In this lecture we are going to look
to the rise of the Portuguese seaborne empire.
The map on this slide gives you an indication
of territory controlled at one point in time or another by Portugal.
This is a map if you are looking to date this would be in the 16th century.
So, parts of South America, some parts of Central Africa,
a lot of coastal Africa,
the coasts in the Indian subcontinent
and as far away as southern Japan.
The Portuguese had many motivations for seeking to expand
certainly, land is always in high demand.
There were excess of soldiers in Portugal at the time
due to political consolidation that had ended
so what better use for soldiers
than to put them on ships and send them someplace else
because if you keep them around they could turn on you.
Some Portuguese citizens became interested in overseas territories
for honorific titles and for glory
others were interested in trade and profit
many Portuguese had Christian missionary zeal
others were curious and wanted to visit new places.
In some way you could consider
Portuguese expansion to be a continuation of the Crusades
that we have talked about in previous weeks.
Certainly, there was an element of many Portuguese believing
that their version of Christianity was superior to others
and that Islamic people was somehow inferior
and so that was certainly a factor in traveling overseas.
You might be surprised to hear the name Portugal
when talking about the first truly global or world power
because it is a fairly small nation
even at the time we are talking here in the 16th century
Portugal only had about a million and a half people.
On the Reconquista the reconquering of the Iberian Peninsula
had taken place much earlier in Portugal that it did in Spain.
Spain did not really finish until 1492 when they conquered Granada
in the southern portion of modern-day Spain.
The Portuguese finished their Reconquista
or the reclaiming of these lands from the Islamic rulers
in the 12th century.
Portugal had a much stable monarchy,
much more stable than other European nations at this time.
If you think of Britain, at the time,
in the 15th century they were fighting the War of Roses.
The French had not even unified what is modern-day France at this time.
Places like Burgundy were still relatively independent.
The Portuguese had an ideal location on the Atlantic seaboard
which gave them several advantages
certainly, that of being close to the sea
where you want to be if you want to expand and create a seaborne Empire.
They also had a long tradition of maritime activities
and tens of thousands of sailors and ships at ready disposal
so that benefited them.
Finally there was this issue of the "fidalgos".
So the word "fidalgo" is similar to the Spanish word "hidalgo"
means "son of someone".
In particular a "fidalgo" or a "hidalgo" in the Spanish tradition
would be the son of a noble, the son of someone, maybe with a capital S
so there were a generation of "fidalgos" who no longer had wars to fight,
civil war was long over
and you had to do something with these individuals.
They were trained for warfare,
they were seeking glory and making a name for themselves
and there just was not much else to do in Portugal
if you were, for example, the duke of a remote region
where there was sheep herding or grain growing.
It is not particularly lucrative nor is it particularly exciting
so some of these "fidalgos", this generation of young nobles
seeking adventure and glory helped to catapult Portugal
to the top as a world power.
One of the most important reasons of the rise of the Portuguese
as a world power was a man named Dom Henrique, or Prince Henry,
of the royal house of Aviz.
He lived from 1394 to 1460.
He was the third son of King John of Portugal,
the founder of the Aviz dynasty
and he was related to King Edward III of England
through his mother's side.
In 1420 he was named the governor of the wealthy Order of Christ.
the Portuguese successor to the Knights Templar.
As the third son of the Portuguese king, chances were pretty slim
even for those days that he would live long enough to be king,
so he was always going to be a claimant to the throne
but a sort of distant claimant
so he kind of carved a new niche out for himself.
As governor of the Order of Christ
he had a very wealthy and steady income stream
which allowed him to sponsor many voyages of discovery.
We should note, I should add,
that Prince Henry the Navigator went on very few voyages himself
and one we will talk about in particular
but mostly stayed in his court at Sagres which is on the screen here.
He attracted scientists, sailors, and merchants to his court.
Unlike — and your book may say this too, I don't recall exactly what it said then
many textbooks have this mistaken impression that at Sagres
there was a research school for maritime studies or something
they came with these crazy terms.
It really was not a school, it was just a medieval prince
that people came to see and they were after his money
or his sponsorship for these voyages which he did
but he was very integral, even though again
he almost never left his court at Sagres.
Here is Sagres, a very southern tip, extreme southwestern tip of Portugal.
on the Atlantic Ocean.
If you were looking out from the court of Prince Henry, the Navigator
— which you can't anymore because it's no longer there,
there is a memorial there for it —
but this is the view that Prince Henry ostensibly would have seen
looking out from his court.
And this is your intrepid instructor in the beach near Sagres
thinking that in August it would be great whether for swimming.
In fact, the water was probably about 4º or 5º C.
The North Atlantic current comes right down the coast of Portugal
at that time of year.
It was very icy, so I was there only long enough to get a photo.
Prince Henry had a number of motivations.
He was a deeply religious individual
and there are some questions to how to rank this.
I would probably say God and gold would be 1 & 2,
depending on the day of the week.
He certainly wanted to spread the Christian Gospel,
to tale back lands that were in the hands of pagans or Muslims
but he was a man of his times and a man who sought prophet
where he could find it
so, he had these dual competing first motivations.
Certainly. he was interested in glory.
He was born into a royal house
and this is sort of expected to make a name for oneself.
One of the main interests though for Prince Henry
was to find a route to what he called the Indies,
places where valuable spices were grown.
Things like pepper, nutmeg, cloves, and maize
could only be at this time purchased through a very fortuitous route.
If you think back to our earliest discussions of the Silk Road,
you get an idea of how far things have to travel across land
to get to Europe.
So, he wanted to sort of a bypass Venetian middlemen merchants
who did business with the Arabs
who did business with the Persians
who did business with people in India and the Indian Ocean basin
and bring those spices to Europe at a cheaper price
and thus, keep the profits for himself.
Finally, Prince Henry was interested in an individual
that we refer to today as Prester John.
Prester John was a mythical figure, he did not exist.
There is a number of theories
as to who might have inspired this legendary figure
but he was believed by the Portuguese and many Europeans at this time
to live somewhere in the east.
So, they had a term they referred to as the Indies
which could have been the Arabian Peninsula.
could have been the Horn of Africa,
could have been India itself.
Europeans at this time had a very fuzzy notion
of what the world looked like.
They did not believe it was flat unlike the common misconception
about Columbus,
but they believed the Indian Ocean was a closed ocean
and the Portuguese were among the first to contest that,
but Prester John was believed to be a very powerful Christian king
somewhere in the east
and Europeans believed fervently
that all they needed to do was to contact with Prester John
and they would have a valuable ally against the Muslim world.
We should not overlook the role of technology
in Portuguese expansion.
The Portuguese proved themselves to be very innovative
both in their use of new technology,
their invention of new technology in their overseas voyages
pictured here as a monument in Lisbon.
Actually it is in Belém, just to the west of Lisbon
It is the "padrão dos descobrimentos", or the pillar of discovery.
Henry the Navigator is first and foremost on the far right.
You can see he is holding a ship
and a number of other famous explorers are in this sculpture,
including Vasco da Gama we'll talk about a bit later
in this presentation.
The astrolabe was used for measuring angles
between observers and the stars, the moon or the sun.
It has Greek and Arabic origins as a land-based navigation tool
but the Portuguese and the Spanish began using this at sea
which was an innovation.
With an astrolabe you can determine latitude
which allows you to sail out of sight from land.
Portulani or portolan charts are maps that show coastal features and ports.
They provide the user a very realistic depiction of the shore
but they do not take into account the curvature of the Earth.
They are very unhelpful in crossing open ocean
where you can't see the land.
They are better used for smaller bodies of water
like the Mediterranean or any place that you could stay in reach of the coast.
But the Portuguese were among the innovators
who began using these portulani.
"Roteiros"
We would translate this in English as rudders.
They are more like diaries that may be like a diary plus a map.
They were highly accurate and secret sailing instructions
that describe harbours and routes to get to various places.
They would provide information about landmarks
and other navigational information
and drawings of notable features.
The Portuguese did their very best for several centuries
to keep these from falling into the hands of would-be competitors.
The Portuguese did not invent the cannon and this use of gunpowder based firearms
as we know from earlier discussions first occurred in China.
But the Portuguese innovation was to stick cannons on ships
and make them sort of floating fortresses.
The "caravela", that the English called the carrack
was a very innovative ship that the Portuguese developed.
It was very agile and easier to navigate.
It had a tonnage of between 50 and 160 tons.
Usually it was a three-masted ship and it mixed a variety of sails
so it had a square mast sail
which is kind of a northern European tradition
— you can see it in the centre of the ship —
which provided power.
And then they mixed in these triangular-shaped or lateen sails
and they get this idea from the Arabs in the Red Sea in the Indian Ocean.
So lateen sails allow you to tack or take 90 degrees angle back and forth
so you can sail against the wind.
The caravel had a very shallow keel instead of a very deeper keel
so shallow keeled ships can go up deeper rivers
as opposed to more ocean-going vessels.
This is a very fast and manoeuvrable ship although somewhat limited
in its cargo capacity, very little in the way of cabin accomnodations.
People generally slept on deck.
Interestingly too, you can see the forecastle and aftcastle.
These are structures built on the ship
but through which armaments could be fired
but they were very powerful ships for the time period, very innovative
and one of the reasons Portuguese took off
as a major seaborne imperial power.
A much larger ship they developed a little bit later into the 16th century
was the "nau".
These would be over 100 tons.
They were more like, if the character of caravel was the floating fortress,
this would be like a floating warehouse with cannons.
They were designed to carry large cargoes
and to protect them as best as possible.
They were able to old sufficient stores for much longer voyages
than the "caravelas" which had to pull into port relatively frequently,
after a few weeks for fresh water and food.
The Portuguese were innovative in developing systems of maritime insurance
to protect against hazards when ships were sent out to sea.
Of course, it was very expensive to outfit a ship and send it to sea
so, this was just another modernization or innovation
the Portuguese were forerunners up.
The beginnings of the Portuguese Empire is the next section
that we'll take a look at
so we have to see how Portugal goes from being a tiny nation
of a million and a half people at the beginning of the 15th century
into becoming a world power.
This process begins with the capture of a place called Ceuta
on the northern African coast in 1415.
This was an expedition and it's one of the few times
Prince Henry actually left Portugal.
He was on this initial military expedition against Ceuta.
45 000 soldiers and support personnel
and 200 Portuguese ships left Lisbon in 1415.
European observers knew something was going on
but they didn't know exactly where the Portuguese were going.
They did catch the defenders of Ceuta off guard
and it was a relatively quick victory.
Unfortunately for the Portuguese, they had originally thought
that if they captured Ceuta, they would have this stranglehold
on trans-Saharan trade, especially gold,
but the caravans just found other ports to go to
and they sort of bypassed Ceuta since it was in Portuguese hands.
So, it was a military victory and they captured some land and territory
but it did not provide the Portuguese the wealth they thought.
The next series of expeditions were down the West Africa coast
and Prince Henry was sponsoring these voyages again.
He would send out ships sometimes several per year.
The expedition led by Gil Eanes to keep Bojador
was particularly significant
because Europeans believed this is a point of no return
where if you went too far sea monsters will devour you.
It's in modern-day Western Sahara.
In my crudely drawn map here you can see
one of the reasons why this had been a source of difficulty for Europeans
is the way that the waves and current systems
travel at Cape Bojador.
They split, they either go north or south.
The difficulty in the past before the development of ships
like the "caravela", was that ships would go past Cape Bojador
and never came back.
They didn't get eaten by sea monsters but they just couldn't make it back
because of the winds and the currents at that point.
Continuing down African coast, 1441
you can see, if you look closely
António Gonçalves and Nuno Tristão.
Nuno Tristão was a knight and an employer of Henry the Navigator.
The success of this expedition led Portuguese merchants and adventurers
to apply to Henry for slave trading licences
between 1444 and 1446.
Several dozens of Portuguese ships set out for slave raids
around our Guinea Bay
which you can see is near the centre of this particular map.
They started initially hunting seals but they brought back slaves to Price Henry
because they couldn't catch seals on one expedition
and this proved to be a very lucrative trade.
Lisbon almost overnight became a major slave selling market
and this really was the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade.
So, if I sound enthusiastic about Prince Henry the Navigator,
keep in mind he was also the world's first merchant
in human trafficking in the transatlantic slave trade.
So, rather mixed history for our friend, Prince Henry.
Alvise Cadamosto was a Venetian ship captain
so, he wasn't ethnically Portuguese
but was in the employ of Prince Henry the Navigator
In 1455 he discovered at least for the Europeans
the Madeira and the Canary Islands.
In 1456 he discovered the Cape Verde Islands.
He sailed about 60 miles up the Gambia River.
Most those accounts of journeys
especially the detailed observations of West Africa
are invaluable to modern-day historians.
The Canary Islands eventually go to the Spanish
but both of those major island chains were major sources of sugar cultivation
and this was sort of a way in which the Spanish and the Portuguese
learned how to make very healthy profits
from exploiting human labour in the form of slaves
to produce a particularly lucrative cash crop which is sugar.
There was an interesting...
Prince Henry the Navigator died in 1456, by the way,
and there was a little bit of a lull in the Portuguese expansion
in part due to an attempted coup d'état on the crown
or civil discontent in the country
but there was an interesting discovery
that was made by João Vaz Corte-Real, the Explorer.
He called it Terra Nova do Bacalhau, in 1472.
Now the Portuguese, remember, are very secret about where they go
but he called it the New Land of the Codfish.
The Portuguese had been traveling into the North Atlantic
to fish for cod which are very big, at this time.
Some of them were up to about eight feet in length
although the North Atlantic has been kind of overfished on cod
but there are very important commodity for the Portuguese.
Prior to traveling to India was codfish
because you can dry it very easily you can sell it, it keeps for a long time.
All you have to do is reconstitute it with water.
So, João Vaz Corte-Real landed someplace in the North Atlantic
that he called it the New Land of the Codfish.
This might have a new feeling.
He might have beat Christopher Columbus to North America by 20 years.
There have been other Europeans not the least of which were the Vikings
who we know today wound up in Newfoundland Labrador
and parts of Canada.
But we are pretty sure he was somewhere in the Grand Banks off the coast
of Newfoundland and may have set foot on North America.
The next major figure that leads Portuguese expansion again
after this period of a civil war and ??? discourse
is João II, who was the grand-nephew of Henry the Navigator.
As a prince, John II accompanied his father
in campaigns in northern Africa, as a young man.
He was made a knight after victory the conquest of Arzila
in northern Africa, in 1471.
In 1473 he married Leonor of Viseu, the Infanta of Portugal, his first cousin.
It was crazy times back then
and that kind of things was pretty normal among the royal houses of Europe.
Significance is he kind of kickstarts and jumpstarts Portuguese expansion.
He is very much interested in the unexplored lands
and the potential for profits that existed overseas.
After Henry the Navigator,
he is probably the second most important figure
in leading Portugal's expansion
and he begins to sponsor new voyages.
Diogo Cão, the first European known to cross the Equator
— I'm sure there were plenty of others who did, we just do not have records of.
In this image you can see a "padrão" or a pillar, a marker,
erected by Cão at the river Congo.
He was the first European known to sight and enter the Congo River
and he explored the territory of Central Africa
from the Equator all the way down to Walvis Bay and Namibia.
The marker he left reads something like this,
"Here arrived the ships of king John II of Portugal"
and the names of the explorers.
On July 2nd also, he sent forth explorers to go to what is modern-day Ethiopia.
This is one of the places that Europeans thought Prester John might be located
because the Ethiopians — as we have talked about in previous weeks —
were a Christian kingdom
but they were not really well known
at least by first-hand experience to the Europeans.
Of course, it's very difficult to get to Ethiopia
— except for the modern world, we can fly there.
It is a highland region so it is 10 -15 thousand feet in the air
and difficult to arrive at
but this is one of several efforts by the Portuguese
to locate this legendary priest, king Prester John.
The Cabo da Boa Esperança,
— which we would translate as the Cape of Good Hope —
was passed by Bartolomeu Dias in 1488.
He made it around and this is the point at which the Portuguese knew
there was another route by which they could get to India.
By this time the Portuguese had figured out the Indian Ocean was not a closed ocean
and there was a route to get there.
The Portuguese are in a very enviable position.
Unfortunately, at this time too
you have Christopher Columbus getting ready to make his voyage
across the Atlantic,
so, the Portuguese are going to wait-and-see mode
after a few years to figure out what has Columbus done
and how this affect us
because they knew at this point that they had a route
they could get to India.
The Indian Ocean basin, at this time, is really the centre of the world commerce.
You can see just a few of the items that are being traded in this region
with this region being sort of the centre for goods going back and forth
between Europe and East Asia
or many products themselves.
A great number of spices, textile products.
Left off of this map here, interestingly, is the East African merchants.
I'm going to have to make a point
to update this map as I'm looking at it
because slaves. ivory and gold were traded from East Africa
to some of these other regions.
But the important point is that the Portuguese knew
this was a place where there was a lot of valuable commodities
and they had to get there.
The Spanish too knew of the existence of this region.
I mean they have been receiving these products
through Venetian and Arabic traders for hundreds of years.
In 1494 we have already had Columbus travel back,
travel to the New World back.
The Portuguese, at this time, know that they have a road to the Indies
so they agree to develop a treaty with the Spanish.
It has to involve the Pope
and it doesn't really go so well for the Portuguese
because there is a Spanish Pope on this time
and so the Spanish kind of have one of their own on the papal throne.
The Treaty of Tordesillas essentially divided the world into two spheres.
This map shows you the boundaries of the Treaty of Tordesillas.
You can see, interestingly, there is this dotted line.
We'll get to that in a second.
Everything to the west was supposed to be Spanish territory.
Everything to the east was supposed to be Portuguese territory.
Of course, the English, the French, the Germans, the Russians,
anybody else who might have an interest in some of these areas,
the Italians, they were not happy about this treaty
and of course, many of them have denounced it
but again, we had a Spanish Pope on the throne.
The dotted line represents the original line of demarcation,
at the 38th longitude.
Interestingly, the Portuguese insisted on getting this pushed further west.
To the Spanish this seemed like a no-brainer be there, like,
"Ok, if you want some open ocean, you can have more open ocean"
because, as far as they knew,
Columbus had landed in the West Indies
— what we today call the West Indies —
and there was nothing else there between the 38th and 46th marker.
Some conspiracy theorists or even educated historians
suggest that maybe the Portuguese knew of the existence of Brazil
and that is why they insisted on moving this line for the west.
The other explanation is the Portuguese were just negotiating
and they had no clue as to the location of Brazil.
But it wouldn't surprise me that the Portuguese again
who were so very secretive and kept all their information tightly close to them
would have known about this.
At any rate, after this treaty is signed there is a new king.
We have got Manuel I.
Vasco da Gama and his famous voyage.
He is the first European to go around the southern coast of Africa
and get to India.
The first voyage in 1497-1499, a very significant expedition
with four ships, 500 men.
When he arrived in Calicut his first words allegedly were,
"We seek Christians and spices".
So, this reinforces this idea that they were still looking
very dedicated fashioned for Prester John.
The second voyage, a much bigger fleet, 20 ships, over 2000 men.
This was a voyage built heavily on the use of what we would today called
gunboat diplomacy.
Vasco da Gama showed up in places like Calicut in the Indian coast,
the Malabar coast of India,
and places like Quiloa, on Swahili coast of East Africa
and essentially gave an ultimatum,
"either sign a trade treaty with us or we will bomb you into oblivion.
Of course, they didn't quite have enough firepower to destroy entire cities
but it was fairly effective
in getting some of these local leaders
to come on board with the Portuguese.
The Mîrî was a pilgrim ship.
You can see it is spelled here.
As a way to try to enforce Portuguese rule
— this was actually in the Arabian Sea
which us kind of the northern part of the Indian Ocean —
this pilgrim ship was traveling back from Mecca
and had mostly women, children and old people on it.
In order to make his point
Vasco da Gama ordered the burning and sinking of the ship
with all the occupants on it.
So, very harsh realities that the Portuguese were seeking
to impose on the Indian Ocean basin.
In terms of a legacy, Vasco da Gama made almost overnight
Portugal a dominant world power.
He provided a new route to the east
something known as the "estado da India" comes out of this.
So, they translated it directly a "state of India"
but it's like the Portuguese Seaborne Empire in India.
This opened a new period of European expansion
and the Portuguese reputation became one of
— I don't know how else to put it —
they become known as rather ruthless
thugs who would do whatever they needed to do
in order to protect their new empire.
Here is a quick image of the "estado da India".
The method by which the Portuguese set shops
in the east was mostly to get these small regions,
little port cities hold on to those tenaciously
and try to control all the choke points on the main trade points
in these networks.
For the better part of a hundred years
the Portuguese had an almost exclusive lock on spices
and other Asian and South Asian products traveling to Europe.
They became extremely wealthy in a very short period of time.
In terms of early effects Portugal again became a major world power.
This really changed the political and commercial structure
of the Indian Ocean basin.
The Portuguese established themselves as a dominant power
not the only power in the Indian Ocean basin
throughout the 16th century.
They were the most powerful maritime force
in the Indian Ocean basin
and had a stranglehold kind of on much of the trade coming out of there.
This was a very significant blow for the Venetians
who again had had that middle person or middleman trading
with Arabs and Persians going through the Middle East.
They used to control the spice trade
and some of the important east-west trades
and they were almost overnight sort of booted out of these trades.
They never really recovered from that.
Prior to the arrival of the Portuguese as a world power,
the Venetians had been on the rise.
They were a major commercial power
and something of a military power in the Mediterranean basin.
That loss almost overnight of revenue doomed them.
Portugal dominated the spice trade to Europe in much of the 16th century
became very wealthy
but good news for Venice bad news for the Portuguese
because other European powers became very interested
in tapping into profits that Portuguese seemed to have monopolized.
This brings to a close or a brief look at
the Portuguese Seaborne Empire.