Henry the Navigator, a prince of Por-
tugal, began sponsoring voyages of explo-
ration after the conquest of Ceuta in North
Africa. Henry sought to expand Portugal’s
trade with Africa and to convert that
continent’s pagan souls to Christianity. His
officers touched at the island of Madeira,
the Canary Islands, and the Azores. Gil
Eanes passed Cape Bojador, the traditional
limit of southern navigation, in 1434. Di-
ogo Gomes reached the Cape Verde Islands
in 1455. The Portuguese built fortified
trading posts at the river mouths and ob-
tained gold, slaves, and ivory. After figur-
ing a method for determining latitude in
the southern hemisphere, Portuguese sail-
orswereabletonavigatetotheCapeof
Good Hope, at the southern tip of Africa.
After the death of Henry the Navigator,
King Joao II continued royal patronage of
exploration. The superior navy of the Por-
tuguese limited the expeditions of their
main rival, Castile. By a treaty signed in
1479, Castilian ships were barred from sail-
ing past Cape Bojador. In 1487, Barto-
lomeo Dias became the first to round the
Cape and explore the Indian Ocean coasts
of Africa.
Vasco da Gama followed Dias in 1497,
sailing up the east African coast and then
across the Indian Ocean to India. This im-
portant voyage opened up trade in the
valuable spices of the Moluccas and the
East Indies. After da Gama returned, King
Manuel I commissioned a second journey
to the Indian Ocean in 1500 by Pedro Al-
vares de Cabral. Blown off course, Cabral
was brought by wind and current to the
coast of Brazil.
In the meantime, Spain was exploring
west to the Americas, beginning with the
first voyage of Christopher Columbus in
- Columbus had failed to interest the
Portuguese king Joao II in a westward voy-
age that Columbus believed would reveal a
faster route to the East Indies. Despite
skepticism on the part of court scientists
and astronomers, Ferdinand and Isabella
agreed to back him in 1492. After Colum-
bus returned with reports of unknown is-
lands to the west, Spain claimed the new
lands with the support of the Spanish pope
Alexander VI. Columbus returned to the
Caribbean three times, each time bringing
home further knowledge of what Euro-
pean geographers now realized was an en-
tirely new hemisphere.
Spain and Portugal were building rival
commercial empires, and racing to estab-
lish hegemony over previously unknown
parts of the world. The Portuguese estab-
lished forts in India, Malaysia, and the
Moluccas and prevented Spain from ex-
ploiting the rich trade in spices. By the
Treaty of Tordesillas in 1494, a line drawn
in the western hemisphere granted Africa,
India, and Brazil trade to Portugal and all
lands to the west to Spain.
At the same time, the English were
sending expeditions across the North At-
lantic. In 1497 Giovanni Caboto, known
in English as John Cabot, reached New-
foundland. Cabot was lost on a second
voyage with four of his ships, but the En-
glish did not give up their search for a
northwest passage to Asia.
The Spanish explored the New World,
the coast of Venezuela and the mouth of
the Orinoco River. Goncalo Coelho led an
expedition of 1501 that roamed the north-
ern coasts of Brazil. A member of his com-
pany, Amerigo Vespucci, coined the term
New World in his account of this voyage,
which was the first to speculate that Euro-
peans had found an entirely new conti-
nent. To honor Vespucci, the German
mapmaker Martin Waldseemüller named
this part of the world America.exploration