Commerce in this case, as in every other, while it is acted upon by an extension of geographical knowledge, in its turn has an obvious tendency to extend that knowledge; this was the case with respect to India.  The ancients had indeed made but small advances in their acquaintance with this country, notwithstanding they were stimulated by the large profits they derived from their eastern commerce; but this was owing to their comparative ignorance of navigation and the sciences on which it depends.  As soon as the moderns had improved this art, especially by the use of the compass, and the Cape of Good Hope was discovered, commerce gave the stimulus, which in a very few years led the Portuguese from Calicut to the furthest extremity of Asia.

It is remarkable that the Portuguese were allowed to monopolize Indian commerce for so long a time as they did; this, however, as Dr. Robertson observes, may be accounted for, “from the political circumstances in the state of all those nations in Europe, whose intrusion as rivals the Portuguese had any reason to dread.  From the accession of Charles V. to the throne, Spain was either so much occupied in a multiplicity of operations in which it was engaged by the ambition of that monarch, and of his son Philip II., or so intent on prosecuting its own discoveries and conquests in the New World, that although by the successful enterprize of Magellan, its fleets were unexpectedly conducted by a new course to that remote region of Asia, which was the seat of the most gainful and alluring branch of trade carried on by the Portuguese, it could make no considerable effect to avail itself of the commercial advantages which it might have derived from that event.  By the acquisition of the crown of Portugal, in the year 1580, the kings of Spain, instead of the rivals, became the protectors of the Portuguese trade, and the guardians of all its exclusive rights.  Throughout the sixteenth century, the strength and resources of France were so much wasted by the fruitless expeditions of their monarchs to Italy; by their unequal contest with the power and policy of Charles V., and by the calamities of the civil wars which desolated the kingdom upwards of forty years, that it could neither bestow much attention on commerce, nor engage in any scheme of distant enterprize.  The Venetians, how sensibly soever they might feel the mortifying reverse of being excluded almost entirely from the Indian trade, of which their capital had been formerly the chief seat, were so debilitated and humbled by the league of Cambray, that they were no longer capable of engaging in any undertaking of magnitude.  England, weakened by the long contests between the houses of York and Lancaster, and just beginning to recover its proper vigour, was restrained from active exertions during one part of the sixteenth century, by the cautious maxims of Henry VII., and wasted its strength, during another part of it, by engaging inconsiderately in the wars between the princes on the continent.  The nation, though destined to acquire territories in India more extensive and valuable than were ever possessed by any European power, had no such presentiment of its future eminence there, as to take an early part in the commerce or transactions of that country, and a great part of the century elapsed before it began to turn its attention to the East.