| .......DATE............. | ...............................EVENT............................. .............. |
PORTUGUESE EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST | |
|---|---|
| 1300s | Portuguese sailors visited the Madeira and Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean |
| 1394 | birth of Henry (the Navigator), third son of John I of Portugal |
| 1415 | The Portuguese conquered Ceuta on the Moroccan coast |
| 1419 | The Portuguese claimed Madeira; Prince Henry (the Navigator) founded an observatory and navigation school on the southern Portuguese coast at Sagres |
| 1439 | The Portuguese claimed the Azores Islands in the eastern Atlantic Ocean |
| 1434 | Portuguese sailors reached Cape Bojador on the West African coast |
| 1442 | Portuguese sailors reached Cape Blanco on the West African coast |
| 1443 | Portuguese sailors reached Arguin Island on the West African coast and fortified it in 1448 |
| 1451 | Portuguese sailors began to visit the Senegal River regularly |
| 1460 | Portuguese sailors reached Sierra Leone; death of Henry the Navigator |
| 1469-1475 | After the death of Prince Henry, further Portuguese exploration was directed by a private "contractor" named Fernao Gomes |
| 1471 | The Portuguese constructed a fort at El Mina on the "Gold Coast" (modern Ghana) |
| 1469-1475 | Portuguese nobles established a planter colony on the island of Fernando Po to produce sugar |
| 1475-1479 | Portuguese exploration was interrupted by war with Spain. |
| 1479 | The Treaty of Alcacovas forced the Spanish to cease trading along the African coast. |
| 1481-1495 | Portuguese exploration resumed again under King John II |
| 1483 | The Portuguese explorer, Diogo Cao, discovered the Zaire River and the Portuguese exchanged ambassadors with the king of the Bakongo people. |
| 1487 | Pedro da Covilha left Lisbon disguised as a Muslim trader, and traveled overland as far as India. He survived until 1506, but never made it back to Portugal. However, he managed to sent a written report of the Indian Ocean trade routes to King John II in 1490. |
| 1488 | Bartholomew Dias reached the Cape of Good Hope at the south end of Africa in 1487 and returned to Portugal with the news |
| 1497/07 | Vasco da Gama left Portugal with an sea expedition to India. |
| 1498 | Vasco da Gama reached the Swahili Coast of East Africa on his way to India. |
| 1499/09 | Vasco da Gama returned to Portugal with spices from India |
| 1500 | Pedro Cabral led a second expedition to India along the route explored by da Gama. Along the way, he claimed Brazil for Portugal. |
| 1502 | Vasco da Gama led another expedition to India with fourteen ships. |
| 1505-1507 | Francisco d'Almeida led an armed fleet to establish Portuguese forts along the East African coast. |
| 1510 | By this time, Lisbon was the richest city in Europe. |
| 1510 | Afonso d'Alboquerque established a fortified Portuguese post at Goa (India). |
| 1511 | Afonso d'Alboquerque reached Malacca (on the Malay Peninsula). |
| 1513 | Afonso d'Alboquerque reached China |
| 1515 | The Portuguese route to India around Africa was firmly established by this time. |
SPANISH EXPLORATION AND CONQUEST | |
| 1451 | Columbus was born in Genoa, the son of a textile weaver |
| 1469 | The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella united Castile and Aragon to form Spain. |
| 1476 | Columbus was shipwrecked off the coast of Portugal. Like his younger brother Bartholomew, he stayed and became a mapmaker. |
| 1479 | By this time, Columbus became a sugar-buyer for a firm from Genoa and traveled to the Azores (Atlantic Islands settled by the Portuguese). About this time, he married a well-born Portuguese woman, Dona Filipa Perestrello |
| 1480s/mid | Columbus rose to the rank of "master mariner" in the Portuguese merchant service. |
| 1488 | The Portuguese sailor, Bartholomew Dias, reached the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa, ending any chance that the Portuguese authorities would support Columbus' plan for an expedition to the west. |
| 1491 | After three years of lobbying, Columbus convinced Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain to support him. |
| 1492 | Spanish forces conquered the the last Muslim kingdom on the Iberian peninsula (Granada) |
| 1492/08/03 | Columbus led three ships from Cadiz |
| 1492/10/12 | Columbus' expedition first sighted land in the Bahamas |
| 1493/03/15 | Columbus returned to Spain as a hero |
| 1493/10 | Columbus began his second voyage with 17 ships and 1500 colonists. He founded a colony La Isabela on the island of Hispaniola and placed his brothers Diego and Bartolem in charge as co-governors |
| 1494 | After direct negotiations between Portugal's King John II and Spain's Ferdinand, the pope finally set the boundary between the Spanish and Portuguese discoveries in such a way that Portugal retained the rights to Brazil, as well as Africa and India (Treaty of Tordesillas, 1494) |
| 1496 | Following complaints by the colonists, Columbus ignored a royal order to return to Spain for investigation, and went on a slaving expedition instead. Although he eventually found gold in southern Hispaniola, his delay angered the royal family, and Columbus returned to Spain in partial disgrace in 1496. |
| 1498 | Columbus left on his third voyage, but since there were no more volunteers, his crew consisted of freed prisoners and other unwilling seamen. On this voyage, Columbus finally reached the American mainland at Venezuela. |
| 1499 | Conditions on at the colony on Hispaniola worsened and the king appointed Nicol s de Ovando as the new governor. |
| 1500 | The new governor arrested all three Columbus brothers and sent them back to Spain in chains. |
| 1502 | Columbus attempted to redeem himself with his fourth and final voyage. Since the Spanish King no longer provided any assistance, Columbus sailed with only four ships. He was forbidden to land at the Spanish colony of Santa Domingo on Hispaniola. |
| 1504 | After Columbus' ships sank off the coast of Jamaica, the Spanish authorities rescued him and his crew, and returned them to Spain. |
| 1506/05/20 | Columbus died in Spain, disgraced. |
| 1507 | A new world map by Martin Waldseemller (1470?-1522?), named the land discovered by Colmbus after another explorer, Amerigo Vespucci, a Florentine who sailed for both Portugal and Spain, visited the mouth of the Amazon River, and devised a means of measuring longitude. |
| 1513 | Vasco Nunez de Balboa, sailing for Spain, reached the Pacific Ocean in Panama in 1513. |
| 1517 | The Spanish king Charles V sold th right to trade slaves in the Spansih empire to Flemish merchants (from the area around the mouth of the Rhine River). |
| 1519-1522 | Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese noble, led a Spanish expedition that sailed around the world. Although Magellan died in the Philippines, a Spanish navigator, SebastĦan del Cano, successfully returned to Spain in 1522 with one ship and fifteen sailors. |
| 1521 | Hernan Cortez and 400 men conquered the Aztec Empire (Mexico) |