Conquerors: How Portugal Forged The First Global EmpireAs remarkable as Columbus and the conquistador expeditions, the history of Portuguese exploration is now almost forgotten. But Portugal's navigators cracked the code of the Atlantic winds, launched the expedition of Vasco da Gama to India and beat the Spanish to the spice kingdoms of the East then set about creating the first long range maritime empire. In an astonishing blitz of thirty years, a handful of visionary and utterly ruthless empire