuguese expeditions, sponsored by the crown, crept down the African coast through the fifteenth century. Bartolomeu Dias rounded the southern tip of Africa in 1488 and turned back after reaching the Indian Ocean side. A decade later Vasco da Gama left Lisbon in July 1497 with four ships, rounded the Cape, called at points on the East African coast and crossed to Calicut on the Indian coast in 1498. This reached the heart of the pepper trade by sea.
The ships used in these early voyages included caravels, which were nimble and good at exploring, and larger carracks and naus that could carry bulk cargo. These types are described in more detail under caravel and carrack. The Portuguese soon organised the Carreira da Índia, a regular sequence of annual sailings from Lisbon to Goa and back, managed by the crown.
Winds and the shape of the voyage
The route looks like a straight run south on a map, but the winds make it a great curve. Sailing ships heading south in the Atlantic must avoid the calms near the equator and the opposing trade winds along the African coast, so they typically swung far out into the ocean, sometimes close to the coast of Brazil, before turning east to meet the westerlies south of Africa. The Portuguese called this loop the volta do mar, and it was a key piece of accumulated knowledge.
Timing mattered as well. Departures from Lisbon were usually in the spring, so that ships could pass the Cape in good conditions and then cross the Indian Ocean with the monsoon trade winds to arrive in India at the right season. A late start could cost an entire year. Return voyages left India in the early part of the year, often with a heavy cargo of pepper and other goods.
Ships followed courses based on dead reckoning, compasses, and measurements of the sun’s height or the pole star, supported by the evolving navigation instruments of the age, including the mariner astrolabe and the magnetic compass.
Hardship on the passage
A voyage out and back could take more than a year. Crowded decks, rotten water and a limited diet made disease common, and scurvy at sea was one of the worst threats on long legs without fresh food. The stock of shipboard provisions, mostly biscuit, salted meat and fish, and wine or water in casks, deteriorated over time. Shipwrecks were frequent, particularly near the southern African coast and on the return passage, when overloaded carracks faced storms. Portuguese literature on these disasters, sometimes called the História Trágico-Marítima, preserved a number of survivor accounts.
The Dutch and English routes
The Dutch and English followed from the late sixteenth century, and the chartered companies of the early seventeenth century turned the passage into a standard commercial path. The Dutch East India Company founded a base at the Cape in 1652 as a supply station where ships could obtain fresh produce, which developed into Cape Town. A significant refinement came when Dutch navigators began, around 1611, to use the strong westerlies south of the Cape to run far to the east before turning north toward the Sunda Strait, a track credited to Hendrik Brouwer. It shortened the passage to Java and became standard for the company’s ships. The vessels that did this work are discussed under East Indiaman.
British, French and Danish companies used similar routes. The prevailing pattern of strong competition, the exchange of intelligence and the frequent need to fight over ports meant that this was never just a peaceful commercial route.
Effects on the old trade centres
The shift mattered unevenly. Venice, which had flourished as a distributor of spices, faced new competition, though it did not collapse overnight, and its great shipyard, the Venetian Arsenal, continued to operate. On the Asian side, Portuguese attempts to control ports such as Malacca spice port and Hormuz disrupted existing Muslim and Asian networks, though local merchants adapted and many continued to trade. In Europe, ports on the Atlantic seaboard, such as Lisbon, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London, rose in importance.
A route that lasted for centuries
The Cape route stayed central until the nineteenth century. The opening of Suez Canal shipping in 1869, together with the steamers that could use the canal profitably, shifted much of the Europe to Asia traffic through the Mediterranean and Red Sea again, bringing the story close to a full circle. Even so, the Cape remained important for sailing ships and for larger vessels that later could not use the canal, and the passage still carries large volumes of cargo today.