Portugal’s empire-building directly displaced the Arab traders who had long controlled Indian Ocean commerce.

Evidence

In 1487–1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and Pedro da Covilhão, taking the caravan route overland, reached the Sudan from where he sailed to India (1488). Later, Vasco da Gama sailed around Africa and then, with the aid of a Muslim pilot, across the Indian Ocean to the city of Calicut (1497–1498). Within ten years, Portugal had established the foundations of a naval and commercial empire. Displacing the Arab traders who had long plied the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, they established a chain of ports to Goa, the East Indies, the Moluccas, and Timor. In 1514, a Portuguese mission reached Canton in China, and in 1542 the first contact was made with Japan. — Stuart Hall, Essential Essays, Volume 2, 545

Categorization

• XREF: This displacement of an existing Arab trade network is the concrete historical antecedent of the ‘Orient’ as constructed by European maritime power — foundational context for how colonial-era trade routes and their takeover presuppose the relations Orientalism describes.