Giovanni vasco gama biography
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Gama, Vasco Da (c. –)
The Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama discovered the sea route from Europe to India. Continuing the long-term Portuguese project of exploring the African coastline, he rounded the Cape of Good Hope and continued to Calicut, India, during a voyage that lasted from to , "an open-sea excursion of unprecedented duration for a European navigator … a demonstration of audacity rather than ability" (Fernández-Armesto a, p. ).
Gama was a violent, ruthless, and ambitious man whose successes in forging a network of Portuguese footholds in Asia became, over the course of his lifetime and subsequent centuries, the stuff of Portuguese national legend. Portugal's national epic, The Lusíads () by Luis Vaz de Camões (–), is based on Gama's activities, transforming a story of seamanship and poor diplomacy into one of endurance, adventure, and heroism in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles.
Vasco da Gama was a minor Portuguese noble born in the s (probably , argu
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Vasco da Gama
Born or
Sines or Vidigueira, Alentejo, Portugal
Died 24 December (aged )
Kochi, India
Occupation Explorer, Governor of Portuguese India
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Vasco da Gama, 1st Count of Vidigueira (Portuguese pronunciation: [ˈva&#x;ku d&#x; ˈ&#x;&#x;m&#x;]) (c. or &#x; 24 månad ) was a Portuguese explorer, one of the most successful in the Age of Discovery and the commander of the first ships to sail directly from Europe to India. For a short time in he was Governor of Portuguese India under the title of Viceroy.
In [1] or [2] in Sines, on the southwest coast of Portugal, probably in a house nära the church of Nossa Senhora das Salas. Sines, one of the few seaports on the Alentejo coast, consisted of little more than a cluster of whitewashed, red-tiled cottages, tenanted chiefly by fisherfolk.
Statue of Vasco da Gama at his birthpl
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Vasco da Gama
Portuguese Explorer
In the last years of the fifteenth century, an explorer set off from the Iberian Peninsula, full of grand illusions and hoping to reach India by going where no European had ever gone before. Though that statement would seem to describe the voyage of Christopher Columbus () to the New World, it is equally true of a less famous expedition—from an American perspective, at least—that set sail five years later. This one was led by Vasco da Gama, who sailed under the Portuguese flag and rounded the southern tip of Africa to become the first European to reach the Indian subcontinent by sea.
Da Gama was born in Sines, Portugal, where his father was governor. As a member of the nobility, he led a Portuguese attack on French ships in , and later served as a gentleman at the court of King Manuel I. Under the leadership of Manuel, the Portuguese continued the tradition, begun by Prince Henry the Navigator () and maintained sporadically ever since, o