Albuquerque

Of all the remarkable people who first opened up the rest of the world to the Europeans Columbus, Magellan, Vasco da Gama, Pizarro and Cortes Afonso de Albuquerque, governor of Portuguese India from 1509 to 1515, was one of the most astonishing. He was a commander of bold strategic conceptions, a far-sighted administrator and in addition a talented writer, whose dispatches to King Manuel contain a wealth of spontaneous narrative, description and pungent comment. Caesar of the East is a specially