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by Sergio Mascarenhas de Almeida, 1999
Note: I'll always use the names of the Portuguese in Portuguese, and the names of foreigners the way they were called in Portuguese by the Portuguese. I'll not attempt to translate it to English.
When king D. Fernando died in 1383, he left a question undecided, since he didn't have male sons: who would become king after him. There were two pretenders: The king of Castela, by way of marriage to his only daughter (and with the strong support of the the keen, wife of D. Fernando, which was also from Castela); D. Joao, his half brother, a bastard son of his father D. Pedro. The king of Castela had the support of the higher nobility; D. Joao had the support of the lower nobility and the urban commoneers of the Concelhos.
The following couple of years the two factions fighted each other for supremacy. That war was the local expression of the 100 years war, with both sides aligning their positions according to the main contenders east off the Pirenees: D. Joao aligned with the English, and Castela allied to the French. D. Joao had strong relationships with England by way of his marriage with D. Filipa, a daughter of the house of Lencaster. He was able to defeat the king of Castela based on the same tactics that allowed the English to defeat the French in the first part of the 100 years war. Finally, when peace came after this episode D. Joao was able to rule a kingdom deprieved of most of his old nobility, but where a new, less powerful nobility emerged. He also had a kingdom where there was a lot of military expertise, and with a big army comprising not only the nobility but also the companies of crossbowmen formed by freemen. He had very good relationships with England, which openned excellent and peaceful economical oportunities, since Portugal was a place of passage in the trade between southern and northern Europe. His wife gave him half a dozen of very bright princes (with a little help from himself, of course).
Yet, he had a problem: he had a lot of men which expected compensation for their support, and the lands confiscated from the internal enemies were not enough; men that had a lot of military experience, and could become hard to control, or worst could cross the frontier and change allegiance. There was an agreed rule supported by the Pope that the three frontier kingdoms (Portugal, Castela, and Aragao) of the Iberian peninsula (then called Spain (1)) could conquer the lands of the infidels along their north-south frontiers. Yet, Portugal had conquered all that there was to conquer in the Peninsula long before D. Joao came to be king. Somehow, the idea came to continue the crusade against the infidel further south, and to conquer the lands in North Africa that continued the imaginary frontiers among the peninsular kingdoms. The result was the conquest of Ceuta in 1415, and the following conquest of other ports in Marrocos. As I said above, this was ideologicaly justified with the spirit of crusade still prevalent in the Europe of the time, and economicaly by the expected gains from the control of the agriculturaly rich fields of Marrocos, and the control of the trade routs to black Africa south of the Sahara, and its gold mines. Yet, this was a failure. The Portuguese didn't have people to cultivate the fields of Marrocos (the Portuguese peasants didn't want to move to what was rightly perceived as a field of battle), and the Moors changed the trade routs heading south to other ports.
In the mean time, a son of D. Joao, D. Henrique, started to send boats south along the coast for trade and war. The king gave him the monopoly of those expeditions. This was not important enough to justify direct control by the crown, but was profitable enough to be interesting to the prince, and didn't require a lot of investment, specially since the prince was able to attract the financial support of private merchants (most of which Italians). His original idea was to reach the gold mines south of the Sahara, and diverse the route of the gold to Europe by sea, undermining the Moorish routes accross the desert. Latter a new trade gained increased importance: the trade in slaves. In fact, the Portuguese were not able to reach the gold mines deep inside the African continent, but they reached the gold mines of the Costa do Ouro. So, the adventure became increasingly profitable. Why would men risk their lives to explore uncharted watters? First, because this was not an isolated activity. It was an extension of the necessary patrolling of the Portuguese coasts and the seas between the Iberian Peninsula and North of Africa to fight pirates (specially Moorish and French pirates). This patrolling was mostly an unprofitable and dangerous activity, while the exploration of the coast of Africa seemed militarily safe, and promised good rewards. When D. Henrique died, the rulling king (D. Joao II, grandson of D. JoaoI) took the control of the discoveries.
An important aspect of whole enterprise is that it was no longer a medieval operation where the participants were rewarded with feuds, but it was neither a modern enterprise where the participants were salarymen. It was a transitional arrangement where the men involved didn't gain any rights for their discoveries and conquests, and worked on limited time assignments. But neither were they on the kings payroll (kings were always short on funds, so being on their payrolls was not a wise choice). They were payed by a participation in the profits of the expeditions, actually sharing the risk of the whole affair with the king (2). Of course, the king would get the largest share in the profits, and the men the largest share in the risks, but that's the way things are. Eventually, a new plan started to emerge: If the Portuguese could not continue their conquests to the east, along the north African coast (since these lands were reserved to Castela), they could move south along the Atlantic coast of Africa, since these were not islamic lands, so were outside of the Papal agreement, an agreement that only incompassed crusading in the lands of the infidel. The plan was this: The Portuguese would conquer the lands in the coast of Africa, actually moving around it until they would reach Easter Ethiopia, the lands of Prestes John (which was perceived as very powerful), and India (which the Europeans believed to be inhabited by christians). From there, they would lounch an eastern crusade (supported by Prestes John and the Indians), and conquer the Holy Land. Of course, the Portuguese didn't know exactly how big Africa was, and underestimated its size. So be it, since its mistakes like this that make the world go around (and be shaped like an egg).
(1) Latter, when Isabel of Castela and Fernando of Aragao decided to combine their two kingdoms, they abusively adopted the name Spain for it. The Portuguese response was to lobby to change the name of the peninsula to Iberia.
(2) In this it was both a very pre-modern arrangement, and an highly post-modern arrangement. Nowadays companies are trying to reach such type of agreements with their workers, in fact.
