4.28 Europe: a.d. 1401 to 1500  (Page 9/16)

There were 2,700,000 sheep in Spain by 1467 and wool was the chief agricultural product, along with mutton, milk and cheese. (Ref. 211 ) At the end of the century Spain had an epidemic of typhus, brought there in 1490 by soldiers who had been fighting in Cyprus. (Ref. 140 ) In addition, incidental to the celebrations upon the return of Columbus from his first voyage in 1493, a terrible epidemic of syphilis broke out. It was severe, rapid in progress and of ten fatal and within 4 or 5 years the disease "toured" Europe. (Ref. 260 )

Portugal

On the political front, Portugal finally made peace with Castile in 1411 and then started their expansion on the African mainland. Their luck was bad as the plague hit and then they suffered an overwhelming defeat at Tangiers in 1437. Alfonso V, who ruled from 1437 to 1481, was one-half Spanish. The nobles revolted against him at one time, but he did promote the Ordenacoes Affonsinas, the first Code of Portuguese Law, in 1146. It was an amalgam of Roman, Visigothic and customary law.

It was not only gold hunger but shortages of grain, fish and slaves to work the sugar plantations of Madiera that stimulated the Portuguese merchant marine of this century. They built fortresses on the Gold Coast of Africa in the 1480s and by the end of the century were bringing 700 kilograms of gold and 10,000 slaves to Lisbon every year. (Ref. 8 )

In their initiation of the slave trade, the Portuguese had the blessings of the Catholic Church in that Pope Nicholas V had authorized them to "attack, subject and reduce to perpetual slavery the Saracens, pagans and other enemies of Christ southward from Capes Bajador and Non, including all the coast of Guinea."

NOTE: Insert Map 55. The Iberian Peninsula Towards The End of the 15th Century (1476)

Near the end of the century Joao Il had to suppress another revolt by the nobles. When Portugal and Spain began to squabble over their overseas possessions in the new world, the Treaty of Tordesillas made a dividing line which was only more or less subsequently observed. In 1497, the same year that Portugal either expelled the Jews or forcibly converted them, Vasco da Gama, using an Arab navigator, Arab maps and astronomy tables of the Jew, Abraham Zacuto, sailed around the southern tip of Africa to India and thus began the commercial supremacy of Portugal. Unfortunately Vasco lost more than half of his crew to scurvy on the journey. Navigational improvements were pioneered through Prince Dom Enrique (Henry), the Navigator, son of Joao II and he brought mathematicians and astronomers, who made instruments and trigonometric tables to measure latitude. These improvements also resulted in the discovery and peopling of the Azores as well as the African coast. (Ref. 150 )