Portuguese Interests in Africa

Sources

Land of Mystery. Although quite close geographically, Africa was a continent that was not well known by Europeans during the Middle Ages. Crusading armies at times had tried to enter it, but on each occasion they had been unsuccessful at even getting past the northern coastlines. Merchants and missionaries, too, it seems, were halted from conducting their activities within the continent’s borders, stopped as much by Muslim governors as by harsh terrain, and thus they also remained ignorant of what the continent had to offer.

Animals and People. Of course, despite this ignorance, there still remained a European interest in Africa, fueled as it was by constant rumors of strange beasts and peoples. Elephants, lions, and crocodiles were well known in Europe, with several monarchs having menageries or zoos with such creatures displayed, usually sent to them as gifts from Middle Eastern and North African magnates who were seeking to improve political and trade relationships between their two lands. People with black skin were also known in Europe, some of whom may have been brought there as slaves or servants by crusaders or merchants, and others who had traveled there themselves. They were seen as curiosities, with little racial hatred, although being called by the generic name Moors reveals a belief that all were of the Muslim religion, whether this belief was true or not. These animals and people, in turn, led the European imagination to assume that other strange beasts and races, and mixtures of the two, existed within the inaccessible continent, as various records and bestiaries from the time have proven. Additionally, once Asia had been crossed and the mythical Prester John had not been found there, it began to be rumored that the great theologian-king dwelled not in Asia but in Africa.

Route to China. By the end of the fourteenth century a new route to China was also sought, one which did not necessarily have to go overland. The protection which merchants had once received from a fairly unified Mongol people had begun to dissolve because of a breakdown in central military authority and the political distance from China. This breakdown led to lawlessness and warfare along the once relatively safe Silk Road.

Reconquista. Before the end of the fourteenth century neither the Portuguese nor the Spanish Kingdoms seemed to have much interest in the non-Iberian geographical world. Having lost this peninsula to Muslim soldiers and their leaders in 711, Spanish and Portuguese Christians fought for more than the next seven hundred years to win it back. So important was the Reconquista, as this Crusade became known, that medieval Popes freed those Spaniards and Portuguese warriors involved in it from having to serve in other crusades being fought at the same time, including Crusades to the Holy Land. By the eleventh century, Christian armies had begun to recapture some Muslim-occupied lands, and in 1147, assisted by soldiers on their way to the Second Crusade (1144-1187), they besieged and conquered Lisbon. For the next two centuries, the Reconquista was at its strongest, with the kingdoms of Portugal, Castille, and Aragon taking the lead in recovering almost all of the Iberian peninsula. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, only the smallest of holdings was left in Muslim hands, the kingdom of Granada, at the tip of the peninsula and nearest to the African coast.

Prince Henry the Navigator. These military successes gave great confidence to the Spanish and Portuguese and, despite having frequent wars between themselves, the leaders of these Iberian kingdoms began to look abroad for the means to increase their economic and political clout. The Portuguese, and in particular Prince Henry of Portugal, known to history because of his fifteenth-century geographical initiatives as “the Navigator.” Before his death in 1460, nearly all of Henry’s goals were achieved: the exploration of Africa below Cape Bojador, the furthest south that any European had previously sailed along the western coast; the opening of trade relations with the inhabitants of the region; learning the extent of the Muslim kingdoms; verifying the existence of the legendary Christian kingdom established by Prester John; and spreading Christianity to any nonbelievers whom the Portuguese encountered.

Sources

Bailey W. Diffie, Prelude to Empire: Portugal Overseas before Henry the Navigator (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1960).

Diffie and G. D. Winius, The Foundations of the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1580 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic 1229-1492 (Philadelpolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977).

P. E. Russell, Prince Henry the Navigator: The Rise and Fall of a Culture Hero (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984).