Vasco da Gama Opens the Sea Route to India
A Portuguese fleet reaches Calicut in 1498 and Europe finds a way around the middlemen
Quick facts
- Reached Calicut
- 1498
- Commander
- Vasco da Gama
- Portuguese take Goa
- 1510
- Goa held for
- Nearly four and a half centuries
What happened
In 1497 Vasco da Gama commanded a Portuguese expedition that, in the words of Royal Museums Greenwich, rounded the Cape of Good Hope for the first time and reached Calicut in India, arriving on India's southwest coast in 1498. The Library of Congress country study puts it plainly: the quest for wealth and power brought Europeans to Indian shores in 1498 when Vasco da Gama arrived in Calicut. His voyage launched the all-water route from Europe to Asia, breaking the Muslim, Venetian, and Genoese hold on the spice trade. In 1510 the Portuguese took the enclave of Goa, which became the center of their commercial and political power in India and which they held for nearly four and a half centuries.
Why it matters
Da Gama's route pulled India directly into a European-dominated maritime world and started four centuries of European trading empires on Indian soil, beginning with the Portuguese and ending with the British. Goa became the first durable European colony in the subcontinent.
How we know
The voyage is documented by a surviving shipboard journal and by the collections of Royal Museums Greenwich, and the Portuguese seizure of Goa is recorded in the Library of Congress India country study.
Sources
- Royal Museums Greenwich. Vasco da Gama, c.1460-1524 · Primary source (author-declared)rmg.co.uk · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
- Library of Congress, Federal Research Division. India: A Country Study (The Coming of the Europeans) · Primary source (author-declared)countrystudies.us · Cited as a "primary" source (no stronger domain match). · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
See something wrong? . Corrections with a source get fixed fastest.
Part of a timelineHistory of India28 events · Cities with covered drains 4,500 years ago, an emperor who renounced war after winning it, six centuries of Muslim and Mughal rule, a colony wrenched free by a man with a spinning wheel, and a partition that killed a million people the week it was bornView all →