PEDRO ALVAREZ CABRAL
Born in 1467, Pedro Alvarez Cabral was Portuguese navigator and a man surrounded by many questions. In 1500, a friend of Vasco da Gama was sent out by Manuel I, the head of a fleet heading to India, along with an officer named Bartolomeu Dias. Navigating the vessel, Cabral headed too far west, reaching the coast of Brazil instead, which was claimed for Portugal. Moving forward, other areas were reached to include Madagascar, Mozambique, and the Indian coast.
However, when they arrived in Calicut, trouble brewed over the establishment of a trading post, as well as the attempt of converting Muslims to Christianity. Although Cabral and his crew tried to bombard the city, he was forced to retreat in order to save all of his precious East Indian cargo. With all the ships heading back to Portugal full of riches, Cabral’s method of diplomacy was met with a tremendous amount of criticism.
Making Cabral so fascinating is all the variations of this story. For example, one story is that he discovered the land of Brazil simply by being driven off course by ferocious storms. Others believe that the Spaniard Vicente Yanez Pinzon had already reached Brazil before Cabral and that Portuguese navigators had been there and wanting to obtain the land, were able to secure a revision of the pope’s initial demarcation of the world into the zones of exploration for both Spain and Portuguese. However, if you consider the 1494 Treaty of Tordesillas, this would change the earlier line, placing Brazil in the Portuguese zone, something still being debated today.
Even so, Pedro Alvarez Cabral is known as being the principal discoverer of Brazil. The story most historians believe is that around 1526, King Emanuel fitted an expedition to Calicut, consisting of 13 ships. Cabral was appointed as commander in chief and taking a westerly course around the Canaries, he discovered Brazil. From there, it is believed that Cabral sailed on to India but lost about 50% of his crew. Even so, he landed at Calicut and after many negotiations with the Indian princes, he was successful in founding a factory there.