Discovery and settlement of Madeira
Captains of Henry the Navigator reached the uninhabited islands of Porto Santo and Madeira and began to settle them — the first Portuguese colony in the Atlantic, where a plantation economy based on sugar and slave labour was first tried out.
- Date
- between 1418 and 1419 – 1425start: exact date unknown: an interval is given; end: year known · duration: ≈ 7 years
- Place
- Funchal (Madeira)today: Funchal, Madeira, Portugal · Africa
- Participants
- Henry the Navigator, João Gonçalves Zarco, Kingdom of Portugal
- Threads
- History of Portugal since the Battle of Aljubarrota
- Also known as
- Porto Santo; Порту-Санту; Machico; Машику
João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, driven by a storm, reached an island they named Porto Santo (“Holy Harbour”); the next year, together with Bartolomeu Perestrelo, they landed on the larger, densely wooded island of Madeira (“wood”). The sources differ on the dates: Porto Santo is dated to 1418 or 1419, Madeira to 1419 or 1420, and the beginning of settlement to between 1420 and 1425, when the islands were granted to Prince Henry. The archipelago already appears on 14th-century charts, so the Portuguese probably rediscovered it.
The settlers cleared the forest by fire and dug irrigation channels, the levadas. From the 1450s sugar cane replaced wheat, and Funchal became a port of call for merchants from all over Europe; Christopher Columbus lived on Madeira and Porto Santo and married Perestrelo’s daughter Filipa Moniz. Plantations worked by enslaved Guanches, Berbers and West Africans became the model later transferred to Brazil and the Caribbean.
Connections
Causes and preconditions
- Portuguese conquest of Ceuta21 August 1415 · AfricaCeuta opened Portugal’s overseas expansion; Zarco, who fought there, soon led Prince Henry’s ships to Madeira
Related events
- First voyage of Christopher Columbus3 August 1492 – 15 March 1493 · Western and Central Europebefore his voyage Columbus lived on Madeira and Porto Santo, where he married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo
- Founding of Salvador and the Governorate General of Brazil29 March 1549 · Latin Americathe Madeiran sugar plantation became the model for the plantation economy of Brazil
Same participants
- Founding of São Jorge da Mina (Elmina)January 1482 · Africavia Kingdom of Portugal
Meanwhile in the world
Other regions, within 25 years of this event
East Asia
- Tumu Crisis1 September 1449
Latin America
- Construction of Machu Picchubetween 1420 and 1450
- Reign of Pachacuti — birth of the Inca Empire1438–1471
The same period
Sources
- Wikipedia (English): History of Madeira
- Wikipedia (English): João Gonçalves Zarco
- Wikipedia (Russian): История Мадейры
- Wikipedia (Russian): Гонсалвиш Зарку, Жуан
- Russell P. E. Prince Henry ‘the Navigator’: A Life. — New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.