European colonisation of Southeast Asia tightening Turkish control and eventual shut down of the Eastern Mediterranean gateways into Asia first prompted Portuguese, and later Spanish and Dutch sea voyagers to ship around Africa in search of new trading routes and business opportunities. Niccolò de' Conti arrived in Southeast Asia as the earliest documented European in the early 15th century. By 1498 Vasco da Gama, who had sailed round the Cape of Good Hope, established the first direct sea route from Europe to India. Central among the various plannings was to establish direct and permanent trade of the highly priced spices, that were native to Southeast
Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America had previously collaborated on two other volumes in the Helm series, on terns and skuas. The following is a list of errors in the corrected reprint: Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America Gulls of Europe, Asia and North America by Klaus Malling Olsen and Hans Larsson is a volume in the "Helm Identification Guides" series of bird identification books. The book is intended to succeed Peter J. Grant's "" as the standard identification work on Northern Hemisphere gulls. Although the Helm series already contained a volume on seabirds, by Peter Harrison, gulls compete for space in that volume with