The great navigations

The great navigations – Age of discoveries

The age of discovery was a name given to a period of history that occurred between the 15th century and the beginning of the 17th century, which is also known as the period of great navigation with the Portuguese and then the Spanish as the pioneers of that era. .

Even before the age of discovery, many European countries explored our land in search of new trade routes, which resulted in many other countries being discovered.

With the pioneering maritime explorations carried out by the Portuguese and Spanish between the 15th and 16th centuries, they managed to establish relations with the African continent, the Americas and Asia in search of alternative routes to the Indies, all driven by the trade in spices, gold and silver.

These explorations in search of the famous route to the Indies were made through the Atlantic and Indian Ocean and these routes were later used by other countries such as France and England, which explored until they reached the Pacific Ocean, thus being able to reach Australia and New Zealand, lasting this exploration until every corner of the earth was mapped.

All this exploration resulted in the mapping of the land, allowing various people from different parts of the world to come into contact with each other.

The first Portuguese expeditions in the Atlantic

Around 1415, in full Portuguese expansion, the city of Ceuta was invaded by the Portuguese (The city of Ceuta is an autonomous city in Spain located on the African bank of the eastern mouth of the Strait of Gibraltar) all with the aim of controlling navigation on the north coast African region, where the possibility of profit was very great.

Over the years, these routes became slave and gold trade routes, connecting West Africa to the Mediterranean Sea, crossing the Sahara desert, which was controlled by powerful Muslims.

Having this area of Africa under the power of the Muslims, the Portuguese decided to go beyond the lands under their power, going further south, thinking about finding allies in the lands that could exist and thus exploring whether it would be possible to reach the Indies, where there was the much-dreamed-of spice route.

Columbus' arrival in the West Indies

In the mid-1500s, to be more exact in 1492, the Spanish sought to expand their trade routes, first starting by controlling territories in eastern Spain, southwestern France and some islands that were the main islands in the region that extended to Greece.

With all this expansion of Spanish routes, King Don Fernando II of Aragon and Queen Isabella of Castile decided to finance Christopher Columbus' expedition.

Sailing for the Spanish crown, Christopher Columbus left Palos de la Frontera with three small vessels: the ship Santa Maria and the caravels of Niña and Pinta Christopher Columbus arrived at what he called the “West Indies”, an islet in the Bahamas to which he gave the name of Saint Salvador. Continuing to sail, he docked in Cuba and arrived in Haiti, which he named Hispaniola. Assuming he had arrived in India, he left a small colony and returned to Europe.

On his second trip returning along the route to what was believed to be the Indies, Columbus saw that the small colony he had left had been decimated by the indigenous people, even so Columbus left another contingent.

Once this was done, Columbus sailed west and arrived in Jamaica. On this trip he founded Isabela, now Santo Domingo, in the Dominican Republic, the first European settlement on the American continent.

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

The discovery of America

Before finding the way to the Indies, the newly crowned King D. Manuel I of Portugal sent an exploratory fleet to what was thought to be the Indies, where the news spread that the Portuguese had reached the “true Indies”, as stated in a letter immediately sent by the Portuguese king to the Catholic Monarchs one day after the arrival of the celebrated fleet.

In 1498, the expedition of the navigator Duarte Pacheco Pereira departed from Portugal, which traveled the Brazilian coast possibly aiming to identify the territories that belonged to Portugal or Castile in accordance with the Treaty of Tordesillas, of 1494. On January 26, 1500, another expedition , by the Spaniard Vicente Yáñez Pinzón, reached Cabo de Santo Agostinho, south coast of Pernambuco.

A fleet of thirteen ships and around 1,500 men left Lisbon on March 9, 1500. Commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral, it had an experienced crew, including experts Bartolomeu Dias, Nicolau Coelho and the clerk Pêro Vaz de Caminha. To avoid the calm off the coast of the Gulf of Guinea, they sailed in a southwesterly direction, in a great “turn of the sea”.

Some historians argue that the Portuguese already knew about the existence of the bulge formed by South America when carrying out the so-called “return from the sea” maneuver; Hence, King João II's insistence on moving the Tordesillas line westward, stating that the landing in Brazil may not have been accidental.

On April 21, they saw a mountain that they named “Monte Pascoal”. On April 22, they disembarked on the coast, and on April 25, the entire fleet sailed to a port they called “Porto Seguro”. Having realized that the new land was east of the Tordesillas line, Cabral soon sent an emissary to Portugal with the important news, believing that the newly discovered lands were an island, which he named “Ilha de Vera Cruz”.

Summary age of discovery

This was the story of the age of discovery, which was driven by the long-awaited path of the Indians and the power over sea routes, aiming to make a profit in the sale of gold, silver and spices.

With the expansion of maritime routes by the Portuguese and Spanish, many lands were discovered and with that the race to conquer new territories began, but even before the territories were actually discovered, they already had owners and the lands were identified by the Treaty of Tordesillas.

This is how Brazil was discovered.