Conquerors: Brief Book Review
History, from the Beginning (Book #9)
In 2018 I realised my knowledge of history was plain bad. This series charts my re-education, starting from the big bang and working my way to present day one book at a time. (Learn more)
By the ninth book, I had my fill of vast, global histories and wanted to make a step change. I desired to be inside the heads and hearts of some of the real people experiencing history on the ground. Crowley’s Conquerors does just that.
Documenting Portugal’s miraculous rise as a global empire through the discovery of a sea route to India, there is nothing more titillating to the human spirit than a wildly ambitious adventure into unknown seas.
Even though it was Vasco de Gama who first laid Portuguese eyes on Indian shores in 1498, it is in fact Alfonso de Albuquerque, captain the fifth voyage to the east, who is brought to life in these pages. Crowley credits Albequerque with a series of extraordinary events that “shook and shaped” the world. After reading the book, you can understand why.
Alfonso is given a near impossible task: to build a profitable trade network with a foreign people in a hostile environment thousands of miles from home and with no secure territory beyond the worm-eaten decks of his ships.
Albuquerque is a polarising figure. At times you hate him: for his treatment of the local population, his destructive single-minded obsessions, and disregard for human life. At other times Albuquerque demonstrates supreme leadership in the face of overpowering hardship. You cannot help but start rooting for the guy.
In the end, Conquerors portrays this long-forgotten commander as “incorruptible and loyal” to a fault, shouldering the impossible expectations of an empire and miraculously succeeding. Alfonso de Albuquerque vaulted a small, marginalised country onto the global stage, and connected the hemispheres of east and west irrevocably.
