Bartolomeu Dias: Did you mean...?

Vasco da Gama (c. 1469-1524) was a Portuguese navigator who, in 1497-9, sailed around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa and arrived at Calicut (now Kozhikode) on the south-west coast of India. This was the first direct voyage from...

The caravel (caravela in Spanish and Portuguese), was a type of medium-sized ship which, with its low draught and lateen or triangular sails, made it ideal for exploration from the 15th century onwards. Fast, manoeuvrable, and only needing...

Portuguese Angola in southwest Africa was the first European colony on that continent. While settlement from 1571 proved problematic in the interior, the Portuguese did obtain a large number of slaves which they shipped to their Atlantic...

From the voyages of the Portuguese navigators under the patronage of Henry the Navigator in the 15th century to the transcontinental expeditions of Henry Morton Stanley in the 1870s, European exploration of Africa gradually transformed European...

Cochin, located on the southwest coast of India, was a Portuguese colony from 1503 to 1663. Known to the Portuguese as Cochim, it was one of several important cities on India’s Malabar Coast and a great trade centre for spices like pepper...

Throughout the 15th century, the Portuguese Crown yearned for a piece of the Far Eastern spice trade. For centuries this trade had been dominated by the Venetians who obtained pepper, cloves, nutmeg, ginger and cinnamon from their Middle...

The 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas (Tordesilhas) was an agreement between the monarchs of Spain and Portugal to divide the world between them into two spheres of influence. The imaginary dividing line ran down the centre of the Atlantic Ocean...

The Age of Exploration (15th–16th centuries) was propelled by a revolution in shipbuilding and navigation that transformed the limits of human travel. Innovations such as the caravel and carrack, the adoption of the magnetic compass, astrolabe...

One of the major motivating factors in the European Age of Exploration was the search for direct access to the highly lucrative Eastern spice trade. In the 15th century, spices came to Europe via the Middle East land and sea routes, and spices...

Portugal established the first and longest-lasting of Europe’s overseas empires, developing a maritime-commercial network that connected the Atlantic, Indian, and Pacific Oceans from the 15th century onward. Under rulers such as João I (reign...