The Discovery of Brazil

S OME Portuguese and Brazilian scholars have long been fond of the hypothesis that Brazil was known to the Portuguese even before Cabral landed on its shores in 1500. This hypothesis, at first little known among students of maritime expansion in the United States, has within the past decade stirred up discussion and criticism, and that criticism has in turn aroused Portuguese response. Admiral Gago Coutinho of the Portuguese Navy has recently put together the arguments for the hypothesis so comprehensively yet so succinctly that it seems desirable to see in what condition he leaves the question. Admiral Coutinho places the discovery of Brazil before I497. His main points are that in 1487 Bartolomeu Dias beat his way along the west African coast and turned the Cape of Good Hope, to find himself on the threshold of the sea route across the Indian Ocean to India. Ten years later, in 1497, Vasco da Gama reached the same threshold by leaving the African coast at Sierra Leone and staying far at sea in the South Atlantic until he headed east at more or less the latitude of the Cape of Good Hope. Obviously, as the Portuguese were prudent sailors, they must have carefully explored the winds of the South Atlantic after Dias's voyage, or da Gama would not have trusted himself thus to the open sea. During the explorations, and some time before da Gama's voyage of I497, Brazil was discovered. Nothing is known of these explorations, according to Admiral Coutinho, because of the policy of the kings of Portugal of keeping secret all information bearing on the path to India. But that the land was known is indicated by Cabral's purposely stopping there en route to India. Documents to prove these points, however, are fragmentary, scarce, or missing altogether, because of the policy of secrecy, so that much of what may be learned of the discovery of Brazil must be derived from conjecture, based in large part on knowledge of conditions of navigation.' From this summary it will be seen that Admiral Coutinho's case rests on two principal bases: belief in the existence of a policy of secrecy and belief in the purposeful nature of Cabral's landing in Brazil. The existence of such a policy may be treated first; for on its acceptance or rejection depends much of the question of the discovery of Brazil before 1500. Dr. Jaime Cortesao, one of the earliest and most vigorous protagonists for the existence of this policy, has pointed out that documents concerning Portuguese explorations during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are exceedingly scarce and that in 1504 the

Geography · Brazilian History and Foreign Policy · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Cuban History and Society

• Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century

  E Morison, S E Morison•Geographical Journal•1942

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