Portugal: Political History and Notable Political and Military Figures

1112 - 1185 - Dom Afonso (All Facts)

• First King and Founder of the Kingdom of Portugal

  • He gained initial control of the territory by defeating his mother Teresa in the Battle of Sao Mamede

  • He gained further control of the territory by defeating the Almoravids in the Siege of Lisbon

  • He controlled most of the country’s northern and western seaboard from his capital, after the Muslims had abandoned both shores of the Tagus and were forced to give up bases at Sintra and Palmela

  • He was recognized as king by Alfonso VII of Castile

• He established the Kingdom of Portugal’s capital at Coimbra

• Under his reign,

  • The Muslims’ northern border in Portugal was forced back to Evora

  • He had to settle his debts with the large combined force of 13K English, Flemish, and German Crusaders in 164 ships all of whom he persuaded to help him in his fight against the Muslims

    • Under the terms of the alliance he put forth, the Crusaders

      • Were given the spoils of Lisbon

      • Could opt for land in Portugal

      • Were given the right to enjoy the customs and liberties of their native lands

    • The English Crusaders settled at Vila Verde

• He became a vassal of the papacy

1385 - 1433 - John (All Facts)

• King of Portugal

  • He was formerly the Grand Master of the Knights of Aviz

  • When his predecessor died, he declared himself king

  • He led a revolt against King John and the Kingdom of Castile

  • Prior to his kingship,

    • He and his forces defeated John of Castile and his forces in the Siege of Lisbon, successfully defending the city with the help of a plague which devastated the Castilian army

    • He and his forces defeated John of Castile and his forces in the Battle of Aljubarrota, successfully securing Portuguese independence and the namesake’s kingship

• During his reign, the kingdom of Portugal made peace after 30 years of wars and truces with the Kingdom of Aragon

• He oversaw a foreign policy of overseas expansion

  • He conquered Ceuta in Morocco

  • He was keen to acquire gold and slaves from Africa

  • He was motivated by a dream of allying with Africans against the Muslims of North Africa (the Maghreb)

1438 - 1477 - Afonso V (All Facts)

• King of Portugal

  • He was nicknamed “The African”

• He tried and failed to claim the hand of (marriage to) Joanna of Castile, his niece, and the throne of Castile in the Castilian War of Succession, in which he was defeated

• Under his reign,

  • For the first time, slaves and gold were directly imported from West Africa into Portugal

  • The Portuguese reached the mouth of the Senegal and Cape Verde

1481 - 1495 - John II (All Facts)

• King of Portugal

  • He was nicknamed “The Perfect Prince”

  • His accession gave a boost to Portuguese voyages of exploration

• He signed the Treaty of Tordesillas with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain

  • This treaty drew an imaginary demarcation line down the Western Atlantic, which (in hindsight) slightly favored Spain since the treaty allowed Spain to retain discovered land west of the demarcation line

  • He planned his own expedition to India, but became alarmed when he learned that King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain had persuaded Pope Alexander VI to issue a series of bulls giving the rulers of Spain all the lands west of the Portuguese Azores discovered (or at that time, to be discovered) by Christopher Columbus

  • As a result, he opened direct negotiations with King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain that led to the Treaty of Tordesillas

• During his reign,

  • He sent a Portuguese expedition to the Kingdom of Kongo, which eventually led to the Portuguese colonization of Angola nearly 100 years later

    • During this time, Portugal’s contact with the Kingdom had peaceful intentions, as they were inspired by the desire to convert rather than conquer

    • The Kongo became a colony, more or less, of Portugal, when they had installed King Afonso there, who had taken the throne from his predecessor usurper

• Under his reign,

  • Bartholomew Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and when recounted to the namesake; he renamed it the Cape of Good Hope from Dias’s coinage of it as the Cape of Storms; because it gave the promise of discovering a sea route to India

  • the first European manual of navigation and nautical almanac was prepared, by a group of mathematical experts whom he appointed

    • The namesake was concerned that his navigators were embarking on long voyages without charts or sailing directions given that the dead reckoning method of establishing a position by recording the distance and direction travelled was unreliable since the North Star was not visible in southern waters

    • The namesake thus told the mathematicians to devise a method of finding latitude by solar observation; the main problem of which was that the track followed by the sun in relation to the earth changes from day to day and from year to year

    • His experts studied a set of tables first worked out by Abraham Zacuto of Salamanca and produced a simplified version of his tables for seamen under the namesake’s reign

      • But taking a reading of the sun’s position and calculating what is called the “latitude” of a ship from that reading is complicated and a seaman must have a grasp of mathematics and astronomy

1495 - 1521 - Manuel (All Facts)

• King of Portugal

  • He was nicknamed “The Fortunate”

  • He was the nephew of his predecessor

• He was Europe’s wealthiest rule until his death, a “cruzado” multi-millionaire

  • However, the rising cost of the trading voyages he and his successors commissioned eventually exceeded the returns on their investments in them

• During his reign,

  • He issued the Edict of Expulsion against the Jews and Muslims, forcing them to leave or be baptized

    • Prior to this, he had relied on Portugal’s Jewish community to manage Portugal’s newfound wealth at the time and the many commercial operations of the namesake

    • He came under pressure, however, from Spain to expel the Jews

    • His stratagem was to tell the Jews that if they merely say they have converted to Christianity, they can stay on with no questions asked

  • He appointed Francisco de Madeira as First Viceroy of (Portuguese) India

  • He found the cost of equipping ships and providing funds for trading to heavy a burden, and made these thus into commercial operations

    • These encompassed raids on Muslim city-states in East Africa

    • At Kilwa, he ordered the building of a fort there

  • He dispatched the first Portuguese mission to Canton in China

    • There, a Portuguese ambassador had arrived in Beijing

  • He built the Monastery of St. Jerome at Belem

    • He was enabled to do this because of the sugar and spice and Guinean gold that was transported to Portugal from various countries

  • He subsidized the St. Barbara College in Paris in France as a school for Portuguese students

• Under his reign,

  • Portugal was experiencing a Golden Age

    • Learning and artistic expression were encouraged

  • Portugal’s territories in the Americas, assigned to them via the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by his predecessor, were divided into hereditary fiefdoms

  • The Portuguese founded various colonies including

    • Brazil

    • India / Goa

    • Malacca

    • Zanzibar

  • The Portuguese

    • established themselves as spice merchants in the Indian Ocean

      • Spices from the East, shipped round the Cape of Good Hope, were in great demand

    • extracted sugar from the Madeira Islands, selling 20 tons of it a year to England

    • setup a trading post in Calicut, on the west coast of India

    • attacked Muslim shipping in the Indian Ocean, as well as the Red Sea

    • levied a tribute from the Sultan of Zanzibar

    • abandoned Kilwa

    • discovered the islands Mauritius and Reunion uninhabited

    • sent embassies to

      • Ethiopia

      • Angola (at the time, the Ngola Kingdom)

• By the end of his reign, Portugal’s positive relationship with the Congolese and the Kongo Kingdom suffered greatly due to

  • Traders and opportunists having arrived and depopulating vast areas for slave trading

  • White missionaries having behaved like rulers

  • Presumptions of European superiority over Africans having taken over

  • The Portuguese, unable to manipulate it for their own benefit, calling the Kongo “heretical” despite the Papacy saying otherwise