The Boundless Sea

by David Abulafia

  27. C. R. and W. D. Phillips, Spain’s Golden Fleece: Wool Production and the Wool Trade from the Middle Ages to the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1997).

  28. F. Miranda, ‘Os antecedentes económicos da conquista de Ceuta de 1415 reavaliados’, Congreso Internacional: Los orígines de la expansión europea: Ceuta 1415; VI Centenario de la Toma de Ceuta, Ceuta 1, 2 y 3 de octubre de 2015 (Ceuta, 2019); C. Gozalbes Cravioto, Ceuta en los portulanos medievales, siglos XIII, XIV y XV (Ceuta, 1997).

  29. Ceuta en el Medievo: la ciudad en el mundo árabe. II. Jornadas de historia de Ceuta (Ceuta, 2002); M. Chérif, Ceuta aux époques almohade et mérinide (Paris, 1996).

  30. D. Abulafia, Frederick II: a Medieval Emperor (London, 1988), p. 258.

  31. Unali, Ceuta 1415, pp. 198–200.

  32. Ibid., pp. 192–8.

  33. Gomes Eanes de Zurara, Crónica da Tomada de Ceuta (Mem Martins, 1992), pp. 44–63.

  34. King Duarte I, cited by P. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: a Life (New Haven and London, 2000), p. 40.

  35. Ibid., p. 44.

  36. Duarte, Ceuta 1415, pp. 88–90.

  37. Russell, Prince Henry, pp. 49, 51–2.

  38. P. Drumond Braga, Uma lança em África: História da conquista de Ceuta (Lisbon, 2015), p. 58.

  39. Luis Vaz de Camões, The Lusiads, transl. L. White (Oxford, 1997), canto 4:49, p. 86. See also e.g. D. Nobre Santos, Povoamento da ilha da Madeira e o sentido ecuménico da cultura lusíada (Estudos Gerais Universitários de Angola, Sá da Bandeira, Angola, 1966).

  40. B. Rogerson, The Last Crusaders: the Hundred-Year Battle for the Centre of the World (London, 2009), pp. 399–402.

  41. Russell, Prince Henry, pp. 120, 291–2.

  26. Virgin Islands

  1. S. Halikowski Smith, ‘The Mid-Atlantic Islands: a Theatre of Early Modern Ecocide?’, International Review of Social History, vol. 55 (2010), Supplement, p. 52.

  2. R. Carita, História da Madeira (1420–1566): Povoamento e produção açucareira (Funchal, 1989), pp. 35–9; F. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus: Exploration and Colonization from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic, 1229–1492 (London, 1987), pp. 195–6.

  3. C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (Ithaca, NY, 1970), pp. 206–19.

  4. P. Russell, Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: a Life (New Haven and London, 2000), pp. 94, 98.

  5. Ibid., p. 91; J. H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (2nd edn, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), p. 97.

  6. Halikowski Smith, ‘Mid-Atlantic Islands’, pp. 51–77.

  7. A. da Cà da Mosto (Cadamosto), The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. R. Crone (London, 1937), ch. 6, p. 9; Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp. 198–9.

  8. D. Abulafia, ‘Sugar in Spain’, European Review, vol. 16 (2008), pp. 191–210.

  9. V. Rau, ‘The Madeiran Sugar Cane Plantations’, in H. Johnson, ed., From Reconquest to Empire: the Iberian Background to Latin American History (New York, 1970), p. 75.

  10. A. Vieira, ‘Sugar Islands: the Sugar Economy of Madeira and the Canaries, 1450–1650’, in S. Schwartz, ed., Tropical Babylons: Sugar and the Making of the Atlantic World, 1450–1680 (Chapel Hill, 2004), pp. 42–84.

  11. Carita, História da Madeira, p. 92.

  12. Halikowski Smith, ‘Mid-Atlantic Islands’, p. 61.

  13. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp. 159–66.

  14. R. Fuson, Legendary Islands of the Ocean Sea (Sarasota, 1995), pp. 44–55, 103–17; D. Johnson, Phantom Islands of the Atlantic (London, 1997), pp. 91–128.

  15. Russell, Prince Henry, pp. 102–3.

  16. Fernández-Armesto, Before Columbus, pp. 199–200; D. Birmingham, Trade and Empire in the Atlantic, 1400–1600 (London, 2000), pp. 14–15.

  17. Parry, Discovery of the Sea, p. 99; Halikowski Smith, ‘Mid-Atlantic Islands’, pp. 61–2.

  18. Verlinden, Beginnings of Modern Colonization, pp. 220–27; A. Vieira, O comércio inter-insular nos séculos XV e XVI: Madeira, Açores e Canárias (Funchal, 1987).

  19. Angra, a Terceira e os Açores nas rotas da Índia e das Américas (Angra do Heroísmo, 1999).

  20. Verlinden, Beginnings of Modern Colonization, pp. 161–80; A. Peluffo, ed., Antonio de Noli e l’inizio delle scoperte del Nuovo Mondo (Noli, 2013; online English edition: M. Ferrado de Noli, ed., Antonio de Noli and the Beginnings of the New World), though some articles are tendentious.

  21. A. Leão Silva, Histórias de um Sahel Insular (Praia, 1995); J. Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa (1450–1560): Documents to Illustrate the Nature and Scope of Portuguese Enterprise in West Africa (2 vols., London, 1942); Halikowski Smith, ‘Mid-Atlantic Islands’, pp. 73–4.

  22. T. Green, The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 95–115; T. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading from West Africa to Iberian Territories, 1513–26 (Farnham, 2015).

  23. Examples may be seen in the Ethnographic Museum in Praia, Santiago.

  24. Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 99–100; cotton: Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, pp. 36, 149, 180, 213.

  25. A. Carreira, Cabo Verde: Formação e Extinção de uma Sociaedade escarvorata (1460–1878) (3rd edn, Praia de Santiago, 2000).

  26. C. Evans, M. L. Stig Sørensen and K. Richter, ‘An Early Christian Church in the Tropics: Excavation of the N.a S.a de Conceição, Cidade Velha, Cape Verde’, in T. Green, ed., Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Precolonial Western Africa (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 178 (2012), pp. 173–92.

  27. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, p. 15; T. Green, Masters of Difference: Creolization and the Jewish Presence in Cabo Verde 1497–1672 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Birmingham, 2007), p. 74; Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 98; Evans et al., ‘An Early Christian Church in the Tropics’, pp. 175–6; Catalans in the Atlantic: I. Armenteros Martínez, Cataluña en la era de las navegaciones: la participación catalana en la primera economía atlántica (c.1470–1540) (Barcelona, 2012).

  28. T. Green, ‘The Export of Rice and Millet from Upper Guinea into the Sixteenth-Century Atlantic Trade’, in R. Law, S. Schwarz and S. Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 79–97; T. Hall, ‘Portuguese Archival Documentation of Europe’s First Colony in the Tropics: the Cape Verde Islands, 1460–1530’, in L. McCrank, ed., Discovery in the Archives of Spain and Portugal: Quincentenary Essays, 1492–1992 (New York, 1993), p. 389.

  29. T. Hall, The Role of Cape Verde Islanders in Organizing and Operating Maritime Trade between West Africa and Iberian Territories, 1441–1616 (Ph.D. dissertation, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1992, distributed by University Microfilms International, 1992), p. 234; Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, pp. 266, 275–6; Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, p. 101.

  30. I. Cabral, A primeira elite colonial atlântica: dos ‘homens honrados brancos’ de Santiago à ‘Nobreza da Terra’, finais do séc. V–início do séc. XVII (Praia, 2015); Z. Cohen, Os filhos da folha (Cabo Verde – séculos XV–XVIII) (Praia, 2007); Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade, pp. 103–7.

  31. História geral do Cabo Verde (Lisbon and Praia de Santiago, 1991), vol. 1, pp. 264–7, 276–9; Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, pp. 84–5.

  32. História geral do Cabo Verde, corpo documental (Lisbon, 1988–90), vol. 2, pp. 234–8; Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, pp. 185–91.

  33. M. L. Stig Sørensen, C. Evans and K. Richter, ‘A Place of History: Archaeology and Heritage at Cidade Velha, Cape Verde’, in P. Lane and K. McDonald, eds., Slavery in Africa: Archaeology and Memory (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 168, 2011), pp. 421–42; ‘A Place of Arrivals: Forging a Nation’s Identity at Cidade Velha’, World Archaeology Ma
gazine, no. 75 (2016), pp. 32–6.

  34. D. Blumenthal, Enemies and Familiars: Slavery and Mastery in Fifteenth-Century Valencia (Ithaca, NY, 2009).

  35. J. Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast 1469–1692 (Athens, Ga., 1979), pp. 19–92; P. E. H. Hair, The Founding of the Castelo de São Jorge de Mina: an Analysis of the Sources (Madison, 1994); C. DeCorse, An Archaeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900 (Washington DC, 2006); A. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485–1897 (London, 1969), pp. 42–5.

  36. I. Batista de Sousa, São Tomé et Príncipe de 1485 à 1755: une société coloniale, de Blanc à Noir (Paris, 2008), p. 17; G. Seibert, ‘São Tomé & Príncipe: the First Plantation Economy in the Tropics’, in R. Law, S. Schwarz and S. Strickrodt, eds., Commercial Agriculture, the Slave Trade and Slavery in Atlantic Africa (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 54–78.

  37. R. Garfield, A History of São Tomé Island, 1470–1655: the Key to Guinea (San Francisco, 1992), p. 64.

  38. Seibert, ‘São Tomé & Príncipe’, pp. 60–61.

  39. Batista de Souza, São Tomé, pp. 21, 23; Garfield, History of São Tomé, pp. 31, 35–6.

  40. I. Castro Henriques, São Tomé e Príncipe: a invenção de uma sociedade (Lisbon, 2000), p. 34.

  41. F. Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7) (Leiden, 2007).

  42. Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa, vol. 1, doc. 9, pp. 86–7.

  43. Seibert, ‘São Tomé & Príncipe’, p. 58.

  44. Samuel Usque, Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel, transl. M. Cohen (Philadelphia, 1965), pp. 201–2; Isaac Abravanel, Commentary to Exodus (Jerusalem, 1984), p. 67, cited by D. E. Cohen, The Biblical Exegesis of Don Isaac Abrabanel (Ph.D. dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 2015), pp. 120, 428.

  45. Garfield, History of São Tomé, pp. 65, 71–2, 85; R. Garfield, ‘Public Christians, Secret Jews: Religion and Political Conflict on São Tomé in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries’, The Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 21 (1990), pp. 645–54; Batista de Sousa, São Tomé, pp. 50–56; Henriques, São Tomé e Príncipe, pp. 63–92.

  46. Garfield, History of São Tomé, p. 31.

  47. Blake, ed., Europeans in West Africa, vol. 1, pp. 89–90.

  48. Ryder, Benin, pp. 42–3 n. 4, 55.

  49. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, pp. 38, 46–7, 57–8, 72–3.

  50. D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008), pp. 145–61; R. Kowner, From White to Yellow: the Japanese in European Racial Thought, 1300–1735 (Montreal, 2014), pp. 50–51.

  51. S. E. Morison, Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century (Cambridge, Mass., 1940).

  52. Verlinden, Beginnings of Modern Colonization, pp. 181–95; Morison, Portuguese Voyages to America, pp. 44–50.

  27. Guinea Gold and Guinea Slaves

  1. Text from Zurara in M. Newitt, ed., The Portuguese in West Africa, 1415–1670: a Documentary History (Cambridge, 2010), doc. 35, pp. 149–50.

  2. A. Saunders, A Social History of Black Slaves and Freedmen in Portugal 1441–1555 (Cambridge, 1982), pp. 38–9.

  3. D. Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind: Atlantic Encounters in the Age of Columbus (New Haven, 2008), pp. 39, 43.

  4. T. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage: Translated Portuguese Manuscripts of Atlantic Slave Trading From West Africa to Iberian Territories, 1513–26 (Farnham, 2015), p. 52, also pp. 43, 45, 65.

  5. R. Collins and J. Burns, A History of Sub-Saharan Africa (2nd edn, Cambridge, 2014), pp. 78–95; B. Davidson, West Africa before the Colonial Era: a History to 1850 (Harlow, 1998); N. Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali (London, 1973).

  6. E. Bovill, The Golden Trade of the Moors (2nd edn, Oxford, 1970); Levtzion, Ancient Ghana and Mali, pp. 81–4; M. Gomez, African Dominion: a New History of Empire in Early and Medieval West Africa (Princeton, 2018).

  7. J. Day, ‘The Great Bullion Famine of the Fifteenth Century’, Past and Present, no. 79 (1978), pp. 3–54.

  8. S. Stantchev, Spiritual Rationality: Papal Embargo as Cultural Practice (Oxford, 2015).

  9. J. H. Parry, The Discovery of the Sea (2nd edn, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1991), pp. 99–100; J. Vogt, Portuguese Rule on the Gold Coast 1469–1692 (Athens, Ga., 1979), p. 4.

  10. Newitt, ed., Portuguese in West Africa, p. 47 n. 3.

  11. J. Correia, L’Implantation de la ville portugaise en Afrique du Nord de la prise de Ceuta jusqu’au milieu du XVIe siècle (Porto, 2008; also published in a parallel Portuguese edition).

  12. Newitt, ed., Portuguese in West Africa, pp. 148–50, doc. 35.

  13. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, p. 7.

  14. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, pp. 29–31.

  15. A. da Cà da Mosto (Cadamosto), The Voyages of Cadamosto and Other Documents on Western Africa in the Second Half of the Fifteenth Century, ed. C. R. Crone (London, 1937), in Newitt, ed., Portuguese in West Africa, pp. 67–71, doc. 16.

  16. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, p. 36.

  17. Ibid., p. 39; T. Green, Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300–1589 (Cambridge, 2012), p. 248.

  18. Hall, ed. and transl., Before Middle Passage, p. 227.

  19. Ibid., pp. 5, 36, 222; C. Evans, M. L. Stig Sørensen and K. Richter, ‘An Early Christian Church in the Tropics: Excavation of the N.a S.a de Conceição, Cidade Velha, Cape Verde’, in T. Green, ed., Brokers of Change: Atlantic Commerce and Cultures in Precolonial Western Africa (Proceedings of the British Academy, vol. 178 (2012)), pp. 173–92.

  20. J. Blake, West Africa: Quest for God and Gold, 1454–1587 (London, 1977), pp. 32–4, 83.

  21. I. Armenteros Martínez, Cataluña en la era de las navegaciones: la participación catalana en la primera economía atlántica (c.1470–1540) (Barcelona, 2012), pp. 72–80.

  22. C. Verlinden, The Beginnings of Modern Colonization (Ithaca, NY, 1970), pp. 176–80.

  23. Blake, West Africa, pp. 49–55.

  24. Abulafia, Discovery of Mankind, p. 95; M. Á. Ladero Quesada, Los últimos años de Fernando el Católico 1505–1517 (Madrid, 2016), p. 167 (1509 confirmation).

  25. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, pp. 7–9.

  26. A. Ryder, Benin and the Europeans, 1485–1897 (London, 1969).

  27. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, p. 9.

  28. Armenteros Martínez, Cataluña en la era de las navegaciones, pp. 77–80.

  29. Blake, West Africa, p. 37.

  30. D. Escudier, ed., Voyage d’Eustache Delafosse sur la côte de Guinée, au Portugal et en Espagne (1479–1481) (Paris, 1992), pp. 12–15.

  31. Ibid., pp. 16–17.

  32. Ibid., pp. 24–5, 28–31.

  33. Ibid., pp. 52–65.

  34. Blake, West Africa, pp. 60–62.

  35. P. E. H. Hair, The Founding of the Castelo de São Jorge da Mina: an Analysis of the Sources (Madison, 1994), p. 5.

  36. C. Antero Ferreira, Castelo da Mina: da fundação às representações iconográficas dos séculos XVI e XVII (Lisbon, 2007), p. 10.

  37. Hair, Founding of the Castelo, pp. 7, 10–11.

  38. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, pp. 20–21; Hair, Founding of the Castelo, pp. 14–15.

  39. Hair, Founding of the Castelo, pp. 15–17; Blake, West Africa, p. 99; Parry, Discovery of the Sea, p. 108.

  40. Hair, Founding of the Castelo, pp. 20–31.

  41. Pina and Barros in Hair, Founding of the Castelo, pp. 22–3, 100–101, 104–5; Pina in Newitt, ed., Portuguese in West Africa, pp. 93–4; Vogt, Portuguese Rule, p. 25.

  42. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, pp. 26–31; C. DeCorse, An Archeology of Elmina: Africans and Europeans on the Gold Coast, 1400–1900 (Washington DC, 2001), pp. 47–9; Blake, West Africa, p. 99.

  43. DeCorse, Archeology of Elmina, pp. 49–51.

  44. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, pp. 34–5, 38–9.

  45. DeCorse, Archeology of Elmina, p. 51; Blake, West Africa, p.
100.

  46. Letter of King João III of 1523 in Newitt, ed., Portuguese in West Africa, pp. 96–7, doc. 23.

  47. H. Thomas, The Slave Trade: a History of the Atlantic Slave Trade 1440–1870 (London, 1997), p. 73.

  48. Vogt, Portuguese Rule, p. 57.

  49. Ibid., p. 209.

  50. Escudier, ed., Voyage d’Eustache Delafosse, pp. 30–31; E. Axelson, Congo to Cape: Early Portuguese Explorers (London, 1973), pp. 39, 41; D. Peres, A History of the Portuguese Discoveries (Lisbon, 1960), p. 59.

  51. Cited by Axelson, Congo to Cape, p. 42.

  52. C. Marinescu, La Politique orientale d’Alfonse V d’Aragon roi de Naples (1416–1458) (Barcelona, 1994), pp. 13–28.

  53. Axelson, Congo to Cape, pp. 45–6, 50–51.

  54. Ibid., p. 61; Peres, History of the Portuguese Discoveries, pp. 60–61.

  55. J. Manuel Garcia, Breve história dos descobrimentos e expansão de Portugal (Lisbon, 1999), p. 50.

  56. Axelson, Congo to Cape, pp. 63–4; Peres, History of the Portuguese Discoveries, pp. 63–4.

  57. Axelson, Congo to Cape, pp. 69–76.

  58. Peres, History of the Portuguese Discoveries, p. 69.

  59. Ibid., pp. 69–70.

  60. Axelson, Congo to Cape, pp. 115–44, also plate vii opposite p. 113.

  61. Ibid., p. 179.

  PART FOUR

  OCEANS IN CONVERSATION

  28. The Great Acceleration

  1. On Columbus: F. Fernández-Armesto, Columbus (Oxford, 1991); W. D. Phillips and C. Phillips, The Worlds of Christopher Columbus (Cambridge, 1992); E. Taviani, Christopher Columbus (London, 1985); S. E. Morison, Admiral of the Ocean Sea (new edn, New York, 1992); V. Flint, The Imaginative Landscape of Christopher Columbus (Princeton, 1992).

  2. On Cabot: J. Williamson, ed., The Cabot Voyages and Bristol Discovery under Henry VII (Cambridge, 1962); J. Williamson, The Voyages of John and Sebastian Cabot (London, 1937); P. Pope, The Many Landfalls of John Cabot (Toronto, 1997); E. Jones, ‘Alwyn Ruddock: “John Cabot and the Discovery of America”’, Historical Research, vol. 81 (2008), pp. 224–54; E. Jones and M. Condon, Cabot and Bristol’s Age of Discovery: the Bristol Discovery Voyages 1480–1508 (Bristol, 2016).