The Catholic Kingdoms of Castile and Portugal Explore and Divide the World

Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 World Map
Universalis cosmographia secundum Ptholomaei traditionem et
Americi Vespucii aliorū que lustrationes

Martin Waldseemüller's 1507 world map was the first map to depict a separate Western hemisphere with the Pacific as a separate ocean. The map grew out of an ambitious project in Saint-Dié, Lorraine (in present-day France), during the early 1500s, to document and update new geographic knowledge derived from the Portuguese and Spanish explorations of the late 15th and early 16th centuries. Waldseemüller's map was the most exciting product of that research effort. It drew upon data gathered during Amerigo Vespucci's 1501-02 voyages to the New World. In recognition of Vespucci's understanding that a new continent had been discovered, Waldseemüller christened the new lands “America." This is the only known surviving copy of the first edition of the map, of which it is believed 1,000 copies were printed. By showing the newly-found American land mass, the map represented a huge leap forward in knowledge — one that forever changed the European understanding of a world previously divided into just three parts: Europe, Asia, and Africa. World Digital Library. 

This image and description were reproduced from the original from the Geography & Map Division, Library of Congress, Washington D.C., July 5, 2024.  https://www.loc.gov/item/2003626426

Prince Henry the Navigator, Christopher Columbus, Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco de Gama and the Treaties of Tordesillas and Zaragoza
1402-1529

Dividing the Atlantic

The Kingdom of Portugal

As the Late Middle Ages was transitioning into the Renaissance, the county of Portugal located on the Atlantic coast in the Kingdom of León-Castilla was poised to become the dominant world power. How did this county that was not even a kingdom rise to become the dominant world power?

Our story dates to 1145 in the High Middle Ages when Pope Eugene III issued the papal bull Quantum praedecessores calling for a Second Crusade. Unlike the First Crusade that was led first by Peter the Hermit (the People’s Crusade) and then by western European princes, the Second Crusade was led by European kings, Louis VII of France and Conrade III of Germany. Their armies marched separately across Europe heading toward Damascus and Jerusalem.

Two years later, the spring of 1147, Pope Eugene authorized the expansion of the Second Crusade to include driving the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula as part of the Reconquista. A combined force of 13,000 Flemish, Frisian, Norman, English, Scottish, and German (they considered themselves “Franks”) crusaders sailed from Dartmouth, England, in 164 ships for the Holy Land. After sailing for almost a thousand nautical miles, bad weather forced them to put into port at Porto, in northern Portugal. The bishop of Porto, Pedro II Pitões, convinced them to meet with Afonso Henriques, who had achieved independence for the county of Portugal from the Kingdom of León-Castilla and who was now King Afonso I, the first king of Portugal. They met and he convinced the crusaders to join his Portuguese army of 7,000 and head south where they would participate in what would be the four-month siege and capture of Lisbon from the Moors. The crusaders would also assist the Portuguese in the capture of the surrounding towns of Santarém, Sintra, Almada, Palmeda and Setúbal. This drove the Moors south of the Tagus River, a river that flowed from east to west across the center of the Iberian Peninsula. Some of the crusaders sailed on to the Holy Land; the majority, however, many of whom were farmers and storekeepers and not trained in the military, stayed behind and settled in Lisbon. They were given land and other benefits. They increased the number of Christians in Lisbon, a city that would become the capital of Portugal. In recognition of the English crusaders, Afonso made Gilbert of Hastings, an English monk and crusader who fought in the siege of Lisbon, the first Bishop of Lisbon.

A hundred years later, in 1249, King Afonso III of Portugal captured Faro, the last Moor stronghold located in the Algarve region, the most southwestern province in the Iberian Peninsula. The town of Faro was on the Atlantic Ocean at the southwest corner of the peninsula. Upon driving the Moors from Faro, the Kingdom of Portugal acquired roughly its present boundaries. With the capture of the Algarve region with southern and western boundaries being the Atlantic Ocean and an eastern border being the Kingdom of Castile, King Afonso III began referring to his kingdom as the Kingdom of Portugal and Algarve.

After driving the Moors from the Algarve, Afonso fought a series of wars with the Kingdom of Castile to determine their common border in the Algarve. In 1267, Portugal and Castile entered into the Treaty of Badajoz that determined that their southern border to be the River Guadiana. This river has remained their border.

In 1279, Afonso III was succeeded by his son, Denis, Afonso’s eldest son by his second wife, Beatrice of Castile. Denis was known as the Farmer King and the Poet King.
During Denis’s forty-six year reign, he systematically centralized the government and consolidated royal power. He reorganized the economy, encouraged agriculture and ordered the planting of a large pine forest to prevent soil erosion and provide the raw materials for the construction of royal ships. He encouraged the discovery and exploitation of sulfur, silver, tin and iron mines and organized the export of excess production of agricultural crops, salt, and salted fish to England, Flanders, and France. His poetry contributed to Portuguese becoming a literary language.

In 1325, Denis was succeeded by his son who became King Afonso IV. In 1357, Afonso IV was succeeded by his son who became King Peter I of Portugal and in 1367, Peter was succeeded by his son who became King Ferdinand I of Portugal.

The Kingdom of England

As previously stated, the relationship between England and Portugal dates back to the Second Crusade when the crusaders who sailed out of Portsmouth, England, joined the 7,000-man Portuguese army to drive the Moors out of Lisbon and south of the Tagus River. That was 1147 when Stephen was the king of England.

Stephen was succeeded by Henry II (1154-1189), Richard I (1189-1199), John (1199-1216), Henry III (1216-1272), Edward I (1272-1307), and Edward II (1307-1327).

From the time of the Norman Conquest, 1066, the king of England, because of his holdings in France, was also a vassal of the king of France. In 1325, King Charles IV of France demanded his brother-in-law, King Edward II of England, perform homage for the English Duchy of Aquitaine. Edward, reluctant to leave England because of domestic discontent, designated his son Prince Edward the Duke of Aquitaine and sent him in his place. Prince Edward was accompanied by his mother, Isabella of France, King Charles’s sister.

While in France, Isabella conspired with Roger Mortimer, whom her husband had exiled, to have her husband deposed as king. To ensure diplomatic and military support for her plan, she arranged the engagement of her twelve-year old son, Prince Edward, to twelve-year old Philippa of Hainault. The County of Hainault was an historical region in the Low Countries because it was logistically situated on France’s eastern border and therefore was a crucial area for an alliance and for military campaigns. The County of Hainault on the northern European trade routes was a commercial center and having a future queen from this region would benefit the English economy. 

When Queen Isabella’s forces invaded England, her husband’s forces deserted him. Isabella and Mortimer summoned a parliament and King Edward II was forced to abdicate in favor of his son, Prince Edward, who, in 1327, became King Edward III of England. He was fourteen. Isabella became her son’s de facto regent. Mortimer assumed a central role at court and became the de facto ruler of England. Mortimer and Isabella had Edward II imprisoned where he died under suspicious circumstances.

Meanwhile, across the English Channel in France, King Charles IV, Queen Isabella’s brother, was coming to the end of his reign. He would die in 1328 without a male heir, ending the direct line of the Capetian dynasty. Twelve years earlier, a rule was established in France against succession by women thereby precluding a king’s daughter from succeeding her father to the throne. Under this rule, King Charles’s one-year old daughter, Mary by Jeanne d’Évreux, could not succeed him to the throne. King Edward III of England, whose mother was Isabella of France, claimed that although the law precluded inheritance by a woman, it did not preclude inheritance through a woman and therefore, Edward as the son of Isabella of France, the daughter of King Philip IV, had the right to inherit the French throne. Edward’s argument did not prevail and Philip of Valois, the son of Charles of Valois and a member of the House of Valois, the next most senior branch of the Capetian dynasty, became King Philip VI of France.

The same year that Philip was becoming king of France, 1328, King Edward III of England married Philippa of Hainault. Two years later, Edward, now no longer under the regency of his mother, decided he had had enough of Mortimer’s disrespect and took direct action against him. King Edward had Mortimer arrested, tried for treason, and hanged. The true reign of King Edward III now began. His fifty-year reign was one of the longest in English history.

Edward III and Philippa of Hainault had thirteen children: eight sons and five daughters. Their first child, Edward of Woodstock, was born in 1330. Long after he died, historians began to call him the Black Prince, a name associated with the distinctive color of his armor and jousting shield. Their second surviving child was a girl, Isabella of England who became the Countess of Bedford. The second surviving son, Lionel of Antwerp, the Duke of Clarence, died in 1368 without a male heir. The third surviving son, John, was born in 1340 in Ghent, Flanders, and was called John of Ghent in the Low Countries and John of Gaunt in England. The city of Ghent was an important importer of English wool.

In 1337, three years before John of Gaunt was born, King Philip VI of France confiscated King Edward’s Duchy of Aquitaine and the county of Ponthieu and this brought the dispute as to succession to the French crown to a head. Instead of seeking a peaceful resolution of the conflict by paying homage to the French king, King Edward responded by claiming the French crown as the grandson of King Philip IV of France. Edward’s mother, Isabella of France, was Philip IV’s daughter. Edward’s claim was rejected and this led to tensions that ultimately was a cause of the Hundred Years’ War with France (1337-1453).

Ten years later, in 1347, one of the most significant events in European history arrived in Messina, Sicily. A ship from the Crimea and Asia docked bringing rats carrying the bubonic plague, otherwise known as The Black Death. By the next year, the Black Death had worked its way to England, killing a third or more of the country’s population. The plague spread rapidly throughout Europe and by some accounts killed an estimated 50 million people. This loss of manpower led to a shortage of farm labor, food shortage, and higher prices. The first waive passed in about 1351. A second and third wave of plague were to follow.

At nineteen, John of Gaunt, who believed in the divine right of kings and was one who would never let a good opportunity pass him by, married his first wife, his third cousin, Blanche of Lancaster. Both were the great-great-grandchildren of King Henry III of England. Blanche’s father owned the county of Lancaster. Lancaster had been designated a county Palatine by King Edward III and that designation was to exist for the life of its then current owner. When Lancaster was designated a Palatine for the second time, the designation was in perpetuity. As a part of Blanche’s dowry, John received Blanche’s share of her father’s estate in Lancaster upon her father’s death. Blanche’s father died two years after they married and John became the Earl of Lancaster. A year later, Blanche’s sister Maud died without heirs and Blanche inherited her sister’s share of her father’s estate in Lancaster. John received that share as well. John’s father, the king, then bestowed upon him the title “Duke of Lancaster.”

As heir of the Palatinate of Lancaster, John became the greatest landowner in Northern England. The Palatinate of Lancashire was only the second dukedom created in England. A county palatine was an area ruled by a hereditary nobleman who enjoyed special authority and autonomy from the rest of the English kingdom. The nobleman swore allegiance to the monarch but had the power to rule his county largely independently of the monarch. By the time John of Gaunt became the Duke of Lancaster, he owned at least thirty castles and estates across England and France, owned land in England in almost every county, and maintained a household comparable with the king’s household.

Meanwhile in Castile, in 1350, King Alfonso XI of Castile and León died and he was succeeded by his only legitimate son, Peter (Pedro). Two years prior, Peter was to marry Joan of England, the favorite daughter of King Edward III of England and Philippa of Hainault, and one of John of Gaunt’s older sisters. As she and her retinue were traveling through Europe on their way to Castile, she caught the plague and died.

Four years later, Peter took María de Diaz Padilla as his mistress. They had four children: Beatrice, Constance, Isabella, and Afonso. After María’s death in 1361, she was recognized as Peter’s wife thereby legitimizing their children.

In 1366, a civil war of succession erupted in Castile. King Peter I’s bastard half-brother, Count Henry of Trastámara, challenged Peter for the throne. Peter was supported by Edward, the Black Prince, who was acting in his capacity as Prince of Aquitaine. He could not act for England because England and France had a peace treaty, the Treaty of Brétigny. Edward, however, led the English forces and the mercenaries he hired. His brother, John of Gaunt, led the vanguard of his brother’s army. Henry of Trastámara was supported by France and French forces.

The next year, Peter’s forces defeated Henry’s forces at the Battle of Nájera. When Edward, the Black Prince, was not reimbursed for his expenses, especially for the very expensive mercenaries he had recruited, he withdrew his forces and returned to Aquitaine and then to England. He also was suffering from dysentery from which he never fully recovered.

A year later, 1368, Blanche of Lancaster died. John of Gaunt was now a widow at twenty-eight. They had seven children although only three survived into adulthood: Philippa, Elizabeth and Henry. They would become the queen of Portugal, the duchess of Exeter, and the king of England.

Two years after being defeated, Henry of Trastámara again challenged Peter. In the Battle of Montiel, Henry was supported by Franco-Castilian forces; Peter, without English assistance, led a Castilian-Granadine force. Henry prevailed and after the battle, Peter was lured into a trap and was stabbed to death. Henry of Trastámara ascended to the thrones of Castile and León as King Henry II and so began the Castilian dynasty of the House of Trastámara.

In 1371, two years after the death of her father, King Peter’s daughter, Constance (Constanza) of Castile married an extremely ambitious John of Gaunt. She was nineteen. Upon the death of her father, Constance was his heir and had a claim to the throne of Castile. If Constance would claim the throne, John would be king consort. Even though he was in England, he assumed the title “King of Castile and León” and would sign documents “Yo El Rey” (“I the King”). English nobles addressed him as “My lord of Spain.”

  Although John and Constance had two children, only the daughter, Catherine, survived. Meanwhile, Catherine’s father kept his mistress, Katherine Swynford, with whom he had four children. After Constance died, John married Katherine and legitimized their children. They were given the surname Beaufort. Their great granddaughter was Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry Tudor who killed his third-cousin once removed, King Richard III, at the Battle of Bosworth Field to become King Henry VII, the first of the Tudor monarchs.

Even at the beginning of his reign, King Edward III of England was more interested in military campaigning than in the day-to-day affairs of state. Over the years, he had transformed the Kingdom of England into one of the most formidable military powers in Europe. As his reign was coming to an end, he became more dependent on his subordinates to manage his kingdom. As his close associates died, he became more reliant on his sons to lead military operations and domestic decision making.

As a duke of the Palatinate of Lancaster, John was one of England’s principal military leaders in the 1370s and 1380s. He was not a charismatic war leader, as was his older brother Edward. He did not have the military accomplishments as did his brother although he did participate in a number of sieges and battles, sometimes with his brother and sometimes without.

The events of 1372, illustrate John of Gaunt’s involvement. On July 10th, King Ferdinand I of Portugal and the representatives of John of Gaunt signed the Treaty of Tagilde in Tagilde, Portugal. This agreement is considered to be the first legal foundation of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, which continues to this day. For Ferdinand, the treaty provided an opportunity to assert Portugal’s independence against Castile. The treaty asserted that the signatories would wage war against Castile on two fronts: the English on the north and the Portuguese on the west.

After signing the Treaty of Tagilde, King Ferdinand sent two ambassadors to London to obtain John of Gaunt’s signature. They then negotiated the Anglo-Portuguese Treaty of 1373 with King Edward III and his first son, Edward, the Black Prince. It was signed at St. Paul’s Cathedral in London by King Edward III of England and King Ferdinand and Queen Leonor of Portugal. This treaty is also known as the Treaty of London of 1373.

The Hundred Years’ War was intermittent and when it restarted, John of Gaunt was called to lead the military campaign. Between August and December 1373, John’s army conducted a chevauchée, that is, a method of Medieval warfare that involved burning and pillaging to reduce the resources that supported the enemy. John’s Chevauchée of 1373 failed and ended with the Treaty of Bruges in 1375. The English possessions in France were reduced to the coastal towns of Calais, Bordeaux, and Bayonne.

By 1375, due to the king’s incapacity due to illness, John of Gaunt was left in virtual control of the government. The next year, the king signed letters patent on the order of succession to the crown, ignoring his second son, Lionel of Antwerp’s daughter Philippa, but including his third son, John of Gaunt. Philippa’s exclusion was contrary to King Edward I’s decision in 1290 that recognized the right of women to inherit the crown and to pass the crown on to her descendants.

In 1376, Edward, the Black Prince, died and his father, King Edward III of England, died the year after. Edward’s ten-year old son, Richard became King Richard II. When he was deposed in 1399, the same year John of Gaunt died, succession under Edward I’s rule favored Philippa and her descendants, since she was the daughter of King Edward III’s second son, Lionel. Rather, Richard was succeeded by Henry, the son of John of Gaunt. Henry became King Henry IV of England, and so succession now passed to the House of Lancaster. King Edward I’s rule would have favored Philippa’s descendants, among them the House of York, beginning with Richard of York, her great-grandson. This led to the Wars of the Roses in the fifteenth century between the two cadet houses of the English royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster and the House of York.

Meanwhile, in 1383 King Ferdinand I of Portugal married his ten-year old daughter, Beatrice, to King John I of Castile. She became queen consort of Castile. Five months later, Ferdinand died leaving no legitimate male heirs. Beatrice was proclaimed queen regnant of Portugal and her mother. Leonor Teles, assumed the regency in her name. Many of the nobles in Portugal were opposed to the dynastic union and they supported John of Aviz, the son Peter I of Portugal and Teresa Lourenço, one of Peter’s mistresses. This led to civil war and the crisis became known as the Portuguese interregnum.

In 1384, the Hundred Years’ War was at its peak with England and France fighting for the French kingdom. The papacy had recently divided with two popes, one in the Vatican and the other in Avignon. Western Europe was still suffering due to the plague. Because the Kingdom of Castile was an ally of France, John of Aviz, on behalf of the Kingdom of Portugal, sought the assistance of England.

In May 1385 with Lisbon under siege, a delegation was sent to England to plead its case with Richard II, the seventeen-year old king. John of Gaunt, who controlled the king’s decision making, agreed to send six hundred men, many who had fought in the Hundred Years’ War, to assist the Portuguese army.

In August, 1385, the small Portuguese army supported by English longbowmen, defeated an substantially larger Castillian army at the Battle of Aljubarrota. Portuguese independence was assured and John of Aviz was recognized as King John I of Portugal.

To seal the relationship between Portugal and England, King John and King Richard entered into the Treaty of Windsor (1386). In the treaty, Philippa of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt and Blanche of Lancaster, would marry King John I of Portugal. This treaty is the oldest continuous treaty in effect to this day. The Treaty of Windsor was signed on May 9, 1386.

With the Castilian army defeated, John of Gaunt made his move to enforce his wife Constance’s claim to the throne of Castile. He assembled a fleet of ships along with a small force of 5,000 men. They, along with his wife and two daughters, Philippa and Catherine (Catalina), sailed from England and landed at La Coruña in Galicia in northwestern Iberian Peninsula. John of Gaunt and his army met a Portuguese army and marched into Castile.

For several months, John of Gaunt’s army sought to engage the Castilian army in battle, but to no avail. Over time, John’s army weakened and with no victory was in sight, John of Gaunt and King John of Castile entered into a truce whereby Constance would renounce her claim to the Castilian throne and in return, King John of Castile’s son, Henry, would marry John and Constance’s daughter Catherine when he became of age. For John of Gaunt, this meant that his future grandson would ultimately become the king of Castile and León. John and Constance sailed back to England leaving Catherine to prepare for becoming queen of Castile and Philippa to be wed to King John I of Portugal.

The Kingdom of Portugal

John I was king of Portugal from 1385 to 1433. These were the years when Western Europe was emerging from the Middle Ages and passing into the Renaissance and the Age of Exploration (Age of Discovery). His Kingdom of Portugal, a seafaring nation located on the southwest corner of the Iberian Peninsula, was well positioned to become the first European kingdom to explore the seas.

February 2, 1387, two years after becoming king, John married Philippa of Lancaster, the granddaughter of King Edward III of England, the niece of Edward, the Black Prince, the first cousin of King Richard II, the Black Prince’s son, and the sister of King Henry IV. The marriage of King John to Philippa was the final step in the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance against the Franco-Castilian threat.

King John I founded a new Portugues dynasty, the House of Aviz. The union of John and Philippa produced eight children, the last six survived into adulthood: Edward (Duarte), Peter (Pedro), Henry (Henrique), Isabella, John (João), and Ferdinand (Ferdnando). Together they became known as the “illustrious generation.” Edward succeeded his father as King of Portugal. Peter, one of the best traveled princes of his day, became the Duke of Coimbra and the 1st Lord of Montemor-o-Velho, Aveiro, Tontúgal, Cernache, Pereira, Condeixa and Lousã. Henry took an interest in the sea and became called by historians “Henry the Navigator.” Isabella married Duke Philip the Good and became the Duchess of Burgundy. John became Constable of Portugal (Constable of the kingdom) and master of the Portuguese Order of St. James of the Sword. Constable was the most important position in the kingdom after the king. The constable commanded the military in the absence of the king, maintained discipline in the army, and attended all military tLagos, Portugal - Wikipediaribunals. Ferdinand was the Holy Prince and the lay administrator of the Knightly Order of Aviz.

Prior to becoming king, John fathered three children, Afonso, Beatrice, and Branca, with his mistress Inȇs Peres Esteves. Afonso became the first duke of Braganza and the 8th Count of Barcelos. Beatrice married Thomas Fitzalan, the 12th Earl of Arundel. When Thomas died, Beatrice married John Holland, the Earl of Huntingdon. Branca died in infancy. Although Afonso and Beatrice were not the Queen’s children, she took charge of their education and raised them as she did her own.

Unlike the Kingdom of Castile that had Mediterranean and Atlantic shorelines, the Kingdom of Portugal was tucked into the southwestern corner of the Iberian Peninsula. To gain access to the trading centers on the Mediterranean, Portuguese ships had to pass through the Strait of Gibraltar that separated Gibraltar at the southern tip of the Iberian Peninsula from Ceuta on the northern coast of Morocco. 

In 1415, King John, at the insistence of his wife, Phillipa, and sons, assembled a fleet of 200 ships and 45,000 men in the harbor of Lagos in an area known as the Algarve in the southwestern tip of Portugal and sailed across the Strait of Gibraltar to capture the port city of Ceuta, which was controlled by the Kingdom of Morocco. John was accompanied by his sons, including his twenty-one year old Henry.

As King John was preparing his fleet, his wife, Philippa, died of the plague. Less than a month later, Cueta was taken by surprise and the Portuguese flag flew over the city. King John’s men suffered eight casualties. It was reported that Henry distinguished himself well in the battle although he was wounded. By conquering Ceuta, the marinid sultanate of Morocco could no longer use the port city to control access between the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean.

One reason why King John wanted to conquer Ceuta was because the Trans-Saharan caravans terminated there. These caravans provided Portugal with gold, spices and enslaved people. Although the Portuguese captured Ceuta, they were unable to profit from the gold or spices trade, or from human trafficking because the caravans were redirected to Tangier, less than 50 miles to the west on the Atlantic Ocean.

Shortly after capturing Ceuta, Prince Henry began directing captains in his service to explore the western coast of Africa. In 1418, he directed João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira to sail south. While exploring the African coast, they were driven off course by a storm. They came ashore on an island west of Morocco that they named Porto Santo (33º03’43”N 16º21’23”W). The following year, they were joined by Bartolomeu Perestrello and the three sailed to Porto Santo to claim the island for the Kingdom of Portugal. They discovered that Port Santo was one of three islands in the Madeira archipelago, the largest being Madeira (32º45’N 17º00’W), the smallest, Desertas. The islands were uninhabited. Within a year or two, the first settlers arrived.

In 1419, the marinid sultanate attempted to retake Cueta but his army was repelled before Prince John and Prince Henry could arrive with Portuguese reinforcements.

Also in 1419, King John appointed Henry to be the governor of the southern province of the Algarve. By then, Henry had a castle in the vicinity of Sagres, in the Algarve near the port city of Lagos, Portugal.

In 1420, Henry was appointed the Governor of the Military Order of Christ, the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar. The Order provided Henry with the revenue to continue to support exploration down the coast of West Africa. 

In 1427, Portugal claimed the Azores (38º66’N 28º07’W), an archipelago of nine volcanic islands about 756 nautical miles west of Lisbon and about 808 nautical miles northwest of Morocco.

Over a ten-year period, Henry had sent fifteen expeditions to sail south of Cape Bojador (26º07’37”N 14º29’57”W) but each was unsuccessful. Those sailing were afraid of the sea monsters and sailing off the edge of the earth. They also believed they could not successfully sail north against the current to reach home. Finally in 1433, Henry entrusted Gil Eanes, his household servant and shield-bearer, with a ship and crew and ordered him to round Cape Bojador. Eanes left from Lagos intending to sail with the winds and the current south along the West African coast.

Eanes sailed down the coast of West Africa before being driven towards the Canary Islands (La Gomera: 28º06’54”N 17º13’30”W). There he captured several natives. By the time Eanes returned with his captives to the court of Prince Henry at Sagres, King John I had died and was succeeded by Edward, Henry’s oldest brother.

The next year, Prince Henry gave Eanes a barquentine-caravel and crew and he sailed beyond Cape Bojador, 104 nautical miles south of the Canary Islands. Prior to Eanes’s successful voyage, Europeans had not sailed south of this cape. This marked the beginning of the Portuguese exploration of Africa.

Eanes and others were learning that by sailing west across the southern current and winds and then northeast, and with the lateen sail to help him sail against the wind, he could return to Portugal.

In 1435, Eanes sailed again beyond Cape Bojador, this time with another ship under the command of Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia. They sailed beyond Cape Bojador and reached the African coast in Western Sahara. They had hoped to find some natives but the area they searched was uninhabited.

The next year, Baladaia sailed again, this time by himself. His instructions were to bring back a local inhabitant. While anchored at Rio do Oro, Baldaia’s crew hunted monk seals for their pelts and oil. Baladaia resumed sailing and crossed the Tropic of Cancer that is about 23º27’ north of the Equator. He was the first European to do so. He continued on to Cape Barbas (22º17’44”N 16º40’20”W) before turning back. He had now sailed 109 nautical miles south of his furthest point the year before.

Without Tangier, Ceuta was worthless economically to Portugal so Prince Henry and his brother Ferdinand convinced their brother John, who was in charge of Ceuta, that they should capture Tangier. In 1437, Henry and his troops launched an attack on the marinid sultanate. The Portuguese were repelled at the Battle of Tangiers and Ferdinand, Henry’s  youngest brother, was captured. The marinid sultanate would not release Ferdinand unless the Portuguese returned Ceuta. The Portuguese cortes refused and Ferdinand died as a captive six years later.

In 1438, King Edward was succeeded by his six-year old son who became King Afonso V of Portugal. In accordance with the terms in his father’s will, Afonso was placed under the regency of his mother, Queen Mother Eleanor of Aragon. Because she was not Portuguese and a woman, she was an unpopular choice for regent. The Portuguese cortes passed a law adding Afonso’s uncle, Prince Peter, Duke of Coimbra, as joint regent. Within a year, the joint regency failed and Peter was appointed Afonso’s sole regent. Eleanor resisted but ultimately fled to the neighboring kingdom of Castile.

Although Portugal prospered under Peter’s rule, his policies interfered with the ambitions of powerful nobles, such as his half-brother, Afonso, the 8th Count of Barcelos. Afonso was able to work himself into the position of being the king’s favorite uncle.

In 1441, Henry sent out two ships. One was captained by Nuno Tristão, a knight in Henry’s household. He was directed to explore beyond Baldaia’s further point, Pedra de Galé (Galha Point), a rock island off Cape Barbas (22°17’44”N 16°40’20”W). The other ship, captained by Antão Gonçalves, was directed to return to Rio do Oro for another seal hunt.

Around Rio do Oro, Tristão met up with Gonçalves, who had happened to capture a young camel-driver, the first native since the Portuguese began sailing down the West African coast. Tristão had an interpreter aboard who was able to interrogate Gonçalves’s camel-driver. The captive told them about a small Sanhaja-Beber fishing camp nearby. The Portuguese attacked the camp and captured fourteen villagers. Gonçalves took the captives back to Henry. Tristão continued south reaching as far as Cape Blanco (20°46’17”N 17°02’50”W).

  Back in Portugal, in 1442, King Afonso V made his uncle Afonso the first Duke of Braganza. With that title and its land, he became the most powerful person in Portugal. Fearful that he would lose his position as the king’s regent to the duke, Peter arranged a  marriage between his daughter, Isabella of Coimbra, to the king. This was another marriage between first cousins

In 1443, Henry sent Nuno Tristão on a second voyage. He sailed beyond Cape Blanco and on to the Bay of Arguin (now Mauritania) (20°08’N 16°62’W). On Arguin (20°60’N 16°45’W), an island in the bay, he found a Sanhaja-Berber village and captured fourteen villagers. These were the first natives that Henry’s captains had come across since beginning to search the West African coast.

In October, Henry received letters patent from his brother Peter granting him an exclusive monopoly over all navigation, including trade, south of Cape Bojador. Any ship sailing south of Cape Bojador without Prince Henry’s license could be confiscated. Under this monopoly, Henry would receive the royal fifth and customs duties of a tenth on imports due the Portuguese crown on any African goods, including enslaved persons brought back to Portugal.

In 1444, Henry sent Nuno Tristão on a third voyage. This time he was to sail further south to look for new slave-raiding grounds. Tristão reached the border of Senegal (northern border 16°N) where the Sahara Desert ended and the forests began. The southern border of the Sahara Desert (about 20°N) is the Sahel, a semiarid region that forms a transitional zone between the Saraha to the north and the belt of humid savanas to the south. Those living on the coast change from Sanhaja-Berbers toWolofs. On his return home, Tristão stopped at Arguin and captured twenty-one Berbers to bring back to Portugal.

News spread when Tristão returned information concerning this new location to capture Africans. Portuguese slave-traders headed for the Senegalese coast. They found their raids more dangerous and less profitable because the natives were more hostile and better-armed.

A consortium of Lagos merchants acquired a license from Henry, equipped a fleet of six slave ships, and in the spring of 1445 sailed for the Bay of Arguin. Lançarote de Freitas was elected commander of the fleet. By early August, the fleet returned to Lagos with 235 enslaved Berbers. 

In 1446, Lançarote de Freitas organized a larger fleet, fourteen ships. A storm separated the fleet so that nine ships reached the Bay of Arguin. Weather continued to play a role in splitting the fleet. Also, Lançarote’s fleet found other fleets searching to kidnap natives. Lançarote may have returned to Lagos with about 157 captives and the raid was viewed as less than successful. Future raids at the Bay of Arguin and at other fishing villages were not planned because the population had been devastated and it was unlikely that the natives would return.

In 1447, Henry sent Nuno Tristão on a fourth voyage. He sailed down to the Sine-Saloum Delta (13°50’07”N 16°29’55”W) where his ship was attacked and he and his crew killed.

In 1448, the conspiracies planted by his uncle Afonso came to a head when King Afonso V nullified all the laws and edicts that had been approved during his regency. The next year, the king, based on false accusations, declared his uncle Peter a rebel. King Afonso’s and his Uncle Afonso’s army joined and defeated Peter’s army at the Battle of Alfarrobeira near Lisbon. Peter died during the battle. Henry was now the last legitimate son of King John I. After the Battle of Alfarrobeira, Henry retreated to his castle near Sagres where he spent his last years.

Peter’s enemy, Afonso, the first Duke of Braganza, died the next year. He had founded the House of Braganza, the most powerful and wealthy dynasty in Portugal. His descendants would become kings of Portugal and emperors of Brazil.

With the news of the death of Tristão and his crew spread rapidly. This and the increased difficulty in seizing the natives led the Portuguese to switch from slave-raiding to slave-trading. In 1450, Prince Henry ordered the erection of a permanent factory (trading post) on Arguin. It was called a “factory” because foreign merchants were called “factors.” This fortified trading post was Portugal’s first on the West African coast. It served as a market, warehouse and support for navigation. The factor was responsible for buying and selling products and collecting taxes on behalf of the king (the royal fifth, i.e., 20%). The factory at Arguin was built to attract Muslum traders and to monopolize the trade routes in northern Africa. By using the Arguin factory, trans-Sahara caravans were no longer necessary for transporting gold, spices and enslaved people across the Sahara to a Muslum port in north Africa. By 1455, 800 enslaved people a year were shipped from Arguin to Portugal.

In 1455, two explorers in the service of Prince Henry, Antoniotto Usodimare, a Genoese trader and explorer, and Alvise Cadamosto, a Venetian explorer, set out separately from Lagos and met by happenstance around Cape Vert peninsula. Having decided to sail together, they found the mouth of the Gambia River (13°27’29”N 16°34’43”W).

In 1456, Usodimare, Cadamosto and a third captain, a Portuguese, sailed south. They were heading towards Senegal when a storm forced a change of course. That led to the discovery the Cape Verde Islands, an archipelago consisting of ten volcanic islands (14°54’59”N 23°30’34”W). They then returned to the coast of Guinea and the Gambia River. Sailing along the coast, they discovered the Casamance River, Cape Roxo, the Cacheu River, the estuary of the Geba River and the Bijagos Islands.

Prince Henry died in 1460. Although he was not an explorer, he encouraged others to use the recent developments in navigation, cartography and maritime technology, including the caravel, a vessel with a lateen sail that could sail into the wind. With this sail, the caravel could explore west into the Atlantic Ocean and south down the coast of West Africa.

Henry’s interests in exploring the west African coast were three-fold. He wanted to find the source of the trans-Sahara caravans that brought West African gold, spices and enslaved people to Portugal; he wanted to locate the empire of the legendary Prester John; and he wanted to stop the pirate attacks on the Portuguese coast that depopulated the villages by kidnapping and enslaving those who lived there.he was succeeded by his son, John II, who was credited with reestablishing the power of the Portuguese monarchy, reinvigorating the Portuguese economy, and renewing Portugal’s exploration of the West African coast.

After Henry’s death, Afonso V showed little enthusiasm for sailing further south. Discoveries, however, did continue. In 1469, Afonso granted Fernão Gomes a five-year trade monopoly in the Gulf of Guinea. Each year he was to explore 100 leagues of the African coast. He also received a trade monopoly in guinea pepper, a substitute for black pepper. Gomes employed a number of other explorers: Jaão de Santarém, Pedro Escobar, Lopo Gonçalves, Fernão do Pó and Pedro de Sintra. Gomes exceeded the requirements of his grant by reaching the Cape of Santa Catarina (Cape Verde) and also islands of the Gulf of Guinea.

By 1471, Portuguese explorers came upon fishing villages along the coast that is modern day Ghana. (Niger River Delta discharges into the Gulf of Guinea (5°19’20”N 6°28’09”W)). This was approximately 1035 statute (land) miles or 900 nautical miles to the south of Arguin. The area was rich in gold and ivory so the Portuguese named it the Gold Coast. Gomes found a thriving gold trade in Elmina.

King Afonso V died in 1481 and he was succeeded by his son who became King John II. Within a year of taking the throne, King John had the Portuguese build the Elmina Castle (5°04’57”N 1°20’53”W)) in Elmina. The castle, Sãn Jorge da Mina, was unique because it was prefabricated in Portugal. The materials arrived on ten caravels and two transports. Assembly was completed within a year.

Elmina Castle was the first trading post built on the Gulf of Guinea. Its military and economic importance overshadowed that of the trading post at Arguin. Soon, Elmina became Portugal’s West African headquarters for trade and exploitation of not only African wealth but also of the African people.

Originally, the Portuguese were interested in West Africa’s gold. Eight thousand ounces of gold was shipped to Portugal from 1487 to 1489, 22,500 ounces from 1494 to 1496, and 26,000 ounces by 1500. This was one tenth of the world’s supply.

From its inception, the Portuguese had determined that Elmina Castle would not be directly engaged in the enslaving of free people; rather, Elmina Castle would serve as a transshipment depot. The Portuguese traded with the slave-catchers for already enslaved people from other regions such as Benin and São Tomé and then arranged for their shipment to Portugal. Between 1500 to 1535, 10,000 to 12,000 enslaved Africans passed through Elmina.

  In 1486, Five years after becoming king, John commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to sail down the coast of West Africa and to reach its southernmost tip. Portugal could soon establish a trade route around the tip of Africa and cross the Indian Ocean to India.

At about the same time, King John commissioned Pero da Covilhã to find a combined land and sea route to the Far East, to discover where cinnamon and other spices could be found and also to search for the land of the legendary kingdom of Prester John.

Both expeditions sailed in 1487. Dias returned the next year with the news he had found the tip of Africa. Covilhã was personally less successful. He did scout the major trade routes of the Indian Ocean and observe the cinnamon, black pepper and clove trade at Calicut, India, but on his return through Ethiopia in search of the land of Prester John, he became a captive and was never allowed to return home. He did send word to King John of what he had learned so Portugal would now have a route to the riches of India and the Far East.

The Kingdom of Castile

In 1379, John, the son of King Henry II and Juana Manuel of Castile, became King John I of Castile and León. Eleanor of Aragon became Queen consort. In 1388, their son, Henry, married Catherine of Lancaster, the daughter of John of Gaunt and Constance of Castile. Henry III was known as “The Suffering” because of his ill health. Two years later, Henry succeeded his father as king of Castile and León. John of Gaunt’s wish had come true. His daughter was now the queen consort of the Kingdoms of Castile and León and her children would inherit the crowns.

In 1402, the Kingdom of Castile began colonization of the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria 27°58’N 15°36’W), an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean 54 nautical miles off the coast of Morocco. The seven main islands, from largest to smallest, are: Tenerife, Fuerteventura, Gran Canaria, Lanzarote, La Palma, La Gomera, and El Hierro. The archipelago also includes many smaller islands. The location of this archipelago on the southeastern corner of the clockwise rotating North American gyre (the North Atlantic Current crossing the Atlantic Ocean east to Western Europe, the Canary Current flowing southward along the west coast of Europe and Africa, the North Atlantic Equatorial Current crossing the Atlantic Ocean west to the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf Stream flowing north along the East Coast of the United States) made the Canary Islands an important link between four continents bordering on the Atlantic Oceans: Africa, North America, South America, and Europe.

The Castilian colonization began with the expedition led by the French explorers Jean de Béthencourt and Gadifer de la Salle, sailing under the service of King Henry III of Castile. They claimed the Canary Islands for the Kingdom of Castile.

In 1406, King Henry III was succeeded by his son who became King John II. In 1418, John married Maria of Aragon, the oldest daughter of his paternal uncle, Ferdinand I of Aragon, and they had one child who survived infancy, Henry. After Maria died, John married Isabella of Portugal and they had two children, Isabella and Alfonso.

John’s son Henry married Blanche II of Navarre and in 1453, after being married for thirteen years with no children, the marriage was annulled. The following year, John died and Henry became King Henry IV of Castile and León. Henry sought an alliance with Portugal so he married Joan of Portugal, the daughter of King Edward of Portugal. Seven years into that marriage, Joan gave birth to a daughter, Joanna.

Joanna was named Princess of Asturias and that officially proclaimed her heir to the thrones of Castile and León, a title held by the heir apparent. A number of nobles preferred that Henry name his younger half-brother, Alfonso, as Prince of Asturias. They circulated a rumor that Joanna was not King Henry’s daughter but rather the daughter of Betrán de la Cueve, the alleged lover of Queen Joan of Portugal, King Henry’s wife. Joanna was nicknamed “Joanna, ‘la Beltraneja',” a mocking reference to her purported father. Under pressure from the nobility, King Henry stripped Joanna of her title of Princess of Asturias and named Joanna’s ten-year old half-brother, Alfonso, Prince of Asturias. Four years later, fourteen-year old Alfonso, who was called Alfonso the Innocent, was poisoned and his older sister, Isabella, became the Princess of Asturias.

After King Henry IV died in 1474, both Joanna and her aunt Isabella claimed to be Henry’s successor. From 1475 to 1479, Joanna’s supporters fought Isabella’s supporters in what became known as the War of the Castilian Succession. The war took on an international flavor. In 1469, Isabella had married her second cousin, Ferdinand of Aragon. He was the heir apparent to the Crown of Aragon. Both Isabella and Ferdinand were descendents of John I of Castile and Eleanor of Aragon. The marriage was, as many royal marriages at the time were, based on political opportunity rather than love. King John II of Aragon, Ferdinand’s father, had arranged the marriage because he needed Castilian support to counter the French on his eastern border along the Pyrenees Mountains. In 1475, Joanna married her uncle, King Afonso V of Portugal. King Louis XI of France, a rival of Aragon for territory in Italy and Roussillon, intervened to support Joanna.

The naval warfare in the Atlantic was an important aspect of the war because maritime access to the gold and slaves of Guinea was at stake. In 1478, the Portuguese navy decisively defeated the Castilian navy in the Battle of Guinea. The war concluded the following year with the Treaty of Alcáçovas. Portugal was recognized as the dominant power in the Atlantic, with the exception of the Canary Islands, and Joanna lost her claim to the Castilian thrones. Isabella and Ferdinand were recognized as sovereigns of the Kingdoms of Castile and León.

With Isabella the Queen of Castile and León, Ferdinand became Ferdinand V of Castile and León, king consort. Upon the death of his father, he became King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella became queen consort. They ruled Castile and Aragon jointly as dynastically unified kingdoms, although Castile and Aragon remained separate until the Nueva Planta decrees issued by King Philip V in 1707-1716 incorporated the Crown of Aragon into the Crown of Castile thereby creating the Kingdom of Spain.

When Isabella became queen, Castile was in a state of disarray. She had succeeded the last of the weak late-medieval kings of Castile and León. Henry had overspent and had failed to enforce the laws of the kingdom so crime was rampant. Isabella set about centralizing her government, repairing her kingdom’s finances, promoting law and order, fulfilling what she perceived was her religious duty to create a solely Catholic Iberian Peninsula, and transforming a dynastically unified Kingdoms of Castile and Aragon into a major European power. These objectives were not beyond her capabilities. She was tough, determined, and iron-willed.

Ferdinand and Isabella’s desire for an all Catholic Iberian Peninsula was facilitated in 1478 when Pope Sixtus IV issued a papal bull authorizing them to name inquisitors to combat heresy thereby enforcing religious uniformity. The Spanish Inquisition would root out non-Christians, doubters and heretics.

From the beginning of their reign in Castile, Isabella and Ferdinand were intent on completing the Reconquista thereby driving the Moors from the Iberian Peninsula. The Reconquista had begun soon after the Moors had invaded the peninsula in 711. Isabella and Ferdinand’s ten-year campaign culminated in 1491 when their armies laid siege to Granada, the last Moor stronghold on the Iberian Peninsula. In November, the Treaty of Granada was signed setting out the conditions for lifting the siege and for the surrender of Granada. Under the treaty, Muslims would be allowed to practice their religion and live in peace. On January 2, 1492, Queen Isabella received the key to Granada signifying the completion of the Spanish Reconquista. For a more detailed discussion of the Reconquista, visit a prior post entitled “The Rise of Isabella and Ferdinand, the Catholic Queen and King, and Their Determination to Complete the Reconquista.”The Alhambra Decree

Three months later, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand issued (also known as the Edict of Expulsion) ordering the expulsion of practicing Jews from any territory under their rule. This meant that the remaining Jews in Castile and Aragon would need to leave their kingdoms, convert to Catholicism, face punishment or risk death. Those who converted were called conversos.

Later that year, in recognition of Isabella and Ferdinand’s defense of the Catholic faith within their realms by completing the reconquista against the Moors and by expelling the Jews, Pope Alexander VI bestowed upon them the title “Catholic King and Queen.” Isabella and Ferdinand became known as Isabella the Catholic and Ferdinand the Catholic.

Meanwhile, a Genoese merchant by the name of Christopher Columbus, with an interest in the sea, had approached King John II of Portugal with a proposal to reach the East Indies (the source of spices) by sailing west across the Atlantic. The king had a committee study Columbus’s proposal but they rejected it on the ground that he significantly miscalculated the circumference of the Earth and therefore his proposed voyage would be impossibly long. Anyways, by this time the Portuguese explorers would soon sail around Africa and have a sailing route to the Far East.

Discouraged but not deterred, Columbus brought his proposal to Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand who were holding court in Castile. King Ferdinand was focused on his kingdom’s expansion in the Mediterranean and with concluding the Reconquista. Queen Isabella, who seemed to have an interest in the Atlantic, was focused on the Reconquista and with her dwindling finances.

Now that the issue of the Moors and Jews was settled, a number of Isabella and Ferdinand’s advisors pressed the monarchs to reconsider Columbus’s proposal. When Luis de Santángel, a third-generation converso who was incharge of royal finances, offered to substantially finance the venture (his family was one of the richest in the Kingdom of Aragon), the Queen consented. On August 3, 1492, Columbus in his three ships, the Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa María, sailed from Palos, Castile. For a more detailed discussion of Columbus’s first voyage, visit a prior post entitled “Columbus’s Unrealistic Voyage to the East Indies, 1473-1493.”

On his return, Columbus’s fleet was down to two ships. The Santa María had run aground in Hispaniola and could not be refloated. He had also left basically its crew and a few officers to build a fort, search for gold, and wait for his return.

Columbus’s return went smoothly until his ships were involved in violent storms around the Azores where they lost sight of each other. Columbus barely made it to port in Lisbon, Portugal. There, he was interviewed by King John II and was told that although Columbus thought he had claimed the West Indies for Castile, the West Indies really belonged to the Kingdom of Portugal under the Treaty of Alcáçovas and prior papal bulls.

Columbus returned to Palos on March 15, 1493. The dispute between King John and Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand as to the ownership of the islands in the new world continued.

Following Columbus's successful first voyage (1492-1493), a second voyage with a much larger fleet was organized for Columbus by Jean Rodriguez de Fonseca. The stated purposes of this voyage were to establish a permanent settlement in the New World and to convert the natives to Christianity. On September 25, 1493, the fleet of seventeen vessels and 1,300 colonists sailed from the Bay of Cádiz.

They sailed south using the winds and the current to the Canary Islands and then proceeded along a more southerly route than Columbus sailed on his first voyage. The tradewinds guided them to the Lesser Antilles where Columbus explored Guadalupe before continuing north toward the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Jamaica, and Puerto Rico). They put ashore on the northwestern coast of San Juan Bautista, now Puerto Rico.

From there they sailed to Hispaniola where Columbus discovered that all the men he had left at La Navidad the year before were dead and their fortress destroyed. Traveling east from La Navidad, Columbus came across the Yaque del Norte River, which he named Río de Oro, the River of Gold, because of the prevalence of gold dust in its sands. The Taínos stated that the gold came from Cibao. Columbus sent one of his captains, Alonso de Ojeda, to Cibao where gold was being mined. He himself visited the mines of Cibao where he had the Fort of Santo Tomás constructed.

The fleet followed the northern coast of Hispaniola where in January 1494, they established the settlement of La Isabela.  After spending some time exploring the interior of Hispaniola for gold and finding some, he established a small fort.

Dissatisfied with the location he had chosen for La Isabela, Columbus set sail east in search of a better site. Later in January, the town of Nueva Isabela was founded. Soon after Nueva Isabela was destroyed by a hurricane, a town was built on the opposite side of the Ozama River and named Santo Domingo. 

After leaving Hispaniola, Columbus explored the southern coast of Cuba and then Discovery Bay, Jamaica. He then returned to Cuba and then to Hispaniola.

By the end of 1494, disease and famine had claimed two-thirds of the 1,300 Spanish settlers who had sailed with him from the Bay of Cádiz.

On the return voyage, Columbus's fleet landed at Portugal, near Odemira, before returning to the Bay of Cádiz on June 11, 1496.

The Treaty of Tordesillas

While Columbus was on his second voyage, the Kingdoms of Castile and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas dividing the lands bordering on the Atlantic Oceans along a meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands off the west coast of Africa.

The treaty resolved the conflict that arose between the 1481 papal bull that affirmed Portugal's claim to all non-Christian lands south of the Canary Islands and Columbus's claim of the Antilles for Castile. The treaty also divided the trading and colonizing rights for all lands west of the Canary Islands. The Kingdom of Castile would claim the exclusive right to lands west of this line; the Kingdom of Portugal would claim the exclusive right to lands east of this line.

The Kingdom of Portugal Capitalized on the Treaty of Tordesillas

In 1496, Pedro Alvares Cabral sailed from Portugal intending to land on the west coast of Africa. His route took him south to the Canary Island and as he continued south across the Equator, the winds and current, now flowing in a counterclockwise direction, landed him in Brazil. Not to waste an opportunity, Cabral claimed Brazil for the Kingdom of Portugal. Under the Treaty of Tordesillas, the eastern portion of Brazil was east of the meridian 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands. Portugal had the exclusive right to eastern Brazil. The Kingdom of Portugal now had a declared presence in the New World.

Now that the Portuguese knew about Brazil, they began harvesting brazilwood trees located in the coastal forests. The dense, orange-red heartwood produced a marketable red dye. The forests, once cleared, were replaced by sugar plantations.

These plantations were labor intensive and once the Portuguese exhausted the availability of the natives whom they enslaved, they turned to enslaved Africans. Between 1540 and the 1860s, about 5.5 million people were enslaved and brought to Brazil.

The Kingdom of Castile Capitalized on the Treaty of Tordesillas

At 2:00 am on Christmas day, 1492, the Santa María ran aground in a harbor in Hispaniola. The ship could not be refloated so Columbus decided to disassemble it and use its lumber to build a fort. Thirty nine crew and three officers were left until Columbus returned the next year. Neither the fort nor the men survived.

On his second voyage, 1493, Columbus left a large number of colonists to begin the settlement of La Isabella. Bartholomew Columbus, Christopher Columbus’s brother, named the settlement La Nueva Isabela after Queen Isabella of Castile. In 1495, it was renamed Santo Domingo, in honor of Saint Dominic. Seven years later, June 1502, Santo Domingo was destroyed by a hurricane and it was rebuilt on the other side of the Ozama River.

On May 30, 1498, Columbus sailed with six ships from Sanlúear, Andalucia, Castile, for his third voyage across the Atlantic. The objective of this voyage was to verify the existence of a continent that King John II of Portugal suggested was located to the southwest of Cape Verde Island.

Columbus divided his fleet: three of the ships headed to Hispaniola with over three hundred colonists and supplies, the other three ships with Columbus aboard sailed to explore the Lesser Antillies.

Columbus and his three ships approached the island of Trinidad from the southeast and sailed along the southern coast. They then arrived near the mouth of South America’s Orinoco River, in what is now Venezuela. They then sailed further west, where Columbus sent his men to obtain some pearls. He then sailed to the islands of Chacachacare and Margarita and sighted Tobago and Grenada. The island of Margarita, Latin for Pearl Island, was located about ten nautical miles from Venezuela.

Columbus, now in ill health, returned to Hispaniola only to find that many of the Spanish settlers of the new colony were in rebellion against his rule. They claimed that he had misled them about the bountiful riches they had expected to find.

Columbus eventually made peace with the colonists but in 1500, the Crown removed him as governor and had him arrested and transported in chains back to Castile. After six weeks in prison, Columbus was freed and allowed to return to the Caribbean, but not as governor.

Columbus's mission on his fourth voyage (1502-1504) was to explore the eastern coast of Central America in the hope of finding the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean. On May 9, 1502, his four ship fleet sailed from Cádiz for Arzila on the Moroccan coast to rescue Portuguese soldiers who he heard were under siege by the Moors. He then crossed the Atlantic landing on the island of Martinique in the Lesser Antilles and then to Hispaniola, although Ferdinand and Isabella had forbidden him to land there. He arrived at Santo Domingo but was denied port even though a storm was imminent.

  While Columbus and his ships were sheltered at the mouth of the Haina River, the governor set sail along with a fleet of thirty vessels for Castile. Columbus's personal gold and other belongings were on board the fleet’s least seaworthy vessel, the Aguya. A hurricane drove some ships ashore while others sank in the Santo Domingo harbor. The governor’s ship may have reached the eastern end of Hispaniola before sinking. About twenty other vessels sank in the Atlantic. About five-hundred drowned. Three ships made it back to Santo Domingo; only the Aguya completed the journey to Castile.

After the hurricane, Columbus regrouped with his men, briefly stopped at Jamaica and Cuba to replenish their supplies, he sailed to Central America arriving at Guanaja, Isla de los Pinos in the Bay Islands off the coast of Honduras where the native introduced Columbus and his crew to cacao.

Several weeks later, Columbus landed on the mainland of the Americas at Puerto Castilla, near Trujillo, Honduras. He spent two months exploring the coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, and Costa Rica looking for the passage, before arriving in Almirante Bay, Panama.

Before leaving Panama, Columbus was involved in a storm “unlike any they had ever experienced.”

He then set sail for Hispaniola but because his ships sustained more damage by a storm off the Cuban coast, he beached his ships in St. Ann’s Bay, Jamaica, where they remained stranded for six months. The governor of Hispaniola finally sent help.

Two ships and seventy-two of the original 147 crew returned to Castile in June 1504.  Upon his return, he learned that the patron of his first voyage, Queen Isabella, was dying. Three days before her death, she stipulated in her will that her Kingdom of Castile be inherited by her daughter, Johanna, and then by her Habsburg grandson, Charles. Queen Isabella died on November 26, 1504.

Isabella and Ferdinand had ruled her Kingdom of Castile and his Kingdom of Aragon in a dynastic unification. During their marriage, they had five children: Isabella, John, Joanna, Maria and Catherine. When Queen Isabella died, she was preceded in death by Isabella who had become Queen of Portugal, and John, who was Prince of Asturias, a title that designated him heir presumptive. When Queen Isabella’s grandson, Miguel de la Paz, Prince of Portugal, died in 1500, Joanna became the  next in line to the throne of Castile.

Dividing the Pacific

The Kingdom of Portugal

In 1486, King John II of Portugal commissioned Bartolomeu Dias to sail down the West African coast to reach the southernmost point of Africa so Portugal could establish a trade route to India across the Indian Ocean and to search for the land of the legendary Prester John and his rich kingdom. At about the same time, the king commissioned Pero da Covilhã to find a combined land and sea route east to the Far East, to discover where cinnamon and other spices could be found and to search for the land of the legendary kingdom of Prester John. Both expeditions set sail in 1487. Dias returned the next year with the news he had found the tip of Africa. He had arrived at the Cape of Good Hope near the southern tip of Africa and Cabo das Agulhas then sailed around the actual southernmost point of Africa that divided the Atlantic and the Indian Oceans. The cape is now known as Cape L’Agulhas.

Covilhã successfully scouted the major trade routes of the Indian Ocean and had observed the cinnamon, black pepper and clove trade at Calicut, India, but on his return through Ethiopia in search of the land of Prester John, he became a captive and was never allowed to return to Portugal. By 1491, he had sent word to the king of what he learned and Portugal would have a combined land and sea route to the riches of India and the Far East. Neither explorer discovered the kingdom of the legendary Prester John.

When Castile and Portugal signed the Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, they apparently did not consider that the earth was round. They focused on the lands bordering the Atlantic Oceans. Portugal was busy sailing south along the West African coast.

Portugal explorers continued to sail further and further south down the West African coast until in 1498, Vasco da Gama sailed around the Cape of Good Hope and across the Indian Ocean to Calicut. Portugal now had a sea route to the riches of India and the Far East.

Seven years after Vasco de Gama arrived in Calicut, Portugal established the office of viceroyalty of India and appointed Francisco de Alaida. Alfonso de Albuquerque, the next viceroy, conquered Goa in 1510, which became the center for Portuguese power in South Asia. He expanded Portuguese influence across the Indian Ocean. In 1511, he conquered Malacca and then sent an expedition to find the Maluku Islands, commonly referred to as the “Spice Islands.”

The Kingdom of Castile

Portugal and Castile’s view of the world, as evidenced by the Treaty of Tordesilla (1494),  would soon change when Fernando de Magallanes, also known as Ferdinand Magellan, came upon the scene.

Magellan was born in about 1480 into a family of minor Portuguese nobility. He was a skilled sailor and naval officer who devised a plan to sail west around the tip of South America, across the Pacific Ocean to the Spice Islands, then across the Indian Ocean, around the southern tip of Africa and back north up the west coast of Africa to Portugal. In 1517, after King Manuel I of Portugal, the successor to John II, denied Magellan’s persistent requests to lead an expedition to reach the Spice Island by sailing west, Magellan renounced his Portuguese citizenship and moved to Castile. He and Pui Faleira, a Portuguese cosmographer, petitioned King Charles I of Castile to sponsor their plan. On April 19th, they received Royal permission directing them to seek spices in the Moluccas, an archipelago in the eastern part of Indonesia. On June 28th, Charles I became Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, in addition to King Charles I of Castile and Leơn. On August 10th or September 20th, Magellan set sail with a fleet of five ships from Sanlucar de Barrameda, northwest of Cádiz. Although Magellan died in battle in the Philippines, he claimed the islands for Castile and his captain, Juan Sebastián Elcano, did locate the Malukas. Elcano and the sole surviving ship, the Victoria, completed the circumnavigation and returned to Castile in 1522.

The Magellan-Elcano expedition found a southwest passage around South America into the Pacific thereby avoiding the Portuguese controlled Cape of Good Hope. In 1525, King Charles, believing that the Spice Islands were within the Castilian zone under the Treaty of Tordesillas, sent a seven-fleet expedition under Garcia Jofre de Loaisa to colonize the Spice Islands. The expedition landed at Tidore and built a fort (trading post); the Portuguese, however, had already landed at Tidore and had built a fort.

The Treaty of Zaragoza

After almost a decade of conflict, Castile and Portugal signed the Treaty of Zaragoza (Saragossa) in 1529. Portugal received all lands and seas west of the line, including all of Asia and that included the Maluku Islands. Castile received all lands and seas east of the line, including most of the Pacific Ocean, including the Philippines. Castile received 350,000 gold ducats, money Charles needed to continue the funding of his wars.

The Kingdom of Castile Capitalized on the Treaty of Zaragoza

In 1535, Castile established the viceroyalty of New Spain in Mexico City The Philippines came under the purview of this viceroyalty. It was not until when Miguel López de Legazpi landed in 1565 that Castilian began colonizing the Philippines. 

  That same year, 1565, six years before Manila became the capital of the Spanish East Indies, Castile discovered a maritime route across the Pacific Ocean from the Philippines to Mexico. This route led to the transpacific transport link for the annual Manila to Acapulco galleons, also called the Manila Galleon. The continents were getting connected and the world was getting smaller. A galleon trading ship would leave each port annually. The ship leaving Manila would carry goods from all over Asia:

 … jade, wax, gunpowder and silk from China, amber, cotton and rugs from India, spices from Indonesia and Malaysia, and a variety of goods from Japan….

Around 80% of the goods shipped back from Acapulco to Manila were from the Americas — silver, cochineal, seeds, sweet potato, corn, tomato, tobacco, chickpeas, chocolate and cocoa, watermelon seeds,vines, and fig trees. The remaining 20% were goods transshipped from Europe and North Africa such as wine and olive oil, and metal goods such as weapons, knobs and spurs. (Wikipedia, Manila Galleon, at 3-4, last viewed on 8/2/23)

After docking in Acapulco, the goods would be offloaded and carried by mule to the viceroyalty in Mexico City and then to the port of Veracruz on the Gulf of Mexico. Some goods would be sold in the Americas while most would be loaded onto Castilian ships and taken to Castile.

Back in the Old World

When the Castillians and the Portuguese were exploring the oceans, the English and French were fighting a series of wars that became known as the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453). The wars originated over competing claims to the French throne between the English House of Plantagenet and the French House of Valois. Finally, the French army defeated the English army at Castillon to end the war.

The English then turned inward and fought a series of civil wars over control of the English throne. These wars, that became known as the Wars of the Roses (1455-1485), were fought between two rival cadet branches of the royal House of Plantagenet: the House of Lancaster (represented by a red rose) and the House of York (represented by a white rose). These extended wars extinguished the male lines of both houses, leading to the Tudor family of Wales inheriting the Lancaster claim through Lady Margaret Beaufort, a descendant of King Edward III.

This power struggle came to a head in 1485 at the Battle of Bosworth Field when the army of Henry Tudor defeated the army of King Richard III. Richard died on the battlefield and Henry claimed the throne of England and the Lordship of Ireland as Henry VII. He married Elizabeth of York, the eldest daughter and sole heir of Edward IV, thereby uniting the rival claims and ending the Wars of the Roses. The two roses were combined to form the Tudor rose.

King Henry VII reigned for nearly twenty-four years. His foreign policy was to maintain peace and his domestic policy was to create economic prosperity. He entered into a number of treaties and trade agreements to further these goals. He stabilized his government’s finances by creating a financial council that created and collected new taxes.

Henry and Elizabeth had four children who survived childhood: Arthur, Margaret, Henry, and Mary. In 1502, Arthur married Catherine, the youngest daughter of Queen Isabella of Castile and King Ferdinand of Aragon. Five months after their marriage, Arthur contracted the mysterious “sweating sickness” and died. The next year, Margaret Tudor, Henry and Elizabeth’s elder daughter, left England to marry James IV, the King of Scotland.

In 1509, Henry, the son of Henry VII and Elizabeth, married his brother Arthor’s widow, Catherine of Aragon. That same year, Henry VII died and his son took the throne as King Henry VIII of England and Lord of Ireland. When the Tudor dynasty ended with the death of Queen Elizabeth, England turned to Henry VIII’s older sister who had married James IV of Scotland. Their great grandson, James VI of Scotland, the son of Mary, Queen of Scots, became King James I of England and King of Ireland.

Martin A. Frey
September 19, 2024