May 20, 1498. Ten and a half months out of Lisbon, two vessels commanded by Vasco da Gama, a Portuguese nobleman, anchor off Calicut, a port on India's Malabar Coast. When the seamen go ashore, history records, the first question asked of them is, "What the devil has brought you here?"
The reply: "We have come to seek Christians and spices."
The Portuguese were the first Europeans to follow the Afri- can coast around the Cape of Good Hope and then to cross the Indian Ocean....