which is reprinted in Europeans in West Africa, 1450–1560, trans. and ed. John William
Blake, vol. 1 ( 1942 ; Nendeln/Liechtenstein: Kraus Reprint, 1967 ), and Abraham Ortelius’s
world map from the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum... (Antwerp, 1570 ), included in Hakluyt
( 1589 ). See also, for a very early example, the Catalan map of Northwest Africa ( 1375 ), in-
cluded in Gomes Eannes de Azurara, The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of
Guinea, trans. Charles Raymond Beazley et al., vol 1 (London: Hakluyt Society, 1896 ). On
traditions of mapmaking, which come into play as well, see Helgerson, 107 – 47.
12. See J. D. Fage, A History of Africa, 3 rd ed. (London: Routledge, 1995 ), 215 – 43 ; and
Philip Curtin et al., African History: From Earliest Times to Independence, 2 nd ed. (London:
Longman, 1995 ), 157 – 60.
13. On Prince Henry’s motivations, see Williamson, Short History, 57 – 58 ; compare
Fage, 222. On the myth of Prester John, see Christopher Miller, 32 – 39.
14. See Curtin et al., African History, 157.
15. On the sugar plantations, see Curtin et al.,African History, 184.
16. See Fage, 231 – 34. For an example of the reliance of the Portuguese on the local in-
habitants, see the description of the building of the fort at Elmina, in Ruy de Pina’s Chron-
icle of John II( 1500 ), included in Blake, Europeans in West Africa, 70 – 78. In that case and
commonly in others, the Portuguese apparently chose to settle in a place inhabited by two
local peoples so that they could, if need be, play one group against the other to secure sup-
port for themselves (Blake, 72 ).
17. See especially Fage, who argues for the overriding appeal of the East, 216 – 43. Fage
makes the case that Africa, in fact, “was not known to produce many of the commodities
which Europeans desired” ( 217 ) and that the Portuguese acquired African goods for trade
in the East, where the demand for European goods was minimal; see 223.
18. Williamson, Short History, 82 ; and Kenneth Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settle-
ment: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630(Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1984 ), 101 – 15.
19. Williamson, Short History, 57 – 60 ; and Robert Ralston Cawley, The Voyagers and
Elizabethan Drama(Boston: D. C. Heath, 1938 ), 83 – 103.
20. See Curtin, “The External Trade of West Africa to 1800,” in History of West Africa,
ed. J. F. A. Ajayi and Michael Crowder, vol. 1 , 3 rd ed. ( 1971 ; New York: Longman, 1985 ),
628 – 29 ; Curtin, African History, 155 – 56 ; and Michel Craton, Sinews of Empire: A Short His-
tory of British Slavery(London: Temple Smith, 1974 ), 5.
21. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, 106.
22. For the full account, see Hakuyt, 6 : 141 – 53.
23. My thanks to Karen Kupperman for suggesting that the English likely perceived
Africa as already taken. On England’s actual and textual relation to the East, see Raman;
Singh, Colonial Narratives; and Said, Orientalism. See also Samuel Chew, The Crescent and
the Rose: Islam and England during the Renaissance(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1937 );
and Raymond Schwab, The Oriental Renaissance: Europe’s Rediscovery of India and the East,
1680–1880, trans. Gene Patterson-Black and Victor Reinking (New York: Columbia Uni-
versity Press, 1984 ).
24. Williamson, Short History, 86.
206 notes to pages 48–50