Portuguese maritime exploration

Methodical expeditions started in 1419 along West Africa's coast under the sponsorship of prince Henry the Navigator, with Bartolomeu Dias reaching the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean in 1488.

Ten years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama led the first fleet around Africa to the Indian subcontinent, arriving in Calicut and starting a maritime route from Portugal to India.

[4] Forced to reduce their activities in the Black Sea, the Republic of Genoa had turned to North Africa for trade in wheat and olive oil and a search for gold – navigating also into the ports of Bruges (Flanders) and England.

[5] Between 1325 and 1357 Afonso IV of Portugal granted public funding to raise a proper commercial fleet and ordered the first maritime explorations, with the help of Genoese, under command of admiral Manuel Pessanha.

[6] The first victims of slave raids by Portuguese and Spanish were the Guanches of the Canary Islands, a people of Berber origin, who put up fierce resistance but were reduced to near extinction by pillaging and enslavement.

Appointed governor of the Order of Christ in 1420, while personally holding profitable monopolies on resources in Algarve, he took the lead role in encouraging Portuguese maritime exploration until his death in 1460.

In 1418, two of Henry's captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira were driven by a storm to Porto Santo an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa which may have been known to Europeans since the 14th century.

Henry wished to know how far the Muslim territories in Africa extended, and whether it was possible to reach the source of the lucrative tran-Saharan caravan gold trade and perhaps to join forces with the long-lost Christian kingdom of Prester John that was rumoured to exist somewhere to the east.

Henry suffered a serious setback in 1437 after the failure of an expedition to capture Tangier, having encouraged his brother, King Edward, to mount an overland attack from Ceuta.

It was created to attract Muslim traders and monopolize the business in the routes traveled in North Africa, starting the chain of Portuguese feitorias along the coast.

As a result of the first meager returns of the African explorations, in 1469 king Afonso V granted the monopoly of trade in part of the Gulf of Guinea to merchant Fernão Gomes, for an annual payment of 200,000 reals.

Under his sponsorship, Portuguese explorers crossed the equator into the Southern Hemisphere and found the islands in the Gulf of Guinea, including São Tomé and Príncipe.

[21] In 1481, the recently crowned João II decided to build São Jorge da Mina fort (Elmina Castle) and factory to protect this trade, which was then held again as a royal monopoly.

In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope near the southern tip of Africa, disproving the view that had existed since Ptolemy that the Indian Ocean was separate from the Atlantic.

These were eventually settled by the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494 which divided the world outside of Europe in an exclusive duopoly between the Portuguese and the Spanish, along a north–south meridian 370 leagues, or 970 miles (1,560 km), west of the Cape Verde islands.

[26][27] Whether or not this was the case, the long-standing Portuguese goal of finding a sea route to Asia was finally achieved in a ground-breaking voyage commanded by Vasco da Gama.

It rounded the Cape and continued along the coast of Southeast Africa, where a local pilot was brought on board who guided them across the Indian Ocean, reaching Calicut in western India in May 1498.

Vasco da Gama's voyage to Calicut was the starting point for deployment of Portuguese feitoria posts along the east coast of Africa and in the Indian Ocean.

While following the same south-westerly route across the Atlantic Ocean as da Gama (to take advantage of the most favorable winds), Cabral made landfall on the Brazilian coast.

The land was found to be abundant in pau-brasil, or brazilwood, from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver meant that for the time being Portuguese efforts were concentrated on India.

In East Africa, small Islamic states along the coast of Mozambique, Kilwa, Brava, Sofala and Mombasa were destroyed, or became either subjects or allies of Portugal.

In 1500, the second fleet to India (which also made landfall in Brazil) explored the East African coast in Southeast Africa, where Diogo Dias discovered the island that he named St. Lawrence, later known as Madagascar.

Coveted for being the best port in the region, mainly for the commerce in Arabian horses for the Deccan sultanates, it allowed the Portuguese to move on from their initial guest stay in Cochin.

[36][37] In April 1511 Albuquerque sailed to Malacca in modern-day Malaysia,[38] the most important eastern point in the trade network, where Malay met Gujarati, Chinese, Japanese, Javanese, Bengali, Persian and Arabic traders, described by Tomé Pires as invaluable.

The island of Mozambique became a strategic port on the regular maritime route linking Lisbon to Goa, and Fort São Sebastião and a hospital were built there.

In 1530, John III organized the colonization of Brazil around 15 capitanias hereditárias ("hereditary captainships"), that were given to anyone who wanted to administer and explore them, to overcome the need to defend the territory, since an expedition under the command of Gonçalo Coelho in 1503 had found the French making incursions on the land.

With permanent settlement came the establishment of the sugar cane industry and its intensive labor demands which were met with Native American and later African slaves.

In 1542 Jesuit missionary Francis Xavier arrived in Goa at the service of King John III of Portugal, in charge of an Apostolic Nunciature.

According to Fernão Mendes Pinto, who claimed to be in this journey, they arrived at Tanegashima, where the locals were impressed by European firearms, which would be immediately made by the Japanese on a large scale.

[42] In 1557 the Chinese authorities allowed the Portuguese to settle in Macau through an annual payment, creating a warehouse in the triangular trade between China, Japan and Europe.