Conquerors: How Portugal Forged the First Global Empire

by Roger Crowley

A decade earlier, he had prompted a letter and a map on the subject from the famed Florentine mathematician and cosmographer Paolo Toscanelli. Toscanelli had proposed “a sea route from here to India, the land of spices; a route which is shorter than that via Guinea.” His reasoning was that because the world was spherical, it was possible to reach the Indies by sailing in either direction, and that it was a shorter voyage to sail west.

The Portuguese account was more muted. Columbus was insufferably condescending. The royal court found him “puffed up in manner, and continuously exceeding the bounds of truth in his account, and making the expedition much more significant in terms of gold, silver and riches than it actually was” and upbraiding the king for lack of belief. João was shaken by the apparent proof of the native hostages he produced. In appearance they were not African; they seemed more like what he imagined the people of the Indies to be, but no one could be certain exactly what the self-promoting Genoese had found. The king’s advisers had a simple solution: kill him discreetly and the Spanish discoveries would die.

By 1500, probably 15 percent of the population were Guinea blacks—there were more slaves in the city than anywhere else in Europe.