Conceived in Liberty (5 page)

During the 1470s, explorations under private auspices covered another two thousand miles along the coast of the Gulf of Guinea. The Spanish, based on the Canaries, began to compete with the Portuguese in the Guinea trade, and the warfare resulting from this rivalry was settled by treaty in 1480. By this treaty, Spain recognized Portugal’s prior rights to Africa and the South Atlantic, and Portugal accepted Spanish rights to the Canary Islands and the “western seas” beyond the Azores. Thereupon, and being hurried by the rumor of an English expedition to West Africa, Portugal in 1482 commissioned voyages to create a strong fort at Elmina in West Africa to defend the trade in gold, pepper, and slaves. Captains for these voyages included Bartholomew Diaz and the Genoese Christopher Columbus.

A large colony of Genoese captains, pilots, and mapmakers had settled in Lisbon during the late fifteenth century, and by 1477 Christopher Columbus (1451–1506) was established in Lisbon as a mapmaker with his brother Bartholomew. After engaging in the sugar trade from Madeira and in the African trade for Genoese firms, Columbus had gained sufficient experience in oceanic navigation to propose a plan for a westward voyage to the Orient. Columbus had concluded that China and the Orient could easily be reached by sailing westward, if Asia were really three thousand miles west of Europe, as the geographers had indicated. (Contrary to popular myth, the idea that the earth was round was well known to the educated Europeans of the day.) The geographical concept of a feasible westward voyage to the Orient received even wider currency in Europe when printed editions appeared of Ptolemy in the 1470s, D’Ailly’s
Imago Mundi
in 1483, Marco Polo’s
Travels
in 1485, and Aeneas Sylvius’ (Pope Pius II’s)
Historia Rerum
in 1477. Columbus was also encouraged in his project by his correspondence with the Florentine scientist Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli.

The Portuguese had meanwhile resumed exploration of Africa south of the equator under the command of Diogo Cao, who discovered the Congo River in 1483. Upon Cao’s return in 1484, the Portuguese prepared for more vigorous exploratory activity, the Crown appointing a Junta dos Mathematicos, composed of Bishop Diogo Ortiz and two Jewish physicians, to decide questions of navigation and exploration. Late in 1484, Columbus presented his plans to the Junta for a westward voyage to China and Japan; however, as Cao was to begin his second expedition, it was hoped that he would discover the route to the Indies around Africa, so the Junta decided to await Cao’s return before accepting Columbus’ project. Cao promptly extended Portuguese exploration by 1,500 miles, reaching Cape Cross in 1486; he also explored the Congo River and established diplomatic relations with the ruler of the lower Congo. In the summer of 1487, an expedition under Bartholomew Diaz was sent to discover the sea route to
India; Diaz sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in early 1488, making it clear that an ocean passage to the Indies would soon be found.

Balked by Portugal, Columbus had gone to Spain to seek aid for his projected voyage; and although he was well received, Spain too made no decision on extending its support. Columbus then renewed his negotiations with the Portuguese, and returned to Lisbon in late 1488. But when Diaz returned to Portugal in December of 1488 with news of his exciting discovery, Portugal lost interest in Columbus’ plan. Columbus then returned to Spain, meanwhile sending his brother Bartholomew to London to present his plan to Henry VII of England. After receiving no encouragement in England, Bartholomew Columbus went to the French court in 1490, where he received better treatment and remained as a mapmaker. When the Spanish court rejected his proposal in 1491, Christopher prepared to join Bartholomew in France; but Columbus was recalled to the Spanish court, partly because its conquest of the Moorish kingdom of Granada was completed in January 1492.

The agreements between Columbus and the Spanish Crown were completed in April 1492; they provided for Spanish financing of the bulk of expenses of the voyage, as well as for naming Columbus “Admiral of the Ocean Sea” and governor of any lands that he might discover enroute. On August 3, Columbus departed from Palos in three ships. Sailing to the Canaries and then westward, Columbus discovered the Bahama Islands on October 12, 1492, and explored the Greater Antilles—Cuba and Hispaniola. Columbus was convinced that he had discovered the shores of Asia, and so christened the natives he found there “Indians.” But despite his error, the New World was now to be opened to the ambit of European society.

Columbus left America in early January 1493, arrived in the Azores in February, and reached Lisbon early in March. Even though Diaz was busy supervising construction of the ships necessary for the voyage around Africa to India, the Portuguese king had the gall to claim the new lands as an extension of the Azores. When Columbus presented his report to the Spanish court in mid-March 1493, it sought to protect its claim from Portuguese encroachment. On the basis of the discovery and of the treaty of 1480, Spain appealed to the pope for a determination of its rights.

As a neutral third power, the papacy made a diplomatic award, affirming Spain’s claim to monopoly possession of Columbus’ discovery. The respective discoveries claimed by Portugal in Africa and Spain in the West were protected by drawing a boundary between Spain and Portugal west of the Portuguese Azores. The respective routes to the Indies were recognized by limiting the Spanish to the western and southern route, and the Portuguese to their eastern and southern route around Africa. The Portuguese considered the papal opinions a useful base for negotiation, but refused to be bound by them. To gain Portuguese recognition for its claims, the Spanish government was obliged to make concessions to
Portugal, and in June of 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas extended the boundary 270 leagues further westward than in the papal mediation, which had the unintended effect of allowing Portugal to control the yet undis
covered coast of Brazil
.
As the dispute was strictly
between Spain and Portugal, the treaty and boundary related only to the area that they had explored, and thus did not receive international recognition by the other powers until confirmed by effective occupation of the respective claims. Since the Spanish territorial claim was limited to the west and south of Columbus’ discovery, that is, the West Indies and Central and South America, it did not exclude other states from North America, as witness the English, Portuguese, and French explorations; there was conflict only when they approached the West Indies.

Meanwhile, in September 1493 Columbus had sailed again to the West Indies with 1,500 colonists on board in seventeen ships fitted out by his friend, the Florentine merchant of Seville, Gianneto Berardi. After exploring the Lesser Antilles, a colony was established in Hispaniola to be an agriculturally self-supporting mining town that would supply Spain with the much needed gold believed to abound there. After further explorations, Columbus departed for Spain in March 1496, leaving his brother Bartholomew as governor.

In March 1496 Henry VII of England granted a patent to John Cabot, a Genoese captain and merchant lately settled in Bristol, England, who had sailed for Venice and Portugal to explore to the west or north, thereby indicating that England would not intervene in Spanish or Portuguese colonies. Cabot was granted a monopoly of trade to any lands he might discover and claim for the Crown, in the profits of which the government would share; and Bristol was made a monopoly or “staple” port for all voyages to or from the newly explored regions. In May 1497 Cabot and his son Sebastian sailed west from Bristol to Asia; they reached Cape Breton Island and sailed down the Atlantic coast to perhaps the site of Maine. In the spring of 1498 Cabot went to Lisbon and Seville to hire sailors who had sailed with Cao, Diaz, or Columbus, and set sail for Japan and the Spice Islands in May 1498; he succeeded in exploring the coast of North America down to the Delaware Bay or the Chesapeake Bay. Joao Fernandes, called Labrador, a Portuguese who had advised Cabot, received a Portuguese patent for northern and western discoveries and explored Greenland. From 1501 on, a group of Bristol and Portuguese merchants, including Fernandes, explored North America under English patents, while several Portuguese, such as the Corte Real brothers, sailed to Newfoundland in the early sixteenth century.

The Portuguese, however, were concentrating on the voyage to India around Africa for which Diaz had spent almost a decade preparing a fleet. In July 1497 the fleet departed, commanded by Vasco da Gama, and arrived at the Malabar coast of India in May 1498; it returned to Lisbon in September 1499 with a cargo of pepper and cinnamon. The Portuguese
had finally found their eastern sea route to India. Early in 1500 a second expedition under Pedro Cabral was dispatched to India; blown off course, Cabral discovered and claimed Brazil for Portugal. In 1501, the Portuguese spices reached Antwerp, which promptly became the major center of spices from Portugal, even as it was then the financial center of Europe.

The Italian merchants were not immediately disturbed at the development of the new spice route, for they considered their competitive position assured by their capital, their commercial ability, and the security of their established routes. Lacking gold or specialized products, the Portuguese were not able to undersell the Arab and Venetian merchants. A major Portuguese voyage of 1505 was, in fact, financed by Genoese, Florentine, and South German bankers, although the complications of bureaucracy led them to provide capital indirectly through investment in “future” cargoes. Similarly, Italian merchants and bankers in Spain provided the venture capital for exploration and discovery. In 1495, on the death of Gianneto Berardi, who had contracted to fit out twelve ships, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who was manager of the Medici bank at Seville, assumed the contract. In succeeding years, Vespucci sailed in Spanish expeditions, and then from 1501 on sailed in Portuguese voyages to explore Cabral’s discovery, Brazil. Vespucci wrote accounts of his voyages; they were immediately printed and received wide circulation. As a result, the mapmakers irrevocably attached Amerigo’s name to the newly discovered continents.

The succession of the Hapsburgs to the Spanish throne in the early sixteenth century promptly occasioned investments by South German banking houses in Spanish mines and then in American mines. The Fuggers leased mines in Hispaniola and Mexico, while the Welsers leased Venezuela for twenty years. However, the Italians, expecially the Genoese merchants of Seville, dominated Spain’s American trade during the sixteenth century, importing gold and tropical products into Europe and exporting manufactured goods as well as slaves under contracts, or Asientos, to America.

In 1498–1500 and 1502–04, Columbus made two further voyages to America, which he still believed to be part of the East Indies. He finally reached the American mainland in 1498. Explorations of the interior of the mainland were begun in 1513, when Ponce de Leon explored Florida, and Vasco de Balboa crossed the Isthmus of Panama to discover the Pacific Ocean, which he believed could be easily crossed to reach the Spice Islands and the Orient.

Portuguese entrance into the spice trade had led to mutual hostility with the Arab and Indian merchants, for these Muslim traders feared the competition afforded by the new sea route. The new route was expected to avoid the heavy expense and taxation that had greatly increased the cost of the route through the Levant. At the same time, the Portuguese
feared that they could not compete in the spice trade for lack of capital, gold, or specialized products. In 1509, the Portuguese defeated a fleet of Arab and Indian Muslims, and, under Alfonso de Albuquerque, established trading centers at Goa on the Malabar Coast and at Malacca in Malaya. By 1513, Portuguese trade had extended to the East Indian Spice Islands and to Canton in China. Albuquerque’s attacks on Muslim shipping and markets caused a shortage of spices in Alexandria, while the conquest of Egypt in 1517 by the Ottoman Turks temporarily cut off spice supplies to Venice. During the second decade of the sixteenth century, most of the spices for Europe arrived in Portuguese vessels by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and the Venetian merchants were forced to purchase spices in Lisbon to supply their customers, Soon, however, Venice reached a trade agreement with the Turks, the spice trade of the Levant returned to normal, and the Levantine trade in spices and Mediterranean goods remained larger and more important during the sixteenth century than oceanic commerce. The Venetians bought goods of better quality, while the expenses of long voyages, shipwrecks, and military forces for Portugal, and lack of goods for trading raised prices in the Portuguese trade.

The Spanish finally reached the East Indies in a voyage under the command of Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese mariner who had lived in the East Indies. Proposing to follow a westward route around South America, Magellan, with a fleet equipped by capital provided by the Fuggers, sailed from Seville in the summer of 1519. He passed through the Strait of Magellan, separating South America from Tierra del Fuego, the following summer and arrived at the Philippine Islands, where he was killed in a native war in April 1521. In September 1522 one ship, commanded by Sebastian del Cano, returned to Spain by way of the Cape of Good Hope, and thus became the first to circumnavigate the world. Meanwhile, in 1519 Hernando Cortez crossed from Cuba to Mexico, and by 1521 had conquered the Aztec empire and begun a search for ports for trade with the East Indies. In 1532, Francisco Pizarro led an expedition to Peru, where, after a number of years, the Inca empire was conquered. In 1527, Sebastian Cabot was to lead an expedition over Magellan’s route to the East Indies, but instead explored for gold on the Rio de la Plata in South America. During the early 1540s the Spanish explored the southern part of North America. In 1539 Hernando de Soto landed in Florida from Cuba and traveled along the Gulf Coast and lower Mississippi River, which he discovered in 1541. At the same time, Francisco Vasquez de Coronado traversed the southwestern part of North America up to Kansas, while expeditions sailed along the Pacific Coast of California to Oregon in 1542–43.