April 22, 1500: Pedro Cabral sees Brazil
Ever wonder why Brazil speaks Portuguese instead of Spanish? Thank Pedro Álvares Cabral. On this day in 1500, the Portuguese explorer saw the coast of Brazil for the first time.
In August 1499, Cabral’s countryman Vasco da Gama completed the first European sea voyage to India. Although he returned with only half his original number of men and ships, the pepper he brought back alone was worth 60 times the entire cost of the trip.
Unsurprisingly, King Manuel I was eager to send a second fleet; he tapped Cabral, an inexperienced minor noble, to lead the armada. His main charge was to negotiate an agreement with the Zamorin, rulers of spice-rich Calicut in the southwest of India.
After stopping at the Cape Verde islands, the fleet headed southwest on March 22, probably in an attempt to catch favorable trade winds. A side benefit was an ability to see if any territory fell on the Portuguese side of the line set by the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas with Spain. (Anything to the west of it would be Spanish.)
A month later, they spotted land; over the next ten days, Cabral and his men would survey 50 miles of seacoast north of present-day Rio before heading off to India, where they managed to start a war with the Zamorin (nice work, guys!).
Since he discovered it around Easter, Pascal called the new land Ilha de Vera Cruz, the Island of the True Cross. It later took the name of the native Pau-brasil tree, used by the Portuguese to make red dye.
For more on Cabral, visit the website of The Mariners’ Museum.
I would say that Cabral’s role was more “contributed to” than “was responsible for”. The thing that kicked the whole thing off was the Treaty of Tordesillas that you mentioned. The treaty divided lands between Spanish and Portuguese control. And the treaty preceded Cabral’s activities. So the treaty put everyone (but especially the Spanish and the Portuguese) on notice that certain lands belonged to Portugal. But an important part of grabbing land in that period was setting foot (or at least eyes) on it. Cabral checked that box. He set foot on the land that Portugal later claimed successfully. Now say the treaty had not existed. As far as I can tell no one (and by this I mean European) had set either foot or eyes on what is now Brazil before Cabral did it. So I suspect that, in the absence of the treaty, Portugal would have been successful in their claim based on the rules in effect at the time. And there is a good chance Cabral’s voyage would not have happened at all absent of the existence of the treaty. So that’s why I come down on the side of “contributed to” rather than “was responsible for”.
Anyhow, these historical vignettes are a lot of fun.