period of European imperialism is the period of Iberian monopoly,
extending to 1588. A Papal award in 1493 confirmed the division of
the non-European world between the two powers, by a judgment which
the orthodox were bound to accept, and did accept for two
generations. All the oceans, except the North Atlantic, were
closed to the navigators of other nations; and these two peoples
were given, for a century, the opportunity of showing in what
guise they would introduce the civilisation of Europe to the rest
of the globe. Pioneers as they were in the work of imperial
development, it is not surprising that they should have made great
blunders; and in the end their foreign dominions weakened rather
than strengthened the home countries, and contributed to drag them
down from the high place which they had taken among the nations.

The Portuguese power in the East was never more than a commercial
dominion. Except in Goa, on the west coast of India, no
considerable number of settlers established themselves at any
point; and the Goanese settlement is the only instance of the
formation of a mixed race, half Indian and half European. Wherever
the Portuguese power was established, it proved itself hard and
intolerant; for the spirit of the Crusader was ill-adapted to the
establishment of good relations with the non-Christian peoples.
The rivalry of Arab traders in the Indian Ocean was mercilessly
destroyed, and there was as little mercy for the Italian
merchants, who found the stream of goods that the Arabs had sent
them by way of the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf almost wholly
intercepted. No doubt any other people, finding itself in the
position which the Portuguese occupied in the early sixteenth
century, would have been tempted to use their power in the same
way to establish a complete monopoly; but the success with which