Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

by Roger Crowley

The royal household projected these voyages to the pope as crusades—continuations of the war with Islam. The Portuguese had expelled the Arabs from their territory far earlier than their neighbors in Castile and established a precocious sense of national identity, but the appetite for holy war remained undimmed. As Catholic monarchs, those in the royal house of Aviz sought legitimacy and parity on the European stage as warriors for Christ. In a Europe that felt itself increasingly threatened by militant Islam, particularly after the fall of Constantinople in 1453, they obtained from the papacy spiritual and financial concessions and territorial rights over explored lands in the name of Christ. The crusading remit from Rome was “to invade, search out, capture, vanquish and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ…and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.”