with the backing of papal bulls, but whose primary interests lay elsewhere, in
the ever-alluring East.^12 To be sure, Prince Henry the Navigator, who author-
ized the first wave of activity, was interested in finding Christian allies in
Africa, including the legendary Christian emperor, Prester John.^13 But while
the Portuguese established a number of trading posts and forts on the African
coasts, the latter largely to fend off encroaching Europeans, their goal was nei-
ther to colonize occupied nor settle in unoccupied African territories. Nor was
it, at least at first, to develop new economies there. Their initial aim was to
tap into the well-established—and they hoped, easily accessed—trades in
North Africa, sub-Saharan gold its much-sought prize. When the North
African traders proved unwilling to cede control of their operation or their
profits, the Portuguese expediently changed course: they sold their shipping
services to African merchants and transported goods (including slaves) from
one part of the continent to the other, acting as middlemen rather than as in-
dependent traders.^14 They also became involved in the gold and slave trades
of Guinea, and established sugar plantations on the island of São Tomé, just
off Africa’s western coast, developing a lucrative model of production and
slavery that they would eventually transport to Brazil and expand substan-
tially there.^15
If in theory these projects bear the signs of colonial domination, in prac-
tice they generally did not. More often than not, instead of conquering the
local people where their outposts lay, the Portuguese relied on the natives for
provisions, water rights, and aid.^16 As well, these missions and ambitions were
both coupled and secondary to one thing vastly greater: the overwhelming de-
sire to reach the East, with its fabulously fabled store of spices, silks, and pre-
cious stones.^17 From the start, Portuguese mariners were looking for a direct
sea route to the East. Once they made it around the Cape of Good Hope (in
the late fifteenth century) and within reach of India, their activities escalated:
they launched an unprecedented series of annual expeditions and constructed
just enough outposts on Africa’s east coast to allow them command of the In-
dian Ocean and so, of the Eastern trade—outposts which they held until the
next century, when the Dutch moved in and forced them out.
England’s African ventures were, to a substantial degree, improvised
around this history, having themselves no single or definitive focus, beyond,
of course, expedient economic gain. It was only after, if not because, the Por-
tuguese redirected their efforts from Barbary to Guinea, that Thomas Wynd-
ham initiated the Barbary trade, with his two voyages to Morocco in 1551 and
1552.^18 In the years immediately after, the English began to explore Africa’s
48 chapter two