54 CHAPTER 3 THE CONQUEST OF AMERICA
outfi tted and sent to India. Swinging far west in the
south Atlantic, Cabral made landfall on the coast of
Brazil in early 1500 and sent one ship back to Lisbon
to report his discovery before continuing to India. He
returned to Portugal with a cargo of spices and tales
of scuffl es with Arab merchants, who were deter-
mined to resist the Portuguese intruders.
The great soldier and administrator Afonso de
Albuquerque, who set out in 1509, completed the
work begun by da Gama. He knew the only way
to squeeze out the Egyptian and Venetian compe-
tition and gain a total monopoly of the spice trade
was by conquering key points on the trade routes of
the Indian Ocean. Capture of Malacca on the Malay
Peninsula gave the Portuguese control of the strait
through which East Indian spices entered the In-
dian Ocean. Capture of Muscat and Ormuz barred
entrance to the Persian Gulf and closed that route to
Europe to other nations’ ships. Although the Portu-
guese strategy was not completely successful, it di-
verted to Lisbon the greater part of the spice supply.
For a time, Portugal basked in the sun of an
unprecedented prosperity. But the strain of main-
taining its vast Eastern defense establishment was
too great for Portugal’s limited manpower and fi -
nancial resources, and expenses began to outrun
revenues. To make matters worse, as a result of
Spanish pressure, King Manuel decreed the expul-
sion of all unbaptized Jews in 1496. Thus, Portu-
gal lost the only native group who were fi nancially
capable of exploiting the investment opportuni-
ties offered by the Portuguese triumph in the East.
Florentine and German bankers quickly moved
in and diverted most of the profi ts of the Eastern
spice trade abroad. Lisbon was soon only a depot,
and cargoes that arrived there from the East were
shipped almost immediately to Antwerp or Am-
sterdam, which were better situated as centers of
distribution to European customers. In time, Dutch
and English rivals snatched most of the Asiatic col-
onies from Portugal’s failing hands.
THE ADVANCE INTO THE ATLANTIC
Certain groups of islands in the eastern Atlantic—
the Canaries, Madeiras, Azores, and Cape Verdes—
early attracted the attention of Portugal and Spain.
These islands played a strategic role in the coloniza-
tion of America, providing steppingstones and stag-
ing areas for the Atlantic crossing. Moreover, their
conquest and colonial economic organization set
the pattern for Iberian policies in the New World.
The Madeira island group, colonized in 1425,
became the most important Portuguese colony in
the eastern Atlantic. Madeira’s soil and climate
were suitable for growing sugar, the most lucra-
tive cash crop of the time, and, with Genoese fi -
nancial and technical aid, sugar production was
established in Madeira, using slaves from the Ca-
nary Islands and later Africa. By 1460, Madeira
had its fi rst sugar mill, and by 1478 it was the larg-
est sugar producer in the Western world. The Por-
tuguese applied the same successful formula—the
combination of sugar and African slave labor—in
their colonization of Brazil.
The Canaries had been known to Europeans
since the early fourteenth century, but their de-
fi nitive conquest by Castile began in 1402. The
islanders (Guanches), a herding and farming peo-
ple organized in mutually hostile tribes, resisted
fi ercely, and the conquest was not complete until
about 1497. Less than two centuries after the con-
quest of the Canaries began, the Guanches, who
once may have numbered between 50,000 and
100,000, were extinct, chiefl y as a result of mis-
treatment and disease. The conquest of the Canar-
ies foretold similar developments in the Caribbean.
Like the Madeiras, the Canaries became a labo-
ratory for testing political and economic institutions
that would later be transferred to the Americas. Al-
though the lordship of the islands was vested in the
crown, the monarchs made agreements (capitula-
ciones) with individual captains (adelantados) who
were authorized to conquer specifi c regions and
granted large governing powers and other privi-
leges. These agreements resembled the contracts
made with military leaders during the Reconquest
and with Columbus, Francisco Pizarro, and other
great captains during the conquest of America.
Like the Madeiras, the Canaries also became
a testing ground for a plantation system based on
sugar and slave labor. By the early sixteenth cen-
tury, twenty-nine sugar mills were in operation
there. The character of the Canaries as a way station
between Europe and America for sugar production
is borne out by the transfer from the Canaries to the