Portuguese leader in the Age of Exploration NO , Why ?

[𝔓𝔲𝔰𝔥𝔶]

I wonder why a Leader of Portugal is not included in the Age of Exploration after reading this? - I can't find any reason not to be.

First Portuguese Atlantic expeditions (1419-1460)

Trans-Atlantic trade routes circa 1400

In 1415, the Portuguese conquered Ceuta with the aim of controlling shipping on the North African coast, an event generally recognised as the beginning of Portuguese expansion. The young Prince Henry the Navigator, who took part in the conquest, learnt about the profit possibilities of the Trans-Asian trade routes. For centuries, slave and gold trade routes had linked West Africa to the Mediterranean across the Sahara desert, controlled by hostile Muslim powers from North Africa. Prince Henry then set out to find out how far the Muslim territories extended, in the hope of overcoming them and trading directly by sea, finding allies in the Christian lands that were thought to exist to the south, such as the legendary Preste João, and finding out if it would be possible to reach the Indies, the origin of the lucrative spice trade. He then invested his personal wealth in sponsoring exploratory voyages off the coast of Mauritania, bringing together a group of merchants, shipowners and those interested in new maritime routes.

In 1419 and 1420, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão da Ilha recognised the islands of Porto Santo and Madeira. The archipelagos of Madeira and the Canary Islands aroused the interest of both the Portuguese and the Castilians from an early stage; being neighbours of the African coast, they represented strong economic and strategic potential. In 1427, Diogo de Silves reached the Azores archipelago.

From 1422 onwards, successive voyages along the African coast succeeded in overcoming Cape No, the southern limit considered insurmountable by Europeans and Arabs. In 1434, Gil Eanes rounded Cape Bojador, dispelling the terror that this promontory inspired. The following year, sailing with Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia, they discovered Angra de Ruivos and the latter reached the River of Gold in Western Sahara. Meanwhile, after the Portuguese defeat of Tangier in 1437, the Portuguese postponed their plans to conquer Morocco in North Africa. In 1441, Nuno Tristão reached Cape Blanc. Together with Antão Gonçalves, they made forays to the River of Gold. From then on, there was a widespread belief that this area of the African coast could sustain commercial activity, regardless of further advances.

In 1453, Constantinople fell to the Ottomans, dealing a blow to Christianity and established trade relations. In 1455, Pope Nicholas V issued the bull Romanus Pontifex, reinforcing the previous Dum Diversas of 1452, declaring that the lands and seas discovered beyond Cape Bojador belonged to the kings of Portugal, authorising trade, but also conquests against infidels and pagans, reducing them to perpetual slavery, and initiating the policy of mare clausum in the Atlantic.

In 1456, Diogo Gomes reached the Cape Verde archipelago. In the following decade, several captains in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator - such as the Genoese António da Noli and the Venetian Alvise Cadamosto - discovered the remaining islands and settlement followed in the 15th century. The Gulf of Guinea was reached in the 1460s.

Explorations after Prince Henry the Navigator (1460-♥♥♥♥)

Replica of a caravel, used from the middle of the 15th century for ocean exploration
In 1460, Pêro de Sintra reached Sierra Leone. In November of that year, Prince Henry died and, in 1469, given the limited income from exploration, Afonso V, King of Portugal, granted a monopoly on trade in the Gulf of Guinea to the Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes da Mina, for an annual rent of 200,000 réis. According to João de Barros, this ‘honourable citizen of Lisbon’ was obliged to continue his explorations, since the exclusive trade was guaranteed on the condition that ‘in each of these five years he would be obliged to discover a hundred leagues along the coast, so that at the end of his lease he would have five hundred leagues discovered’.

This advance, of which there are few details, is thought to have started from Sierra Leone, where Pêro de Sintra and Soeiro da Costa had already arrived. With the collaboration of navigators such as João de Santarém, Pedro Escobar, Lopo Gonçalves, Fernão do Pó and Pedro de Sintra, Fernão Gomes went even further than contracted: with their sponsorship, the Portuguese reached Cape Santa Catarina, already in the Southern Hemisphere. João de Santarém and Pêro Escobar explored the northern coast of the Gulf of Guinea, reaching the ‘gold mine’ of Sama (now Sama Bay), the coast of Mina, Benin, Calabar and Gabon and the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe and Ano Bom. When the expeditions reached Elmina on the Gold Coast in 1471, they found a flourishing local trade in alluvial gold.

In 1474, King Afonso V entrusted his son, Prince João, the future King João II, with the organisation of explorations of African lands, which thus passed from private initiative to the crown. He reconnoitred the entire coast up to the region of the St Augustine pattern. In 1483, Diogo Cão reached the Zaire River and two years later, on a second voyage, the Serra Parda.

In 1487, King João II sent Afonso de Paiva and Pêro da Covilhã overland in search of Preste João and information on navigation and trade in the Indian Ocean. That same year, Bartolomeu Dias, commanding an expedition with three caravels, reached the Cape of Good Hope. The nautical link between the Atlantic and the Indian Ocean was thus established. The project for the sea route to India was outlined by King João II as a measure to reduce costs in trade with Asia and an attempt to monopolise the spice trade. In addition to the increasingly solid Portuguese maritime presence, King João aimed to dominate the trade routes and expand the kingdom of Portugal, which was already becoming an empire. However, this endeavour would not be realised during his reign. It would be his successor, Manuel I, who would appoint Vasco da Gama to this expedition, while maintaining the original plan.

Maritime expansion to the ‘New World’
Columbus reaches the ‘West Indies’ (1492)
See main article: Discovery of America, Discovery of Brazil
The Crown of Castile, Portugal's rival, was a little slower to start exploring the Atlantic. It wasn't until the end of the 15th century, after the unification of the crowns of Castile and Aragon and once the reconquest had been completed, that the Spanish were committed to finding new trade routes and expanding. The crown of Aragon had been a maritime potentate in the Mediterranean, controlling territories in eastern Spain, south-western France and major islands such as Mallorca, Sicily and Malta, the Kingdom of Naples and Sardinia, in domains that extended as far as Greece. In 1492, the Catholic kings conquered the Moorish kingdom of Granada, which had been supplying African goods through tribute to Castile, and decided to finance the expedition of the Genoese Christopher Columbus - who had presented himself to King John II of Portugal twice, in 1485 and ♥♥♥♥, without success - ‘in the hope of diverting Portugal's trade to Africa and thence to the Indian Ocean, reaching Asia by travelling west’.

The four voyages of Christopher Columbus 1492-1503
Sailing for the Spanish crown, Christopher Columbus set sail from Palos de la Frontera on 3 August 1492 with three small vessels: the ship Santa Maria and the caravels Niña and Pinta. On 12 October 1492, Christopher Columbus reached what he called the ‘West Indies’, an islet in the Bahamas which he named San Salvador. Sailing on, he docked in Cuba (according to the Cubans themselves, the name is derived from the word Taíno, ‘cubanacán’, meaning ‘a central place’) and arrived in Haiti, which he named Hispaniola. Assuming he had reached India, he left a small colony and returned to Europe. On his second voyage in 1493, he sighted the Antilles and approached Martinique. He then headed north and reached Puerto Rico. He went to Hispaniola, where the small colony had been razed to the ground by the natives. Having left another contingent of men there, he sailed westwards and reached Jamaica. On this voyage he founded Isabela, now Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, the first European settlement on the American continent.

Replicas of the caravels Niña, Pinta and the ship Santa María (centre) in Palos de la Frontera, Spain
The Spanish were initially disappointed with their discoveries - unlike Africa or Asia, the Caribbean islands allowed little trade. The islands therefore became the focus of colonisation efforts. Only later, when the interior of the continent was explored, would Spain find the wealth it had sought in the form of abundant silver and gold.

In the Americas, the Spanish found a series of empires as large and populous as those in Europe. However, small bodies of Spanish conquistadors with large armies of Amerindians managed to defeat these states. The most notable of the conquered states were the Aztec empire in Mexico (conquered in 1521) and the Inca empire in Peru (conquered in 1532). During this time, disease pandemics such as European smallpox devastated the indigenous populations. Once Spanish sovereignty was established, exploitation centred on the extraction and export of gold and silver.

The Treaty of Tordesillas (1494)
See main article: Treaty of Tordesillas

Tordesillas Meridian (pink) of 1494 and its antimeridian (green) established by the Treaty of Zaragoza in 1529
After Columbus arrived in the ‘West Indies’, a division of the zone of influence became necessary to avoid future conflicts between the Spanish and Portuguese. This was resolved in 1494, with the signing under papal aegis of the Treaty of Tordesillas, which ‘divided’ the world between the two powers of the time, Portugal and Spain.

Immediately after Columbus' return in 1493, the Catholic kings had obtained from Pope Alexander VI the papal bull Inter caetera stating that all the lands west and south of a meridian 100 leagues west of the Azores or the Cape Verde Islands should belong to Spain and, later, including all the territories of India. It did not mention Portugal, which could not claim newly discovered lands even east of this line. King João II of Portugal was not satisfied with the agreement, feeling that it gave him little leeway - preventing him from reaching India, his main objective. He then negotiated directly with King Ferdinand of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile to move this line westwards, allowing him to claim all the newly discovered lands to the east of it.

In the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, the Portuguese ‘received’ all the territories outside Europe east of a meridian that ran 270 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands, which gave them control over Africa, Asia and eastern South America (Brazil). The Spanish were given all the territories west of that line, which were still almost completely unknown, and which turned out to be mainly the western part of the American continent and the islands of the Pacific Ocean.

The New World (1497-1507)

Juan de la Cosa's map of 1500 is the oldest unequivocal representation of the Americas
Only a small part of the area divided up by the Treaty of Tordesillas had ever been seen by Europeans, and it was only divided up on paper. Immediately after Columbus' first voyage, several explorers sailed in the same direction. In 1497, Giovanni Caboto, also an Italian, obtained a patent from King Henry VII of England. Leaving Bristol, probably supported by the local ‘Society of Merchant Venturers’, Caboto crossed the Atlantic further north, hoping that the journey would be shorter, and landed somewhere in North America, possibly in Newfoundland.

In 1499, João Fernandes Lavrador was licensed by the King of Portugal and, together with Pêro de Barcelos, for the first time sighted Labrador, which was granted and named in his honour. Almost at the same time, between 1499-1502, the brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte Real explored and named the coasts of Greenland and Newfoundland. Both explorations were marked on the Cantino planisphere of 1502.

[𝔓𝔲𝔰𝔥𝔶]

Maleque Aiaz (Malik Ayyaz) or Maleque Iaz de Diu (Malik Yaz de Diu), called Meliqueaz or Melique Az by the Portuguese, was governor of the city of Diu (1507-1509), under the rule of the Sultan of Gujarat and one of the most distinguished warriors of the time.

Meliqueaz was a Mamluk of Russian origin who had been taken prisoner and converted to Muslim, arriving in India where he distinguished himself in the service of the Sultan of Guzerate (Maleque is the equivalent of Dom, or Lord). Guzerate lived off trade in the Red Sea and Egypt, and when the Portuguese threatened his domains, the sultan put the defense in the hands of Meliqueaz, who fought several battles with the Portuguese, along with the Mamluk fleet captain Mirocém (Amir Huceine Alcurdi). He took part in the Battle of Chaul, at the end of which, although he was sorry to see such brave men die, he still saved twenty Portuguese (after the Battle of Diu he would hand over the prisoners of that battle, dressed and well fed) and later the Battle of Diu in 1509 .

As the battle approached, the Portuguese viceroy Francisco de Almeida sent him a letter that said:

“I say this to you, honorable Meliqueaz, captain of Diu, and let you know that I am going with my horsemen to this city of yours, to spear the people who have taken refuge there, after they fought with my people in Chaul, and killed a man who was called my son; and I am coming in the hope of God in heaven to take vengeance on them and on those who help them; And if I do not find them, this city of yours will not escape me, and it will pay me everything, and you, for the good help you did in Chaul; which I am making you aware of, so that when I arrive, I will be on my way, and I will be staying in this island of Bombay, as this man who is carrying this letter will tell you”.

" You've eaten the chicken, now you'll have to eat the rooster"

On the Portuguese side there were 18 ships, 15 of which were ships and caravels. The opposing forces had a much larger number of vessels, almost a hundred, although only 12 were large ships.

[Jean Cousteau]

Chatgpt post. Play a different game