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Trade between Elmina and Portugal grew over the next decade. The port became a major trading center for gold and slaves purchased from local African peoples along the slave rivers of Benin. Using his profits from African trade, Fernão Gomes assisted the Portuguese king in the conquests of Asilah, Alcácer Ceguer, and Tangier in Morocco.
The Portuguese had established important trade routes in West Africa as part of the Portuguese Empire since the 15th century and their merchants, including Sephardic Jews started the Atlantic slave trade, whereby African slaves purchased from West African traders were brought to work sugar cane and other plantations in Portuguese America. This ...
The Portuguese presence in Africa soon interfered with existing Arab trade interests. By 1583, the Portuguese established themselves in Zanzibar and on the Swahili coast. The Kingdom of Congo was converted to Christianity in 1495, its king taking the name of João I. The Portuguese also established their trade interests in the Kingdom of Mutapa ...
The first Portuguese feitoria overseas was established by Henry the Navigator in 1445 on the island of Arguin, off the coast of Mauritania. It was built to attract Muslim traders and monopolize the business in the routes traveled in North Africa. It served as a model for a chain of African feitorias, Elmina Castle being the most notorious.
The Portuguese Empire [a] was a colonial empire that existed between 1415 and 1999. In conjunction with the Spanish Empire, it ushered in the European Age of Discovery.It achieved a global scale, controlling vast portions of the Americas, Africa and various islands in Asia and Oceania.
In 1297, King Dinis of Portugal took personal interest in the development of exports and organized the export of surplus production to European countries. On May 10, 1293, he instituted a maritime insurance fund for Portuguese traders living in the County of Flanders, which were to pay certain sums according to tonnage, accrued to them when necessary.
Around 1489, Sofala had been visited by the Portuguese spy Pêro da Covilhã, who identified it as the principal emporium for the gold trade with the interior kingdom of Monomatapa. The Portuguese crown had been eager to tap into that gold source, and made it a priority for its early Portuguese India Armadas to find the city.
Portuguese visitors so often engaged in slavery in Japan and occasionally South Asian and African crew members were taken to Macau and other Portuguese colonies in Southeast Asia, the Americas, [31] and India, where there was a community of Japanese slaves and traders in Goa by the early 17th century, many of whom became prostitutes. [32]