Some countries, at some stage in their history, go on the rampage. England took over vast tracts of land on almost every continent to create their own empire, a posh word for what you get when you steal the belongings of millions of people  and force them to live like you do. The Romans did the same, building an epic empire founded on mass misery, suffering and greed. The Portuguese joined in, discovering and claiming far-flung lands for themselves, and you can still see the impact of their shenanigans today in the country’s artwork, buildings, sights, attractions and museums. Tracing the life and times of these merciless seafarers adds an extra dimension to a holiday in Porto, so let’s go!  

Portugal’s Age of Discovery period in bullet points 

  • Portugal’s maritime explorers found a host of new territories and sea routes
  • They ultimately mapped the coastlines of Africa, Asia, Canada and Brazil, a vast and lethally dangerous undertaking 
  • They were especially active during the 1400s and 1500s
  • A Portuguese attempt to capture one of the Canary Islands, partially settled by Spaniards in 1402, proved a disaster 
  • In 1415 Portuguese occupied the North African city of Ceuta so they could control shipping through the Strait of Gibraltar
  • In 1418 two of Prince Henry the navigator’s ship captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, accidentally found Porto Santo, an uninhabited island off the coast of Africa
  • In 1419 Zarco and Teixeira landed on Madeira
  • The Azores were probably discovered in 1427 by Diogo de Silves, who first found the island of Santa Maria. Within a few decades Portuguese mariners had found and set up home on the other Azorean islands
  • Prince Henry’s expedition to capture Tangier failed in 1437
  • In 1443 Henry and his brother Prince Pedro managed to secure a monopoly on navigation, war and trade in their newly conquered countries, an act of violence supported by the pope in 1452 and confirmed by another pope in 1455
  • Senegal and Cape Verde Peninsula were on the horizon in 1445, the same year the first ever overseas trading post was set up off Mauritania, created to capture trade from North Africa
  • In 1446, Álvaro Fernandes got as far as Sierra Leone
  • The Portuguese reached the Gulf of Guinea in the 1460s, discovering São Tomé and Príncipe
  • In 1471 the explorers reached Elmina on Ghana’s Gold Coast
  • In 1481 the new king built the São Jorge da Mina fort, AKA Elmina Castle, to protect the highly profitable gold trade in the region
  • In 1482, Diogo Cão discovered the mouth of the Congo River
  • In 1486 Cão continued to Cape Cross, in present-day Namibia
  • Bartolomeu Dias sailed to the Cape of Good Hope and into the Indian Ocean in 1488
  • Pêro da Covilhã found his way to India via Egypt and Yemen in 1490
  • In 1492 Christopher Columbus’s ‘discovery’ of the New World caused political ructions, then the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas divided the non-European world into a huge duopoly, sharing it out between Portuguese and Spanish
  • Vasco da Gama left Portugal in 1497 with four ships and 170 crew, sailing around the Cape of Good Hope and onwards to south east Africa. He reached India in 1498
  • A second voyage to India left in 1500 under Pedro Álvares Cabral, who landed in Brazil by accident
  • Two follow-up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503 but because they didn’t find any gold, the Portuguese decided to focus in India instead
  • From 1497 to 1542 they explored the vast Indian Ocean
  • Several forts and trading posts were set up from 1500 to 1510 in east Africa, Mozambique, Kilwa, Brava, Sofala and Mombasa, all forced to become Portugal’s allies
  • In 1500 Diogo Dias discovered the island of St. Lawrence, later known as Madagascar
  • In 1502 Vasco da Gama took the island of Kilwa on the coast of Tanzania
  • In 1505, king Manuel the First appointed Francisco de Almeida first Viceroy of Portuguese India
  • In 1506 Tristão da Cunha and Afonso de Albuquerque’s fleet conquered Socotra at the entrance of the Red Sea
  • In 1507 they took Muscat in 1507 and in 1509 the Portuguese won the sea Battle of Diu against the combined forces of several countries
  • In 1510 Goa was taken from the Bijapur sultanate
  • 1511 saw Malacca become the strategic base for Portuguese trade expansion with China and Southeast Asia,
  • The Portuguese took Makassar, reaching Timor in 1514
  • Jorge Álvares arrived in south China during 1513
  • In 1515, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Hormuz on the Persian Gulf,
  • Bahrain was captured in 152
  • 1n 1525 an expedition sailed to colonize the Moluccas islands
  • In 1530 John 3rd decided to colonise Brazil by creating 15 ‘hereditary captainships’ to give to people who thought he was a good guy
  • Between 1534 to 1538 the Ottoman empire’s ambitions were finally smashed, leaving Portugal reigning over the region
  • 1557 the Chinese let Portuguese people settle in Macau
  • In 1570 the Portuguese bought a Japanese port and founded the city of Nagasaki

By the end of the Age of Discovery Portugal had either discovered of re-discovered a remarkable number and variety of new lands to plunder and people to oppress. Now, like he Roman, Ottoman and English versions, their empire is thankfully gone, but take a tour of Porto and you’ll still be able to sense their influence hundreds of years later.

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