Holy War: How Vasco da Gama's Epic Voyages Turned the Tide in a Centuries-Old Clash of Civilizations by Nigel Cliff

This book looks at the other 15th century ocean navigational achievement.  Columbus went off to the west in search of a pathway to India, and the very dear spices that were being imported from there and discovered unimaginable riches and a whole new continent.  Vasco Da Gama took off in a southerly direction and circumnavigated the Horn of Africa.  Neither of these feats had been accomplished previously.  The Chinese has immense sailing vessels the century before and thoroughly explored the East African coast--but seeing nothing they liked, they went home and stayed there.  They were so much more advanced than the rest of the world that it just didn't make any sense to them to leave the Asian continent.  The Europeans, however, were about to enter their heyday, and Da Gama's voyage was an early part of that ascension.  This book tells that story well.

The book's title implies that Da Gama had some sort of long term effect on the religious wars between Muslims and Christians, and I don't see that case being made.  Islam was being purged from the Iberian Peninsula at a rapid pace before his voyage (the superior seafaring vessels of the Portuguese and the Spanish helped with the recapture of North Africa, and set the stage for the Inquisition--but all of that occurred before Da Gama set sail for India).  The Crusades had been a long ongoing battle to wrest the Holy Land from Muslim control--not much progress was made there.  What Da Gama did accomplish was the expansion of Christian cities on the coast of India--they became favored trading partners and thus benefited financially from their religious preferences.  But tipping the balance in the centuries old battle between Islam and Christianity?  No go.  That one is still going on--and no signs of tolerance in sight--on either side.  And while the Portuguese had a brief time at the top of the trade routes going east, they were out-competed and out-gunned by the Dutch and the English in the next century.  This is a book about how that story started.