Roger Crowley

makes it to the Spice Islands.

And at this point, we're starting to see a conflict between the Portuguese and the Spanish in these tiny little islands fighting each other, probably across about 500 yards straight on the other side of the world.

And this is going to be a running fight that's going to go on for several decades.

It's a very, very weird little battle between two micro-armies to try and control the spice trade of these most valuable commodities.

Absolutely.

And suddenly the world has been proved to be circular in all kinds of ways.

And it redefined people's ideas of the planet immediately, absolutely immediately.

We've encircled the globe.

Elcano gets a very fine coat of arms with the globe on it and above it.

The globe is saying, you have circumnavigated me.

We now own you, I think.

The globe is very small on the coat of arms.

This is a sign of European conquests of the world.

Warfare goes on for quite a long period.

The Portuguese can sail quite easily to the Spice Islands.

For the Spanish, it's much, much more tricky because they have to sail across the Pacific Ocean.

The route around South America is very tough.

And after a while, they start shipbuilding on the west coast of Mexico under Cortes and sending expeditions over to the Spice Islands.

The problem for the Spanish is

is that they can sail over there very easily, but they find it impossible to sail back.