Christopher Columbus, like Vasco de Gama, was from Genoa, the prosperous Italian city-state renowned for its trading and seafaring. Both men were in effect maritime mercenaries, engaged in the race to find a new sea passage to the spice islands of the East – all the overland trade routes being blocked by the Mongol hordes. Hoping to obtain funds for his bold expedition across the Atlantic, Columbus approached the kings of Portugal, Spain, France and even despatched his brother Bartholomew to England to ask King Henry VII to invest in the enterprise. Henry, who was much preoccupied with domestic problems following the Wars of the Roses, did not take up the offer, and thus lost a golden opportunity to extend his territories to another continent. He also, indirectly, deprived himself and his subjects of the experience of drinking chocolate, which was not to reach England until the mid-seventeenth century.
