Subrahmanyam, author of studies on the political economy of southern India and on Portuguese trade and settlement in the Bay of Bengal, a political and economic history of the Portuguese in Asia, and a host of provocative essays, provides in The Career and Legend of Vasco da Gama a revisionist assessment of Gama based predominantly on published sources. But, other than in the context of the voyage, Gama has been elusive. No less than Columbus, Magellan, or Cook, Gama has been seen as emblematic of imperial aspirations and, as such, an object of reverence or opprobrium. In the pantheon of national heroes, Gama is unique in that, within half a century of his death (1524), this voyage was central to a major epic poem of western literature, Os Lusiadas, where he was mythified and the voyage divinized. Vasco da Gama is best known as commander of the Portuguese fleet that pioneered the exclusively sea route from Portugal to the west coast of India and, by doing so, undermined what has been portrayed as a Venetian monopoly on the supply of spices to Europe.
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