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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
To understand the setting of the discovery and of the early voyages to Brazil we must go back to some of the circumstances which preceded, and review the conditions in Europe at that time. The discoveries of the Portuguese navigators mark an epoch in world history. Had Columbus not persuaded the Spaniards to finance his voyage to the Spice Islands by a western route, the Portuguese might easily have claimed the discovery of both North and South America within a decade following Columbus’ landfall. Both continents would probably have been visited in 1500 when Gaspar Corte-Real reached Newfoundland and Pedro Alvares Cabral, Brazil. The former voyage was but a continuation of others westward over the Atlantic and the latter was only an incident in the Voyages to India. Furthermore, the delusion of reaching Asia would have been avoided. The exploration of the Americas would then have been carried on in an orderly manner with the realization that a new world had been found. However, the Portuguese are not best known for their voyages to America, but for the first accurate knowledge of both the West and East coasts of Africa, of the Indian Ocean and of the Spice Islands. They continued these voyages even farther, up the coast of China, and in 1542 they were the first Europeans to set foot in Japan. These achievements, of which any nation might justly be proud, were made by a country which then numbered between one and two million people.
1 Morison, Samuel E., Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1940), 13.Google Scholar Professor Morison is convinced that the Azores were discovered by the Portuguese and that the islands shown in this position on earlier Genoese maps are mythical.
2 Prestage, Edgar, The Portuguese Pioneers (London, 1933), 331.Google Scholar Quirino da Fonseca, A Caravela Portuguesa (Coimbra, 1934). The Portuguese caravel was superseded in modern times by the schooner which was developed for the West India trade.
3 This and subsequent bulls and treaties are given in Davenport, Frances G., European Treaties Bearing on the History of the United States (Washington, 1917), vol. I, edited and with bibliography.Google Scholar They are also to be found in Alguns Documentos di Archivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo, ed. by J. Ramos Coelho (Lisbon, 1892).
4 This much coveted reward was later bestowed on John II and on King Manuel.
5 The portion of the Guinea Coast extending eastward from Cape Palmas was known from a very early period, possibly by the Carthaginians. It is shown as a bay by Ptolemy; and on several portulan charts of the 14th century it is distinctly delineated. The distortion of the maps of the 14th and 15th century, because of the uncertainty of longitude, made the distance from the Bight of Biafra below Tunis to Abyssinia, south of Egypt, appear shorter than it was in reality. It had thus been hoped that the Emperor of Abyssinia, the so-called “Prester John of the Indies”, could be reached across Africa through the lands of the heathen who might be converted to Christianity. A cape at the southern extremity of Africa had been assumed for many years but this had not as yet been rounded by the Portuguese. There was even a feeling at this time that this voyage might be too long and too dangerous. It has therefore been held by many historians that this statement, “As far as the Indians”, meant eastward to Abyssinia rather than around the Cape of Good Hope.
6 João de Barros, Asia, Dec. I, bk. 2, ch. ii, tr. by G. R. Crone; The Voyages of Cadamosto, Hakluyt Soc, 2nd ser., no. 80 (London, 1937), with bibliography, 107–10. This contract was evidently in the mind of King Manuel when he made a similar one with Fernão de Loronha in 1502 for the trade in dye wood and other products of Brazil.
7 Alguns Documentos, 33. Civet cats were valued as a base for perfume and for their skins, Malagueta pepper also known as grains of Paradise, or Guinea pepper, for medicine and as a spice. According to George Macdonald in The Gold Coast Past and Present (London, 1898), these cardamons came from the Malagueta or Grain Coast, now known as Liberia. During the 16th century they were used to flavor spirituous liquors and as an adulterant for beer; their importation was finally forbidden by the English Government because they were considered poisonous. They are still used by the natives as a condiment, a medicine and as an external irritant. The Grain Coast took its name from this spice and not from cereals. The unicorn referred to was probably the rhinoceros, the horn of which was made into cups which were supposed to counteract poison. Pearls, brazil wood and lac were not found on this coast but came from the East.
8 A fortified factory, São Jorge da Mina, was constructed by Diogo de Azambuja in 1482. According to the chronicler, Garcia de Resende, King John circulated the report that ships which might sail along the coast could not make their way back because of the swift Guinea current. The Portuguese caravels, however, could do so.
9 This seems to be the Pero Escollar who was granted an annuity by the King on February 18, 1500 because of his services in Guinea and in the discovery of the Indies. He would, therefore, have been the commander of the store ship, Berrio, on the voyage of da Gama and the Pero Escolar who was prominent as a pilot in the fleet which went to Brazil and India under Cabral.
10 The Order of Christ was military and its obligation was to prepare the way for the actual conversion by others. This duty fell to Franciscan Missionaries. They followed this Order closely after the occupation of the Azores, the Madeira and Cape Verde Islands and soon thereafter had the more difficult task of converting the pagan negroes of Guinea whose lives were governed by fetish worship, which appeared first by that name in West Africa. An outline of the work done by the Franciscans in Africa at this time is given by Marcellino da Civezza, O.F.M., Storia universale delle missioni Franciscane (Prato, 1881), ch. V. See also Fr.Soledade, Francisco da O.F.M., Historia Serdphica Chronológica de S. Francisco, Provincia de Portugal (Lisbon, 1705–1725)Google Scholar and P. Dr. Leonhard Lemmens, O.F.M., Geschichte der Franziskanermissionen (Münster in Westfalen, 1929). According to the last author the first missionary in Guinea was the Spanish Franciscan, Padre Alfonso de Bolano who arrived there in December of 1462. A Franciscan church was erected in 1481 at El Mina on the Gold Coast in honor of St. Anthony of Padua.
11 Barros, op. cit., 126–127. Ogané is shown on some of the early portolans as dwelling to the west of Prester John and is represented, as is Prester John, seated on a throne hidden by curtains, according to Barros’ description. The negro ruler found by the Portuguese and given that name lived to the east of the Bight of Biafra.
12 While the efforts to reach Abyssinia from Europe seemed futile at this time, Abyssinians reached Italy. One monk who came to Italy in 1431 returned to Abyssinia and ten years later twelve more arrived in Rome. Here they were received with great honor. They did not return immediately for on Septembr 2, 1442, there are records of their having visited Florence. In 1450 an Abyssinian embassy of greater importance, dressed in national costume, reached Rome. It came through the efforts of the Franciscans and two members of that order returned with it to Abyssinia. Other Franciscans followed in 1482–83. There were other contacts between Rome and the Negus of Abyssinia after 1613 through this Order but these were religious rather than political. The author who tells of these expeditions is Francesco Suriano, a Franciscan from Mount Sinai, whose work, Il trattado di Terra Santa e dell’ Oriente (1485), was edited for the first time by Geralamo Golubovich, O.F.M., (Milan, 1900), cited by Charles de la Roncière, La Découverte de l’Afrique au Moyen Age (Cairo, 1924–27), III.
13 The chief sources relating to this period are given by Greenlee, W. B. in “A Descriptive Bibliography of the History of Portugal”, in the Hispanic Am. Hist. Rev., XX (1940), 491–516.Google Scholar
14 The store-ship was not able to keep up with the caravels and was left far behind so many of the crew were too exhausted to continue the voyage further than a short distance beyond the “Stormy Cape”. On the return of the little fleet the question of a continuance of the voyage to India was seriously debated because it was realized that Portugal had scanty resources and lacked seamen to engage in voyages which might meet hostile Arabs and other dangers which might result in disaster. King Manuel, however, when he could turn to this enterprise ten years later, was able to” convince his advisors to the contrary.
15 For the texts and translations of the bulls and” treaties concerning America see Davenport, F. G. and Alguns Documentos, Paul Gottschalk’s The Earliest Diplomatic Documents on America (Berlin, 1927), with facsimiles and bibliography and Thatcher’s, J. B. Christopher Columbus (N. Y., 1903), II.Google Scholar These are also given by Blair, and Robertson, in The Philippine Islands, 1493–1903 (Cleveland, 1903).Google Scholar The translations here used are those of Miss Davenport.
16 Davenport, op. cit., I, 77–78.
17 Davenport, op. cit., I, 95–97.
18 The complete Portuguese text is given in Alguns Documentos, 495–512, with a facsimile page. The Spanish text and translation is in Davenport, op. cit., I, 169–198. The documents in Seville through 1529 are published in the first five volumes of Colección General de Documentos Relativos a las Islas Filipinas (Barcelona, 1918). A translation, somewhat abbreviated, of the negotiations is to be found in Blair and Robertson, op. cit., I, and there is a summary in E. Prestage, Portuguese Pioneers, 304 ff.