The Portuguese Empire’s commercial winds dictated the geography of its slave and spice ports

Evidence

The Portuguese Empire did come into being, however, and from the middle of the fifteenth century and for the next one hundred years—to the good fortunes of both its national and expatriate sponsors—its mixture of greed, piety, savagery, militarism, cultural arrogance, and statescraft swept across the world. Not surprisingly, given the long-standing preoccupations of medieval long-distance merchants, the winds of commercial interests blew the empire first to the south and east: Senegambia, Elmina, and Luanda along the west coast of Africa; Safala, Mozambique and Mombasa on the African east coast; Hormuz in the Persian Gulf; Goa on the Malabar coast of India; Malacca in Malay; and Ternate in the Moluccas. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 539