After Da Gama rounded the Cape of Good Hope and reached the Indian Ocean prot of Sofala in modern-day Mozambique in January 1498, he connected with a sea route that had already been in use for some 700 years. Stretching some 7000 miles (11000km) this route linked the Islamic world, with its center at Baghdad in modern Iraq, with the southeast Chinese ports of Quanzhou and Guangzhou (Canton). Subsidiary routes connected Baghdad with East Africa and China with the Philippines. The workings of this route deserve our attention because a sophisticated trading system took shape there around 800, centuries before the much-studied voyages of the Age of Exploration. One reason that we don't know about this route is that most records are in Arabic and Chinese, another is that unnamed Asian sailors ventured into new waters without the sponsorship of monarchs- in a way quite different from the European explorers.
Join the East Asia Center as we host Valerie Hansen, Stanley Woodward Professor of History at Yale University, for a speaker series lecture entitled "The Age of Exploration Before Da Gama: When Spices and Ceramics traveled Halfway around the Globe." The talk will be held Friday, October 6, from 3:15 - 4:30 p.m. in Nau 211.
