Da Gama had returned to India for a third voyage, appointed Viceroy to reform a colonial administration riddled with corruption. Within months of landing he contracted malaria and died in Kochi at around 55. His body was later exhumed and returned to Portugal, where he was reburied with great ceremony in Vidigueira.
Vasco da Gama's 1498 voyage around the Cape of Good Hope to Calicut had shattered the Muslim and Venetian monopoly on Asian spice trade and rewritten the map of global commerce. Portugal rewarded him lavishly, but he waited over two decades before returning to India a final time, sent by King John III to clean up a viceroyalty that had grown lawless and corrupt under his successors.
He arrived in September 1524 determined to impose discipline, dismissing officials and cracking down on abuses with the same ruthlessness that had made him famous — and feared — decades earlier. The tropical climate proved less forgiving than the officials he purged. Fever struck him within weeks, and he died in the coastal city of Kochi on December 24 by some accounts, though Portuguese sources most often cite December 13 as the date.
His remains stayed in India for fourteen years before being shipped home. The man who had opened the sea route connecting Europe to Asia — a route that funded empires and reshaped global trade for centuries — died far from Portugal, a footnote to the vast changes he had set in motion.