Sublime

the breakup of Christian medieval Europe occurred as a result of an epidemic obsession with the new, the exotic, and the delightful—in short with consciousness-expanding substances.

Gaius Julius Zoilos

For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.

The Portuguese were a network, held together by religion and language, and with better sources of market information in long-distance trades than their purely Asian counterparts.11 Portuguese became the lingua franca of maritime Asia. The very marginality of the Portuguese as an alien maritime subculture helped to make them acceptable to government

Many were looted simply because they were rich.