PIONEER WORK OF PORTUGAL (1400-1527)
The great period of explorations, of which the discovery of America was
a part, lay between the years 1485 and 1520, between the discovery of
the Cape of Good Hope by Diaz and the circumnavigation of the globe by
the ships of Magellan. Long before this period of fruition, however,
there was a significant movement of discovery, and an important
acquisition of knowledge, experience, and boldness in exploration. This
early dawn, preparatory to the later day, consisted in a series of
discoveries on the west coast of Africa, due to the energy of the
Portuguese and to the enlightenment of their great Prince Henry.
Portugal was especially fitted to be the pioneer in modern maritime
exploration. Without geographical or racial separation from the rest of
the Iberian peninsula, the national distinctness of Portugal was
largely a matter of sentiment gathering around the sovereign. The
nationality of Portugal had been created in the first place by the
policy of its rulers, and preserved by them until the growth of
separate material interests, a national language and literature, and
traditions of glorious achievements confirmed the separateness of the
Portuguese nationality from that of Spain.
The desire to hold aloof from other Spanish countries turned the
attention of the king of Portugal to more distant alliances, and the
open western seaboard naturally suggested that these should be with
maritime states. In 1294 a treaty of commerce was signed with England.
A century later, 1386, a much closer alliance with that country was
formed and a new treaty signed at Windsor. [Footnote: Rymer, Foedera,
II., 667, VII., 515-523.] This was followed in the next year by a
marriage between the king of Portugal and Philippa, daughter of the
English John of Gaunt and first cousin of King Richard. This "Treaty of
Windsor" was renewed again and again by succeeding English and
Portuguese sovereigns and remained the foundation of their relationship
until it was superseded long afterwards by still closer treaty
arrangements. With Flanders, Portugal had frequent peaceful
intercourse, both in trade and in diplomacy. A Venetian fleet also
called from time to time at the harbor of Lisbon on the way to and from
England and Flanders, and thus brought Portugal into contact with the
great Italian republic, and may have aroused an interest in far Eastern
trade products of which loaded the galleys.
The contract before referred to by which Emanuel Pesagno was made
hereditary lord high admiral, in 1317, continued to be fulfilled by the
descendants of the first great admiral through the whole fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries, and kept up a constant connection with Genoa.
[Footnote: M. G. Canale, Storia del Commercio, Viaggi, &c., degl'
Italiani, book II., chap. x., etc., quoted by Payne, New World, 96.]
Thus the associations of Portugal were with a line of seaboard states
extending from England to Italy. After 1263 the maritime interests of
the Portuguese kings became more distinct by their conquest from the
Moors of the kingdom of Algarves, giving them a southern as well as a
western sea-coast. [Footnote: Stephens, Hist. of Portugal, 81.] It was
at Sagres, on Cape St. Vincent, which juts out into the open Atlantic
Ocean on the extreme southwest of this province, that Henry, the fifth
son of John II. of Portugal, established his dwelling-place in 1419,
and created a centre of maritime interest and a base of exploring
effort which was of world-wide influence. Henry was duke of Viseu, lord
of Cavailham, viceroy of Algarves, and grand master of the Order of
Christ. He had no wife or children; his private estate was, therefore,
available for the expenses of exploring voyages; and projects of
geographical discovery became his chief occupation. Whatever other
duties or services were required of him on account of his membership in
the royal family, he always returned to Sagres and to his exploring
expeditions. He possessed also the interest and support of his father
and brother, who successively occupied the throne. After his death his
work was carried on by his nephew, King Alfonso V. The work of Henry
was, therefore, substantially the concern of the whole royal family of
Portugal for three generations. [Footnote: Major, Prince Henry the
Navigator, chaps. iv., vi., xiii., xviii.]
Prince Henry "the Navigator," as he has come to be called, gathered
around him a body of men trained as sailors; he learned the use of
charts and instruments, taught these arts to his captains, and
ultimately made the neighboring port of Lagos the most famous point in
the world for the departure and return of exploring expeditions.
[Footnote: Nordenskiold, Periplus, 121 A. For discussion of divergent
views of Prince Henry's "school of navigation," see Beazley.] During
forty years expedition after expedition was equipped almost yearly and
sent down along the west coast of Africa, in the effort to solve its
mystery and, if possible, to sail around its southern extremity.
In the process of exploration Prince Henry was governed by some of the
strongest of human impulses. The crusading spirit was hot within him,
and he hoped to continue in Africa the old struggle of the Portuguese
Christians against the Moorish infidels. Gentler missionary ideals
caused him to plan to spread Christianity into new lands, and to make
connection with Prester John, the Christian ruler of the India which
lay to the eastward of Africa. [Footnote: Hakluyt Soc., Publications,
1899, cvi.-cxii. Murara, Discovery of Guinea, chaps, vii., xvi.] His
interest in trade was equally strong; he was familiar with the internal
trade of Africa, and he lost no opportunity of developing traffic along
the sea-coast. [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. vii]
Yet it was the instinct of the explorer that inspired Prince Henry with
the steady devotion to his life work. The fine curiosity which placed
geographical discovery above all material gain, and rewarded his
captains, not in proportion to what they had accomplished, but in
proportion to the efforts they had made to carry the boundaries of
knowledge farther, kept him and them intent on the work of exploration.
[Footnote: Bourne, "Prince Henry the Navigator," in Essays in
Historical Criticism, 173-189.] Henry possessed, at the beginning of
his explorations, little more than the traditional geographical
conceptions of the later Middle Ages. Besides some twelve or fourteen
extant fourteenth-century maps drawn by Italian draughtsmen, which were
probably all known to Henry, his brother Pedro gave him one which has
since disappeared, which had been constructed at Venice, and which "had
all the parts of the world and earth described." [Footnote: Major,
Prince Henry, 62.] He was probably also familiar with the classical
tales of the circumnavigation of Africa.
Besides this he had some important personal knowledge. During a
Portuguese invasion of the Barbary states of Africa in 1415, in which
Prince Henry served with his father and brothers, and later when he was
himself in command, he found that there were caravan routes whose
termini were at Ceuta and other Mediterranean towns. From the Sahara
and the Soudan, across the desert, came caravans to the Mediterranean
coast bringing gold, wine, and slaves, and news of trading routes far
to the southward.
Moreover, these routes extended to rivers and seacoasts unknown to
Europeans, which must, nevertheless, be connected with the open
Atlantic Ocean, and might well be on the southern shore of that
continent. "He got news of the passage of merchants from the coast of
Tunis to Timbuctoo and to Cantor on the Gambia, which inspired him to
seek those lands by way of the sea." [Footnote: Diego Gomez, quoted in
Beazley, Introduction to Azurara's Chronicle (Hakluyt Soc.,
Publications, 1899).] "The tawny Moors, his prisoners, told him of
certain tall palms growing at the mouth of the Senegal or western Nile,
by which he was able to guide the caravels which he sent out to find
that river." [Footnote: Ibid.]
The first decade of Henry's efforts, from 1420 to 1430, resulted in
little in the way of new discovery. The Madeira and Azores islands were
rediscovered and their full exploration and permanent colonization
begun. Every year saw one or more caravels sent from Lagos southward to
follow the coast of the main-land; but they skirted no shores that were
not desert, and turned back baffled by their own fears. Cape Boyador
long remained a barrier whose imaginary dangers of reef and shoal
served as an excuse for the still more unreal horrors of the "Sea of
Darkness."
The next decade saw better results. In 1434 Gil Eannes, one of the
boldest of the captains who were growing up in Prince Henry's service,
when he reached Boyador, sailed far out to sea, doubled the cape, and,
returning to the coast, landed and gathered "St. Mary's roses," and
took them home to the prince as a memento of the "farthest South."
[Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. ix.] The greatest
barrier had been passed, that of superstitious dread, and almost every
voyage now brought its result of progress farther southward. Soon the
boundaries of Islam were passed, for natives were found on the coast
who were not Mohammedans.
The third decade saw still further advance. In 1441 Nuno Tristam
discovered Cape Blanco, the "White Cape," glistening with the white
sand of the Sahara. In 1445 Dinis Diaz, of Lisbon, sailed at last
beyond the desert and reached Cape Verd, the "Green Cape," [Footnote:
Ibid., chap. xxxi.] fifteen hundred miles down the African coast, and
as far from Gibraltar south as Constantinople was east. By this time
the captains of Prince Henry had reached the fertile and populous
shores where the western Soudan borders on the Atlantic Ocean, and a
new obstacle to further exploration revealed itself in the attraction
and the profit of the slave-trade.
The first "Moors" or negroes were some ten or twelve captured and
brought home in the year 1441 by Antam Goncalvez, to satisfy the
curiosity of the prince and to obtain information useful for the
further prosecution of the voyages. Others were soon brought for other
purposes. Of the two hundred and thirty-five Moors who made up the
first full cargo of human freight, the prince gave away the fifty-six
which fell to his share as one-fifth, although it is recorded with the
somewhat grotesque piety of the fifteenth century that "he reflected
with great pleasure on the salvation of their souls that before were
lost." [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery of Guinea, chap. xxv.]
There is no reason to believe that Henry planned or wished the
development of a trade in slaves; [Footnote: The statement to the
contrary in the Cambridge Modern Hist., I., 10, is not deducible from
any contemporary evidence.] but labor was scarce on the great estates
of southern Portugal, slaves were in demand, and very different desires
from those of the prince might be gratified by capturing and bringing
to the slave-market of Lagos the unfortunate natives of the newly
discovered coasts. Hence one expedition after another, sent out for
purposes of discovery, returned, bringing tales of failure to reach
farther points on the coast, but laden with human booty to be sold.
Private adventurers sought and obtained the prince's permission to send
out caravels, and these also brought home cargoes of slaves. Only the
most vigorous pressure, exercised on the choicest spirits among the
Portuguese captains, served now to carry discoveries farther.
Nevertheless, a basis of interest in distant voyages had been found
which had not existed before; and the further exploration of the
African coast was certain, even in default of the personal
enlightenment and enthusiasm of the Navigator. The expeditions sent by
the prince and private voyages made familiar to the mariners of
Portugal two thousand miles of coast instead of six hundred as of old.
Guinea was eventually reached.
In 1455 the Venetian Cadamosto entered into Henry's service; and,
followed closely by Diego Gomez, discovered the Cape Verd Islands and
passed so far around the shoulder of northwestern Africa as not only to
reach the ends of the caravan routes from Morocco, and to open up trade
in gold, ivory, and the products of the Guinea coast, but to suggest
that there was open sea now all the way eastward to India. The
temporary disappointment of finding that this was not true was left to
the successors of Prince Henry, for his death occurred in 1460. But the
work was still carried on by his nephew, Alfonso V., and by the next
king of Portugal, John II.
A series of bold pilots now passed beyond the whole Guinea coast,
crossed the equator, and made their way down almost two thousand miles
more of the African coast. The belief became assured that "ships which
sailed down the coast of Guinea might be sure to reach the end of the
land by persisting to the south"; and stone pillars six feet high were
ordered to be erected at landing-places to indicate possession and mark
the stages of the route to the Indies.
Finally, in 1486, Bartholomew Diaz, the third member of his family to
take part in the discoveries of Prince Henry, with two vessels sailed
the remaining distance on the coast, and passed so far to the eastward
that his sailors mutinied and refused to go farther. Diaz then suddenly
realized that, notwithstanding the necessity for his return, he had at
last found the passage-way to India dreamed of through so many ages and
sought for at such heavy cost.
A period of still greater discoveries was already at hand. "It was in
Portugal," says Ferdinand Columbus, "that the admiral began to surmise
that if men could sail so far south, one might also sail west and find
lands in that direction." The Portuguese were so wedded to the search
for the southeast route, and it was so nearly achieved at this time,
that their interest was but languid in the plans for a search to the
westward. Another people therefore took it up, and soon the exploration
of the New World was in full tide, and the period of pioneer effort
passed into the era of great accomplishment.
Meanwhile Portugal saw the fruition of Prince Henry's work in the
circumnavigation of Africa. Ten years later than the exploit of Diaz,
in 1496, a fleet sailed from Lisbon under Vasco da Gama which was
destined to round the Cape, make its way up the east coast of Africa
till familiar parts of the Indian Ocean were reached; then to sail
across to India, cast anchor, and secure cargo in Calicut and many
other ancient ports; and to return thence safely to its port of
departure. [Footnote: The First Voyage of Vasco da Gama, in Hakluyt
Soc., Publications, 1898.] The Portuguese search for a new route to the
lands of Eastern products was thus successful; and once found, this
path became familiar. The fleet of Cabral in 1500 immediately followed
that of Da Gama, and, driven to the westward as it sailed to the south,
discovered Brazil, as a casual incident of its successful voyage to
India. Thus, if the voyage of Columbus had never been undertaken,
America would have been found within less than a decade.
Albuquerque followed around the southeast passage in 1503; a permanent
traffic between Portugal and India was established, and thereafter
yearly fleets of merchant and war vessels rounded the Cape. Soon most
of the points of vantage of the Indies were in Portuguese control--
Ormuz, Diu, Goa, Ceylon, Malacca--and the enterprising little western
state had trade settlements in Burma, China, and Japan. [Footnote:
Hunter, Hist, of British India, I., 110-133.] The private path of the
Portuguese ultimately became the public highway of the nations. Spain,
Holland, England, and France sent fleets around the Cape of Good Hope,
and made use of the route to the East which the Portuguese had
discovered.
The actual progress of scientific knowledge and practical equipment for
navigation made at Sagres, Lagos, Lisbon, and on the seas, during the
voyages sent out by Prince Henry and his immediate successors, is
unfortunately not accurately known; but some glimpses of it may be
obtained. "In his wish to gain a prosperous result of his efforts,"
says an almost contemporary historian, "the Prince devoted great
industry and thought to the matter, and at great expense procured the
aid of one Master Jacome from Majorca, a man skilled in the art of
navigation and in the making of maps and instruments, and who was sent
for, with certain of the Arab and Jewish mathematicians, to instruct
the Portuguese." [Footnote: De Barros, Decadas da Asia, quoted in
Beazley, Henry the Navigator, 161.]
When trained Italian navigators applied to Henry, as was the case with
the Venetian Cadamosto, they were readily taken into his service, and
he sent word by them that he would heartily welcome any other such
volunteers. When the prince's work fell into the hands of his nephew,
King John, the latter appointed the German Behaim, of Nuremberg, who
lived in Lisbon from 1480 to 1484, to be one of the four members of his
"Junto de Mathematicos." It was Behaim who introduced to the Portuguese
the improved ephemerides calculated by the German Regiomontanus, and
printed at Nuremberg in 1474. He also improved the astrolabe and the
staff, drew charts and made globes, and accompanied one of the West-
African expeditions in 1489. [Footnote: Major, Prince Henry the
Navigator, 326-328.] Diego Gomez, one of Henry's captains, remarks, in
describing his voyage of 1460, "I had a quadrant with me and wrote on
the table of it the altitude of the arctic pole, and I found it better
than the chart; for though you see your course of sailing on the chart
well enough, yet if once you get wrong it is hard by map alone to work
back into the right course." [Footnote: Quoted, in Beazley, Henry the
Navigator, 297, 298.] Azurara also contrasts the incorrect charts with
which Henry's sailors were provided before their explorations with
those corrected by the later observations. [Footnote: Azurara,
Discovery of Guinea, chap. Lxxvi.] His navigators, therefore, used the
compass, the quadrant, and carefully constructed charts; but their
advances in the use of this equipment are not recorded.
The first portolano to note the discoveries on the coast of Africa made
by the Portuguese was that of Gabriele de Valsecca, of Majorca (1434-
1439). A map drawn by Andrea Bianco, of Venice, at London in 1448,
seems to have been intended especially to indicate them, as it gives
twenty-seven new names along the coast to the south of Cape Boyador.
But the map which was distinctively the outcome of the new discoveries
was the so-called "Camaldolese map of Fra Mauro," drawn by Mauro,
Bianco, and other draughtsmen during the year 1457, in the convent of
Murano in Venice. King Alfonso of Portugal himself paid the expenses of
its construction, and sent charts showing the recent discoveries. It
included all the new knowledge obtained up to that time by Prince
Henry's explorers. It is the first large map drawn with the exactness
and the reliance on observed facts of the portolano, notwithstanding
the fact that it included a larger part of the earth's surface in its
field than any earlier map. Though disappointing in some respects, it
stands in the forefront of improved modern maps, and not unworthily
represents the advance made in the knowledge of the world's surface as
a result of the Portuguese efforts up to that time. The scientific
importance of the discoveries of the Portuguese and the intellectual
alertness of the Italians are alike illustrated by an incident that
occurred at the court of Ferdinand and Isabella in 1491. Columbus
having explained to the sovereigns his scheme for a western voyage to
reach the Indies, most of the Spanish prelates who were present
declared his ideas heretical, supporting themselves upon the authority
of St. Augustine and Nicholas de Lyra. Alessandro Geraldini, an
Italian, preceptor of the royal children, who was standing behind
Cardinal Mendoza at the time, "represented to him that Nicholas de Lyra
and St. Augustine had been, without doubt, excellent theologians but
only mediocre geographers, since the Portuguese had reached a point of
the other hemisphere where they had ceased to see the pole-star and
discovered another star at the opposite pole, and that they had even
found all the countries situated under the torrid zone fully peopled."
[Footnote: Mariejol, L'Espagne sous Ferdinand et Isabelle, 96.] In
ship-building Henry and his navigators made positive progress. The
Venetian Cadamosto testifies that "his caravels did much excel all
other sailing ships afloat." Many varieties of vessels are mentioned in
the records of Prince Henry's time--the barca, barinel, caravel, nau,
fusta; the galley, galiot, galeass, and galleon; the brigantine and
carrack. Of all these the caravel became the favored for the long,
exploring voyages. It was usually from sixty to one hundred feet long
and eighteen to twenty-five feet broad, and of about two hundred tons
burden. It had three masts with lateen sails stretched on the oblique
yards which were swung from the masthead, and was steered, at least
partly, by the turning of these great, swinging sails. [Footnote:
Revista Portuguesa, Colonial (May 20, 1898), 32-52, quoted by Beazley,
Introduction to Azurara's Chronicle (Hakluyt Soc., Publications, 1899,
p. cxii.).] John II. encouraged the immigration of English and Danish
ship-builders and carried improvements still further. The greatest
service to navigation done by Prince Henry and his successors was that
of providing a school of sea-training. Not only were the whole group of
early Portuguese explorers, Henry's own captains, "brought up from
boyhood in the household of the Infant," [Footnote: Azurara, Discovery
of Guinea, chap xiii.] but there was scarcely a name great in
navigation in the succeeding period which had not in some way been
connected with these voyages. Diaz, Da Gama, Albuquerque, Da Cunha,
Cabral, and the other captains who made the Portuguese empire in the
East, Magellan, who found still another way to India by the southwest;
Estevam Gomez, who sailed to the arctic seas; Bartholomew and
Christopher Columbus--were all taught or practised in that school.
Columbus lived in Lisbon from 1470 to 1484, married there the daughter
of Bartholomew Perestrello, the discoverer and captain-general under
Prince Henry of Porto Santo in the Madeiras; and, besides his voyages
on the Mediterranean and to England and Iceland, went repeatedly to the
coast of Guinea and lived for some years in the Madeiras. Between 1477
and 1484 he was regularly engaged in the maritime service of the
Portuguese crown. Besides these great names, many navigators who had
only local repute or have remained nameless were Portuguese in birth
and training, and belonged to the same maritime school. In 1502, close
upon the English grants of exploring and trading rights to the Cabots,
came a similar concession to "Hugh Elliott and Thomas Ashehurst,
merchants of Bristol, and to John Gunsalus and Francis Fernandez, Esq.,
subjects of the king of Portugal." [Footnote: Rymer, Foedera] The
expedition of the French captain De Gonneville to Brazil, in 1503, was
guided by two Portuguese pilots; [Footnote: Pigeonncau, Hist du
Commerce, II, 50.] and twenty of the sailors on Magellan's Spanish
fleet of 1519, besides the commander, were Portuguese. [Footnote:
Navarrete, Coleccion, II, 12] Three vessels from Dieppe, under
Portuguese pilotage, in 1527, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and visited
Madagascar, Sumatra, and the coast of India. [Footnote: De Barros,
Decadas da Asia (Madrid ed., 1615), 42 decade, book V., chap, vi.,
296.]
Actual skill in navigating vessels was increased and developed to a
high degree in the struggle with the adverse maritime conditions on the
coast of Africa. The violent and disturbing currents, the terrible surf
of the beaches, the cyclones of the Guinea coast, the trade-winds,
which were always head-winds to the mariners returning from the south-
west, the uncharted reefs and bars, all favored a school of seamanship
which trained the Portuguese and Italian sailors to meet far worse
difficulties than those likely to confront them in the later and more
distant voyages to the westward.
Other experiences of the Portuguese were later utilized by the
Spaniards in their American colonies. The slave-trade was a sombre
precedent, followed only too readily; the system of grants of newly
discovered territory to captains or contractors who would continue its
discovery or conquest, exploit its resources, and pay to the crown a
large share of its products was followed, somewhat intermittently, in
the West Indies and Central and South America. [Footnote: Bourne, Spain
in America, chap. xiv.]
One of the permanent lessons of the Portuguese explorations was the
need for and effectiveness of royal or quasi-royal patronage. Italian
expeditions bore no fruit and could bear none, for this requirement of
patronage was but ill-afforded by her merchant cities or even by her
merchant princes. It was impossible for Venice or Genoa to take a part
in the new discoveries and follow the new lines of trade, not only
because of their unfavorable geographical position, not only because
they were then engaged in a desperate military and economic struggle to
retain their old Levantine trade conquests and connections, not only
because their wealth and prosperity were deeply smitten by their mutual
struggles and their common losses from the repeated blows of the
Ottoman conquest, but because Italy had no royal family to take under
its patronage distant discovery, conquest, trade, and colonization.
Italy furnished most of the knowledge, the skill, and the individual
enterprise that made the great period of explorations; but Portugal,
under the leadership of her great prince, was its true pioneer.