ABSTRACT
During the first third of the fifteenth century, the Chinese sent several huge naval armadas into the Indian Ocean, but they withdrew into isolation after 1433, leaving the region open to the domination of others. At the end of that century, the Portuguese entered the ocean from the opposite direction, determined to control the spice trade. The Portuguese subjugated the coastal cities of East Africa, southwest India, and Indonesia. The Spanish took over the Philippines. Both Iberian powers attempted to extirpate Islam from the Indian Ocean basin, but their efforts backfired, resulting in a wider Islamization than before. The Dutch were more successful commercially than the Iberian powers, and their success resulted in a catastrophic decline in the regional economies.
