famous
heroes, and it is impossible to understand the greatness of his
conceptions and of his deeds without having some idea of the general
history of the Portuguese in India.

The importance to Europe of the successful establishment of the
Portuguese in the East was manifested in two widely different
directions. On the one hand, it checked the rapid advance of {16}
Muhammadanism as represented by the Turks. In the sixteenth century
the advance of the Turks was still a terror to Europe; Popes still
found it necessary to preach the necessity of a new Crusade; the
kings of Christendom occasionally forgot their own feuds to unite
against the common enemy of the Christian religion; and the Turks
were then a progressive and a conquering and not, as they are now, a
decaying power. It was at this epoch of advancing Muhammadanism that
the Portuguese struck a great blow at Moslem influence in Asia which
tended to check its progress in Europe.

Of equal importance to this great service to the cause of humanity
was the fact that the Portuguese by establishing themselves in Asia
introduced Western ideas into the Eastern world, and paved the way
for that close connection which now subsists between the nations of
the East and of the West. That connection was in its origin
commercial, but other results have followed, and the influence of
Asia upon Europe and of Europe upon Asia has extended indefinitely
into all departments of human knowledge and of human endeavour.

A wide contrast must be drawn between the Portuguese connection with
Asia and between the English and Spanish connection with America. In
the latter case the exploring and conquering Europeans had to deal
with savage tribes, and in many instances with an uncultivated
country; in the former the Portuguese found themselves confronted
with a {17} civilisation older than that of Europe, with men more
highly educated and more deeply learned than their own priests and
men of letters, and with religions and customs and institutions whose
wisdom equalled their antiquity.

The India which was reached by Vasco da Gama, and with which the
Portuguese monopolised the direct communication for more than a
century, was very different to the India with which the Dutch and
English merchants sought concessions to trade. The power of the
Muhammadans in India was not yet concentrated in the hands of the
great Mughals; there were Moslem kingdoms in the North of India and
in the Deccan,