Kind of a weird hodgepodge. Starts with a lot of poorly organized, ill-edited, sometimes barely grammatical meanderings that are no doubt interesting--the cloak-and-dagger profit-and-crusadism of the stealth Portuguese imperialism of the 15th century--but also perplexing--e.g. the consistent treatment of Prester John as though he was a real dude (!). I construct Axelson as a Boer eccentric, combing through the archives, obsessed with matching up the landforms on his habitual walks with what da Gama and his men saw. History brut, you know?


then comes the diary itself, in its entirety, which means it's of course fascinating--the relaxed European cannonading of all and sundry, whether aggressed against or not, which reminds you that before Europeans were the industrial global warlords etc. etc., they were still vicious little bastards who would rather smack you up a little first thing just to let you know who's boss. Or also the descriptions of the cities of East Africa--Malindi, Mombasa, Sofala, Zanzibar--black princes, Arab traders, tall whitewashed buildings and cobbled streets and seagulls and bustling ports and shirts of white linen. One of our most underappreciated historical lifeworlds. So these things are cool, but there is also more stuff about longitudes and mast repairs and trade winds than even a sailor like myself wants to sit still for really.


And then the third section turns out to be quite good--a discussion of the Portuguese epic, the Lusiads of Camoes, and his amazing story of bumming around the docks in Goa and Mozambique for twenty years trying to get home, and its role, intriguingly, as the codification of the medieval Portuguese attitude to the essentially modern project of mercantile empire--the vision of global trade as a quest, an adventure. National history as a divine trust, a crusade. Gotta read that b.


And some interest in the discussion of the Lusiads as influence in South African poetry--that this is still a land where titans dwell and strangeformed nymphs gambol on rocky outcroppings--at least in imagination, at least till around the turn of the 20th century. How could we ask our Europeans to give up imperialism when it was so allfired fun? And could exploration have taken place without exploitation? ( )