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Great Nations of Europe coming through . . .

They came in good ships; their guns were the best. First were the Portuguese, then the Dutch. The English followed. The destinations were India, Sumatra, Java, Japan, China and the Spice Islands. It had taken the crews the best part of a year of foul food and slow sailing to get there. Many had died on the way. When they arrived, the different nationalities pushed, squabbled, tricked, fought and cheated each other - not to mention the natives. Illness took men in such numbers that luck had a great say in who was successful. For more than three hundred years, from around 1600 until the European empires finally fizzled out, the Great Nations of Europe gave the world an early taste of the pleasures and perils of globalisation.

LRB 27 June 2002 | PDF Download