Roger Crowley

I mean, I think what enraged the Europeans was that spices are very expensive.

The markup could be 1,000% from source to consumer.

It was largely coming through the Indian Ocean, although there were spice routes that linked up with the Silk Road.

And most of that trade, a lot of that trade was in the hands of Muslims.

The Mamluks in Egypt were getting very wealthy.

A lot of the trade, spice trade, came up the Red Sea and then was portaged over to the Nile and then to Alexandria.

And the prices just went up and up and up.

And so this feeling of being in hock, if you like, to Islam was one that was of particular interest and aggravation, I think, to Europe at this time.

Well, it's very interesting, isn't it?

I mean, the Portuguese, who are going to be, if you like, the pioneers of...

Atlantic expansion was an incredibly poor little country, population of about a million, too poor to mint its own gold coins.

Facing the wrong way, you could say, because whatever economic action there was within the Mediterranean,

And they're slightly barricaded by their neighbor, Castile, on whom they're not on good terms.

Portugal has nothing.

It has no natural resources.

But what it does have is, because they've got this long Atlantic coast, they are the first candidates, if you like, to crack the code of the Atlantic Ocean and to start making voyages down the coast of Africa and to work out how the wind systems work.

to explore the west coast of Africa and to jump off the edge of the known world.

So it's this very small country of no importance at all that is going to be the front runner in an expansion into the wider world.

What precipitated this, I think, was they were also very keen on crusading, as most people were, and they had some knowledge of North Africa.

It was almost down to individuals.