#almeida

Opening night of the Line of Beauty at the Almeida Theatre

And some memorable scenes

The Portuguese Conquest of India

Throughout the 15th century, the Portuguese Crown yearned for a piece of the Far Eastern spice trade. For centuries this trade had been dominated by the Venetians who obtained pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon from their Middle Eastern trading partners, the Mamluks and Ottomans.

In 1497, King Manuel I of Portugal (r. 1495-1521) selected the nobleman Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) to find the way to the spices. Da Gama was to follow the route to the Indian Ocean pioneered by Bartolomeu Dias (c. 1450-1500), who had learned to use the strong east winds of the mid-Atlantic to hurl him and his crew around the Cape of Good Hope.

Da Gama's Voyage

Da Gama set off on 8 July 1497 with a squadron of four well-armed ships, three years of supplies and a store of cheap goods to trade with what was assumed would be unsophisticated natives. Unfortunately, instead of boomeranging directly around the Cape, da Gama got caught in the doldrums of the central Atlantic and did not make it around the Cape. After sailing for 95 days, he landed 125 miles north of it at St Helena Bay.

By the time they reached land, most of da Gama's crew were in desperate shape with scurvy – their hands and feet grotesquely swollen, and their bloody gums distended over their teeth. Scurvy was to become the scourge of all the future European voyages to India and led to countless deaths. No one escaped the symptoms after a couple of months at sea without fresh fruit and vitamin C. Fortunately, the healthiest of da Gama's crew were still able to mend sails, collect water, and hunt for fresh meat allowing them to continue their journey. During one of the missions to collect water, the crew had a nasty encounter with the local Khoikhoi, and da Gama received a minor spear wound. The Portuguese resolved to never again approach land without being heavily armed and ready to "fight at the slightest provocation" (Crowley, 2015).

Da Gama then headed down the rest of the west coast, travelled through the stormy seas around the Cape and passed the Great Fish River (Eastern Cape, South Africa) where Dias had previously anchored, before sailing into waters previously unknown to Europeans. With Christmas on the way, da Gama gave the coast they were passing the name Natal.

Vasco da Gama's first landing on the eastern coast of Africa was on Mozambique, in early March of 1498. At first, he had pleasant interactions with the local natives who were interested in trading for his cheap trinkets, but this atmosphere changed dramatically when he arrived at his first settlement of Muslim traders in Mozambique City. The local sultan was insulted by the poor quality of the brass pots, trinkets, and clothing that he was offered, and after a series of altercations, da Gama fled the city and continued north.

As da Gama moved up the coast, he was astonished to find a series of rich, sophisticated city-states. What he had stumbled upon was the south-western periphery of the prosperous trade network that stretched all the way from Africa to India, down to Malaysia, and through the islands of Indonesia to China. He was moving into a largely Muslim world that was much more deeply layered and complex than the Portuguese had anticipated in their wildest dreams.

Da Gama also made the startling discovery that Muslim trading vessels were unarmed, a situation totally alien to Mediterranean traders. Genoa and Venice had long been waging commercial wars at sea along with the Catalans, Spaniards, and Franks. Da Gama realized it would be easy to prey on any Muslim trading vessels he came upon, taking gold, silver, foodstuffs, and hostages from the unarmed ships.

Toheeb Jimoh as Romeo and Isis Hainsworth as Juliet in the Almeida Theater’s new production of Shakespeare’s tragedy. Credit: Marc Brenner

...this production from Rebecca Frecknall — the buzzy British director whose shows tend to scoop up Olivier awards — treats the often overly familiar play as if it were entirely fresh, and the result is astonishing.

...Her “Romeo and Juliet,” performed without an intermission, begins with the cast clawing feverishly at a stage wall, onto which are projected crucial lines from the prologue. But as if in haste to get straight to the meat of the play, the wall soon collapses to reveal the citizenry of Verona mid-combat. Danger, you feel from the start, is the default mode of a contemporary-seeming milieu amid which Juliet is described by her father as “a stranger in the world.” That is perhaps because she hasn’t yet experienced life’s abrasions; such an awareness will come — and how — with time.