ATLANTIC OCEAN
Cape or Good Hope -
Henry the Navigator's sea imperium formed an ocean picket line in the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and the Canaries. The Canaries were ceded to the Spanish, but the Azores, Madeira and Cape Verde Islands are Portuguese-speaking to this day.
voyages had been), seems to die away as the 1300s wear on, followed by the Iberian breakthrough into the ocean world in the late 1400s. Barbara Tuchman in A Distant Mirror calls the 1300s the "calamitous" century, and with nearly continuous wars in France and Italy and the scourge of the Black Death in the latter half of the century, Europe 's population was reduced (it is now reckoned) by more than half. Surely there was calamity and to spare. This perspective was widely expressed at the time and was evident in extensive social disorders, even as the Renaissance was beginning to spread its wings in new learning and trumpet a new vision of the world in transcendent art. I've long been puzzled by the apparent failure to follow up these brilliant early Genoese initiatives at sea and am still not fully satisfied with the "calamitous century" rationale. It is important to note, however, that we next find Genoese merchant-adventurers working through the nascent nations of Portugal and Spain. They were deeply involved in the efforts of the Portuguese kings to make the new-minted, threatened nation survive-an experiment in "nation-building" that really worked. In 1317 King Dinis named Manuel Passagno (Pei;anha, in Portuguese), as admiral of his navy. It should come as no surprise to know that this able citizen came from a wealthy Genoese merchant house. Engaged in the Lowlands trade, their ships stopped in Lisbon, where a considerable Genoese colony had taken root since the expulsion of the Muslim overlords. This Genoese admiral proved successful, and relatives of hjs family were still commanding the Portuguese Navy into the 1600s, long after Portuguese admirals and seamen had proved their unexcelled abilities at sea. At this point it is well to remember how the nascent nations of Portugal and Spain came into being to replace the ad hoc entrepreneurialism of the Genoese with the new nations' SEA HISTORY 77, SPRING 1996
emerging state policies. The Germanic tribes which swept into the Iberian peninsula as the Roman Empire came apart toward 500 AD had themselves been overrun by the stunning surge of Muslim forces, which conquered all North Africa and almost all of Iberia in the early 700s AD and had swept on north in a headlong advance which was only turned back deep in central France at the Battle of Tours in 732. From their mountain fastnesses in northwestern Iberia, the Christianized Germans fought back, and in a centuries-long grueling drive which came to be called the Reconquista, won back control of the Iberian peninsula, district by district. By the mid1200s, the Portuguese had secured the borders the nation has today. The kingdoms of Leon, Castile and Aragon-that were to unite to form Spain-had still to conquer the southern region of the peninsula. But Spanish and Portuguese power was dominant in the period from the mid-1300s onward. And it was on the map with world-changing results to follow. Outsiders were involved in the explosive mixture of forces that formed the new nations of the Reconquista. Less than a hundred years after the Muslim onrush of the 700s, the French king Charlemagne came storming into Spain as part of his plan to establish a universal empire of the Germanic tribes. He succeeded in western Germany, all of France, northern Italy and a small enclave in northern Spain. The Muslims--or Paynims as the Christians called them-were too strong for the Franks to wrest back the whole Iberian peninsula. The French nalional epic, the "Song of Roland," is based on the annihilation of the rear guard of one of Charlemagne's expeditions into Spain, whose leader was too proud to sound his horn for help in the face of overwhelming odds. As the Crusades got under way 300 years later, northern fleets of German and English knights stopped off at Lisbon on their way to the Holy Land at the far end of the Mediterranean. Here these "have sword will travel" types were welcome to join the practically continuous battle against the Muslim rulers, for loot and glory and to serve their God. Among the English who stopped there was John of Gaunt, son of the formidable Edward III who had launched the Hundred Years' War with France. John stayed on to repel a Castilian invasion with the support of the English archers who were winning battles throughout France at this time. Thjs assured the national independence of Portugal. In true chivalric style John 's daughter Philippa, a strong-willed person, was then married to the Portuguese King Ferdinand. Philippa, who introduced English customs to the court, made a contribution of unanticipated value to her new home when she gave birth to Prince Henry, known to history as Henry the Navigator. Henry was to launch Portugal on the new nation's oceanic mission. Henry the Navigator Disappointed in ambitions at court, where his elder brother Edward ruled successfully as king, and perhaps wearying of the pursuit of the bubble reputation, so eagerly sought out by medieval nobility, in disastrous campaigns against the Moors in Africa, Henry began to concentrate his considerable intellect and energies on sailing ships out to the Atlantic islands reconnoitered in previous centuries by the Genoese, who had sailed at fust on their own account and later, evidently, under 15