Drawing on extensive first-hand accounts, Crowley brings to life the exploits of an extraordinary band of conquerors - men such as Afonso de Albuquerque, the first European since Alexander the Great to found an Asian empire - who set in motion five hundred years of European colonisation and unleashed the forces of globalisation.

An epic tale of navigation, trade, technology, money, religion, diplomacy, espionage and shipwrecks, charting how Portugal set about exploring and conquering the world in the 16th century.