Rulers of the Indian Ocean

With the "discovery" of India in May 1498 by Vasco da Gama who doubled the Cape of Good Hope, and which opened the direct sea route between Europe and India a new phase in history began. West came to east, and eventually west conquered east which meant the western rule in the Middle East, India, and the Far East. How was this miracle wrought? This question has been asked by Ballard and answered in this book. Ballard finds the answer in the warning words of Francisco Almeida, the first European Viceroy of the Indies to his sovereign – Monoel I of Portugal. "Let it be known to your majesty", he said, "that if you are strong in ships the commerce of the Indies is yours; and if you are not strong in ships little will avail you any fortress on land". As Manoel I did not pay heed to Almeida’s advice, the Portuguese lost to the British. Ballard’s book, as the title indicates, is about the history of the rulers of the Indian Ocean, for the supremacy in the Indian Ocean enabled the Europeans first to trade with the Middle East, India and far eastern countries; and secondly, to establish colonial governments in all these countries after fighting a series of victorious battles. Of the four European powers – the Portuguese, the Dutch, the French and the English – it is the British who ultimately became the lord of the Indian Ocean and hence practically of all Asian countries. And the British, as we all know, were able to retain that supremacy for about two centuries. Ballard thus unfolds the prodigiously impressive drama of the rival European maritime dominion – and especially of the British in the Indian Ocean, and as India was the most prized possession of the outcome of that drama, more than half of the book describes how the British exterminated, one by one, the Portuguese, the Dutch, and finally the French from the Indian ocean. Ballard says that the dominion became possible because of the British maritime supremacy. Ballard’s book is an important contribution to the maritime history of the Middle East, Far East and India as much as it is a history of "two civilizations taking their stand on different elements in dealing with each other."