Bartholomew Columbus
Bartholomew Columbus was an Italian explorer from Genoa and the younger brother of Christopher Columbus. Born in the Republic of Genoa, in the 1470s Bartholomew was a mapmaker in Lisbon, the principal center of cartography of the time, conceived with his brother the "Enterprise of the Indies", a planned expedition to reach the Orient and its lucrative spice trade by a western rather than an eastern route. In 1489 he went to England to seek assistance from Henry VII for the execution of the expedition, he was taken by pirates and landed in England in a destitute condition, on presenting himself at Court was unfavorably received. He sought help at the court of Charles VIII in France, again without success. Meanwhile, his brother Christopher was in Castile trying to persuade Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon to back the expedition; when word arrived in 1493 that his brother had succeeded, Bartholomew returned to Spain, where he missed Christopher, who had left on the second voyage of his four to the "New World".
Funded by the crown, Bartholomew Columbus traveled to Hispaniola in 1494 to meet his brother, where he was given the title of governor, during his brother's absences. He founded the city of Santo Domingo on Hispaniola between 1496 and 1498, now the capital of the Dominican Republic, he was imprisoned together with Christopher and another brother, Giacomo, on false charges contrived by Francisco de Bobadilla and returned to Spain in December 1500. After the Court acquitted Christopher Columbus of all of the charges, the Crown funded Christopher Columbus's fourth and last voyage to the West Indies. Bartholomew accompanied his brother on this final New World voyage, was to be left with a garrison near the Belén River. Bartholomew's men were attacked by el Quibían. Following Christopher Columbus's death in Spain in 1506, Bartholomew returned to the Antilles in 1509, accompanying his nephew Diego, but Bartholomew soon returned to Spain when the King confirmed his concession involving Mona Island near Puerto Rico.
Bartholomew Columbus is known to have fathered a daughter out of wedlock, named Maria and born in 1508. Augusto Mascarenhas Barreto: O Português. Cristóvão Colombo Agente Secreto do Rei Dom João II. Ed. Referendo, Lissabon 1988. English: The Portuguese Columbus: secret agent of King John II, Palgrave Macmillan, ISBN 0-333-56315-8 Bartolomé Colómbo
Samuel Eliot Morison
Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph. D. from Harvard University in 1912, taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea, a biography of Christopher Columbus, John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography. In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People, co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic with Henry Steele Commager. Over the course of his distinguished career, Morison received eleven honorary doctoral degrees, garnered numerous literary prizes, military honors, national awards from both foreign countries and the United States, including two Pulitzer Prizes, two Bancroft Prizes, the Balzan Prize, the Legion of Merit, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Samuel Eliot Morison was born July 9, 1887, in Boston, Massachusetts, to John Holmes Morison and Emily Marshall Morison. He was named for his maternal grandfather Samuel Eliot—a historian and public-minded citizen of Boston and Hartford, Connecticut; the Eliot family, which produced generations of prominent American intellectuals, descended from Andrew Eliot, who moved to Boston in the 1660s from the English village of East Coker. The most famous of this Andrew Eliot's direct descendants was poet T. S. Eliot, who titled the second of his Four Quartets "East Coker". Morison attended Noble and Greenough School and St. Paul's prior to entering Harvard University, where he was a member of the Phoenix S K Club. At the age of fourteen, he learned to sail, soon after learned horsemanship—both skills would serve him well in his historical writings, he earned both a Bachelor of Arts and Master's degree from Harvard in 1908. After studying at the École Libre des Sciences Politiques, Morison returned to Harvard.
Intending to major in mathematics until Albert Bushnell Hart talked him into researching some papers of an ancestor stored in his wine cellar, Morison's Harvard dissertation was the basis for his first book The Life and Letters of Harrison Gray Otis, Federalist, 1765–1848, which sold 700 copies. After earning his Ph. D. at Harvard, Morison became an instructor in history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1912. In 1915 he returned to Harvard and took a position as an instructor. During World War I he served as a private in the US Army, he served as the American Delegate on the Baltic Commission of the Paris Peace Conference until June 17, 1919. In 1922–1925 Morison taught at Oxford University as the first Harmsworth Professor of American History. In 1925 he returned to Harvard. One of several subjects; as early as 1921 he published The Maritime History of Massachusetts, 1783-1860. In the 1930s Morison published a series of books on the history of Harvard University and New England, including Builders of the Bay Colony: A Gallery of Our Intellectual Ancestors, The Founding of Harvard College, Harvard College in the Seventeenth Century, Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636–1936, The Puritan Pronaos.
In years, he would return to the subject of New England history, writing The Ropemakers of Plymouth and The Story of the'Old Colony' of New Plymouth and editing the definitive work, Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647. During his time at Harvard, Morison became the last professor to arrive on campus via horseback, he was chosen to speak at the 300th Anniversary celebration of Harvard in 1936 and a recording of his speech is included as part of the "Harvard Voices" collection. In 1938 Morison was elected as an honorary member of the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. In 1940, Morison published Portuguese Voyages to America in the Fifteenth Century, a book that presaged his succeeding publications on the explorer, Christopher Columbus. In 1941, Morison was named Jonathan Trumbull Professor of American History at Harvard. For Admiral of the Ocean Sea, Morison combined his personal interest in sailing with his scholarship by sailing to the various places that Christopher Columbus explored; the Harvard Columbus Expedition, led by Morison and including his wife and Captain John W. McElroy, Herbert F. Hossmer, Jr. Richard S. Colley, Dr. Clifton W. Anderson, Kenneth R.
Spear and Richard Spear, left on 28 August 1939 aboard the 147 foot ketch Capitana for the Azores and Lisbon, Portugal from which they sailed on the 45 foot ketch Mary Otis to retrace Columbus' route using manuscripts and records of his voyages reaching Trinidad by way of Cadiz and the Canary Islands. After following the coast of South and Central America the expedition returned to Trinidad on 15 December 1939; the expedition returned to New York on 2 February 1940 aboard the United Fruit liner Veragua. The book was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 1943. In 1942, Morison met with his friend President Franklin D. Roosevelt and offered to write a history of United States Navy operations during the war from an insider's perspective by taking part in operations and documenting them; the President and Secretary of the Navy Frank Knox agreed to the proposal. On May 5, 1942, Morison was commissioned a lieutenant commander in the US Naval Reserve, was called at once to active duty. Gregory Pfitzer explained his procedures: He gained berths on patrol boats and heavy cruisers.
South China Sea
The South China Sea is a marginal sea, part of the Pacific Ocean, encompassing an area from the Karimata and Malacca Straits to the Strait of Taiwan of around 3,500,000 square kilometres. The sea carries tremendous strategic importance. Huge oil and gas reserves are believed to lie beneath its seabed. According to International Hydrographic Organization Limits of Oceans and Seas, 3rd edition, it is located south of China; the minute South China Sea Islands, collectively an archipelago, number in the hundreds. The sea and its uninhabited islands are subject to competing claims of sovereignty by several countries; these claims are reflected in the variety of names used for the islands and the sea. South China Sea is the dominant term used in English for the sea, the name in most European languages is equivalent; this name is a result of early European interest in the sea as a route from Europe and South Asia to the trading opportunities of China. In the sixteenth century Portuguese sailors called it the China Sea.
The International Hydrographic Organization refers to the sea as "South China Sea". The Yizhoushu, a chronicle of the Western Zhou dynasty gives the first Chinese name for the South China Sea as Nanfang Hai, claiming that barbarians from that sea gave tributes of hawksbill sea turtles to the Zhou rulers; the Classic of Poetry, Zuo Zhuan, Guoyu classics of the Spring and Autumn period referred to the sea, but by the name Nan Hai in reference to the State of Chu's expeditions there. Nan Hai, the South Sea, was one of the Four Seas of Chinese literature. There are one for each of the four cardinal directions. During the Eastern Han dynasty, China's rulers called the Sea Zhang Hai. Fei Hai became popular during the Northern Dynasties period. Usage of the current Chinese name, Nan Hai, became widespread during the Qing Dynasty. In Southeast Asia it was once called the Champa Sea or Sea of Cham, after the maritime kingdom of Champa that flourished there before the sixteenth century; the majority of the sea came under Japanese naval control during World War II following the military acquisition of many surrounding South East Asian territories in 1941.
Japan calls the sea Minami Shina Kai "South China Sea". This was written 南支那海 until 2004, when the Japanese Foreign Ministry and other departments switched the spelling to 南シナ海, which has become the standard usage in Japan. In China, it is called the "South Sea", 南海 Nánhǎi, in Vietnam the "East Sea", Biển Đông. In Malaysia and the Philippines, it was long called the "South China Sea", with the part within Philippine territorial waters called the "Luzon Sea", Dagat Luzon, by the Philippines. However, following an escalation of the Spratly Islands dispute in 2011, various Philippine government agencies started using the name "West Philippine Sea". A Philippine Atmospheric and Astronomical Services Administration spokesperson said that the sea to the east of the Philippines will continue to be called the Philippine Sea. In September 2012, Philippine President Benigno Aquino III signed Administrative Order No. 29, mandating that all government agencies use the name "West Philippine Sea" to refer to the parts of the South China Sea within the Philippines' exclusive economic zone, including the Luzon Sea as well as the waters around and adjacent to the Kalayaan Island Group and Bajo de Masinloc, tasked the National Mapping and Resource Information Authority to use the name in official maps.
In July 2017, to assert its sovereignty, Indonesia renamed the northern reaches of its exclusive economic zone in the South China Sea as the "North Natuna Sea", located north of the Indonesian Natuna Islands, bordering the southern Vietnam exclusive economic zone, corresponding to the southern end of the South China Sea. The "Natuna Sea" is located south of Natuna Island within Indonesian territorial waters. Therefore, Indonesia has named two seas. States and territories with borders on the sea include: the People's Republic of China, Republic of China, the Philippines, Brunei, Indonesia and Vietnam. Major rivers that flow into the South China Sea include the Pearl, Jiulong, Mekong, Pahang and Pasig Rivers; the International Hydrographic Organization in its Limits of Oceans and Seas, 3rd edition, defines the limits of the South China Sea as follows: On the South. The Eastern
Carmo Convent (Lisbon)
The Convent of Our Lady of Mount Carmel is a former Catholic convent located in the civil parish of Santa Maria Maior, municipality of Lisbon, Portugal. The medieval convent was ruined during the sequence of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake, the destroyed Gothic Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel on the southern facade of the convent is the main trace of the great earthquake still visible in the old city; the monastery was founded in 1389 by the Constable D. Nuno Álvares Pereira, from the small Carmelite convent situated on lands acquired from his sister Beatriz Pereira and the admiral Pessanha; the reconstruction of the convent began sometime in 1393. In 1407 the presbytery and apse of the conventual church was completed, allowing the first liturgical acts in that year. By 1423 the residential cells were completed, allowing the Carmelites friars from Moura to inhabit the building, including Father Nuno de Santa Maria, the Constable D. Nuno Àlvares Pereira who donated his wealth to the convent and entered the convent.
By 1551, the convent contained 70 clergy and 10 servants, paying land rents of 2500 cruzados annually. In 1755, an earthquake off the coast of Portugal caused significant damage to the convent and destroyed the library, which housed 5000 volumes; the 126 clerics at the time were forced to abandon the building, transferring to Cotovia to Campo Grande. Minor repairs to the monastery were carried out in 1800. Ten years the monastic site was occupied by quarters of the Guarda Real de Polícia, including the garrisoning of the sharpshooter battalion and the militia, following painting its interiors. In 1834, there were repairs by the Public Works department to adapt the convent to receive the Tribunal do Juízo de Direito do 3º Distrito; the church was never rebuilt and rented out as sawmilling shop, before the religious orders were expelled from the country. At that time the first and second companies of infantrymen for the municipal guard were stationed at the convent and the first cavalry squadron in 1845.
The buildings and site were donated in 1864 to the Association of Portuguese Archaeologists, which turned the ruined building into a museum. In 1902, a team was given the responsibility for restoring. Between 1911 and 1912, the walls around the Carmo Convent were reconstructed, with various arches built, under the guidance of architect Leonel Gaia. In 1955, permission was given to execute public projects to conserve and restore the facades and roofing of the garrison buildings, by the Delegação nas Obras de Edifícios de Cadeias das Guardas Republicana e Fiscal e das Alfândegas. On 28 February 1969, an earthquake caused damage to the church nave. During the events of the Carnation Revolution the convent was encircled by military rebels, who opposed the Estado Novo regime; the regime's last President, Marcelo Caetano, forces loyal to his regime were holed-up in the buildings, surrendered to the future democratic President António de Spínola. The old convent was transformed into the headquarters of the Republican Guard.
The Carmo Convent and its Church were built between 1389 and 1423 in the plain Gothic style typical for the mendicant religious orders. There are influences from the Monastery of Batalha, founded by King John I and was being built at that same time. Compared to the other Gothic churches of the city, the Carmo Church was said to be the most imposing in its architecture and decoration; the church has a Latin cross floorplan. The main facade has a portal with several archivolts and capitals decorated with vegetal and anthropomorphic motifs; the rose window over the portal is destroyed. The south side of the church is reinforced by five flying buttresses, added in 1399 after the south wall collapsed during the construction work; the old convent, located to the right of the facade, was rebuilt in neo-Gothic style in the early 20th century. The church interior has a nave with three aisles and an apse with a main chapel and four side chapels; the stone roof over the nave collapsed after the earthquake and was never rebuilt, only the pointed arches between the pillars have survived.
The Carmo Convent is located in the Chiado neighbourhood, on a hill overlooking the Rossio square and facing the Lisbon Castle hill. It is located in front of a quiet square close to the Santa Justa Lift. Nowadays the ruined Carmo Church is used as an archaeological museum; the nave and apse of the Carmo Church are the setting for a small archaeological museum, with pieces from all periods of Portuguese history. The nave has a series of tombs, fountains and other architectural relics from different places and styles; the old apse chapels are used as exhibition rooms. One of them houses notable pre-historical objects excavated from a fortification near Azambuja; the group of Gothic tombs include that of Fernão Sanches, a bastard son of King Dinis I, decorated with scenes of boar hunting, as well as the magnificent tomb of King Ferdinand I, transferred to the museum from the Franciscan Convent of Santarém. Other notable exhibits include a statue of a 12th-century king, Moorish azulejos and objects from the Roman and Visigoth periods.
In video games, Assassin's Creed Rogue featured the chu
Christopher Columbus
Christopher Columbus was an Italian explorer and colonist who completed four voyages across the Atlantic Ocean under the auspices of the Catholic Monarchs of Spain. He led the first European expeditions to the Caribbean, Central America, South America, initiating the permanent European colonization of the Americas. Columbus discovered the viable sailing route to the Americas, a continent, not known to the Old World. While what he thought he had discovered was a route to the Far East, he is credited with the opening of the Americas for conquest and settlement by Europeans. Columbus's early life is somewhat obscure, but scholars agree that he was born in the Republic of Genoa and spoke a dialect of Ligurian as his first language, he went to sea at a young age and travelled as far north as the British Isles and as far south as what is now Ghana. He married Portuguese noblewoman Filipa Moniz Perestrelo and was based in Lisbon for several years, but took a Spanish mistress. Though self-educated, Columbus was read in geography and history.
He formulated a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. After years of lobbying, the Catholic Monarchs of Spain agreed to sponsor a journey west, in the name of the Crown of Castile. Columbus left Spain in August 1492 with three ships, after a stopover in the Canary Islands made landfall in the Americas on 12 October, his landing place was an island in the Bahamas, known by its native inhabitants as Guanahani. Columbus subsequently visited Cuba and Hispaniola, establishing a colony in what is now Haiti—the first European settlement in the Americas since the Norse colonies 500 years earlier, he arrived back in Spain in early 1493. Word of his discoveries soon spread throughout Europe. Columbus would make three further voyages to the New World, exploring the Lesser Antilles in 1493, Trinidad and the northern coast of South America in 1498, the eastern coast of Central America in 1502. Many of the names he gave to geographical features—particularly islands—are still in use.
He continued to seek a passage to the East Indies, the extent to which he was aware that the Americas were a wholly separate landmass is uncertain. Columbus's strained relationship with the Spanish crown and its appointed colonial administrators in America led to his arrest and removal from Hispaniola in 1500, to protracted litigation over the benefits that he and his heirs claimed were owed to them by the crown. Columbus's expeditions inaugurated a period of exploration and colonization that lasted for centuries, helping create the modern Western world; the transfers between the Old World and New World that followed his first voyage are known as the Columbian exchange, the period of human habitation in the Americas prior to his arrival is known as the Pre-Columbian era. Columbus's legacy continues to be debated, he was venerated in the centuries after his death, but public perceptions have changed as recent scholars have given attention to negative aspects of his life, such as his role in the extinction of the Taíno people, his promotion of slavery, allegations of tyranny towards Spanish colonists.
Many landmarks and institutions in the Western Hemisphere bear his name, including the country of Colombia. The name Christopher Columbus is the Anglicisation of the Latin Christophorus Columbus, his name in Ligurian is Cristoffa Corombo, in Italian Cristoforo Colombo, in Spanish is Cristóbal Colón, in Portuguese is Cristóvão Colombo. He was born before 31 October 1451 in the territory of the Republic of Genoa, though the exact location remains disputed, his father was Domenico Colombo, a middle-class wool weaver who worked both in Genoa and Savona and who owned a cheese stand at which young Christopher worked as a helper. His mother was Susanna Fontanarossa. Bartolomeo, Giovanni Pellegrino, Giacomo were his brothers. Bartolomeo worked in a cartography workshop in Lisbon for at least part of his adulthood, he had a sister named Bianchinetta. Columbus never wrote in his native language, presumed to have been a Genoese variety of Ligurian: his name in the 16th-century Genoese language would have been Cristoffa Corombo.
In one of his writings, he says he went to sea at the age of 10. In 1470, the Columbus family moved to Savona. In the same year, Christopher was on a Genoese ship hired in the service of René of Anjou to support his attempt to conquer the Kingdom of Naples; some modern historians have argued that he was not from Genoa but, from the Aragon region of Spain or from Portugal. These competing hypotheses have been discounted by mainstream scholars. In 1473, Columbus began his apprenticeship as business agent for the important Centurione, Di Negro and Spinola families of Genoa, he made a trip to Chios, an Aegean island ruled by Genoa. In May 1476, he took part in an armed convoy sent by Genoa to carry valuable cargo to northern Europe, he docked in Bristol and Galway, Ireland. In 1477, he was in Iceland. In the autumn of 1477, he sailed on a Portuguese ship from Galway to Lisbon, where he found his brother Bartolomeo, they continued trading for the Centurione family. Columbus based himself in Lisbon from 1477 to 1485.
He married Filipa Moniz Perestrelo, daughter of the Porto Santo governor and Portuguese nobleman of
Rafael Perestrello
Rafael Perestrello was a Portuguese explorer and a cousin of Filipa Moniz Perestrello, the wife of explorer Christopher Columbus. He is best known for landing on the southern shores of mainland China in 1516 and 1517 to trade in Guangzhou, after the Portuguese explorer Jorge Álvares landed on Lintin Island within the Pearl River estuary in May 1513. Rafael served as a trader and naval ship captain for the Portuguese in Sumatra and Portuguese-conquered Malacca. João de Barros wrote that Rafael Perestrello became lost while sailing by the Andaman Islands, but ventured safely through territory, rumored to be inhabited by native cannibals. Filippo Perestrello, Rafael's great-grandfather and son of Gabriele Palastrelli and wife Madama Bertolina, was a nobleman from the Italian city of Piacenza who moved with his wife Catarina Sforza to Portugal in 1385, living in Porto and in Lisbon to conduct trade. Filippo and Catarina had four children: Richarte, Isabel and Bartolomeu. Richarte Perestrello became a Prior in the parish of Santa Marinha in Lisbon, yet fathered two children who he legitimized in 1423.
Rafael was the son of Richarte's son João Lopes. Rafael sailed in a ship from Portuguese Malacca to Guangzhou in southern China in 1516, sent by Afonso de Albuquerque, the Viceroy of Estado da India, in order to secure trading relations with the Chinese during the reign of the Ming dynasty ruler Zhengde. Rafael traveled with a crew from a Malaysian junk, bringing back profitable trade items and glowing reports about China's commercial potential. In fact, his report on China was one of the main reasons why Fernão Pires de Andrade decided to carry out his mission in going to China instead of Bengal in 1517. Rafael was admitted into port by Chinese authorities in order to trade with the merchants there, but was not allowed to move further. In 1517, Rafael piloted yet another trade mission to Guangzhou. Rafael Perestrello's mission was followed up in 1517 by the Portuguese apothecary Tomé Pires and pharmacist and diplomat Fernão Pires de Andrade, in a diplomatic mission to Ming China commissioned by Manuel I of Portugal.
Initial trade and diplomatic missions were temporarily ruined once wild rumors of Portuguese cannibalizing Chinese children was coupled with real events of Portuguese settlers breaking Chinese laws, pillaging Chinese villages, taking off with female captives. The ex-sultan Mahmud Shah of Malacca had sent diplomatic envoys to Ming dynasty China to seek aid in expelling the Portuguese from Malacca. Despite these initial hostilities, a Portuguese settlement was established at Macau and granted consent by the Chinese government in 1557, while annual Portuguese trade missions to Shangchuan Island took place since 1549. Leonel de Sousa, the second Governor of Macau, had smoothed out relations between the Chinese and Portuguese in the early 1550s, following a Portuguese effort to eliminate pirates along the coasts of China; the 1554 Luso-Chinese agreement legalized trade between the two realms. Rafael served as a captain under Jorge de Albuquerque, the younger cousin of Afonso, when the former was governor of Malacca and battled against the Islamic Kingdom of Pacem in Sumatra in 1514 in order to install a ruler there, friendly to Portuguese interests.
While Rafael Perestrello's crew was aiding Jorge de Albuquerque's siege on a fort and large stockade defended by these Sumatran "Moors", a calafate of Rafael's troops named Marques was—according to the historian João de Barros—the first man to scale the heights of the stockade during the fight. The battle against the well-defended fort and ruler of Pacem was a success. During Jorge de Albuquerque's second tour of duty, he defeated Mahmud Shah of Malacca at Bintan in 1524, forcing the latter to flee, this time to the Malay Peninsula. Europeans in Medieval China Age of Discovery Henry the Navigator History of the Ming dynasty History of Portugal Brook, Timothy.. The Confusions of Pleasure: Commerce and Culture in Ming China. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22154-0. Dames, Mansel Longworth; the Book of Duarte Barbosa. New Delhi: J. Jelley. ISBN 81-206-0451-2 Dion, Mark. "Sumatra through Portuguese Eyes: Excerpts from João de Barros"Decadas da Asia'," Indonesia: 128–162. Douglas, Robert Kennaway..
Europe and the Far East. Adamant Media Corporation. ISBN 0-543-93972-3. Madariaga, Salvador de.. Christopher Columbus. New York: The MacMillan Company. Madureira, Luis. "Tropical Sex Fantasies and the Ambassador's Other Death: The Difference in Portuguese Colonialism," Cultural Critique: 149–173. Wills, John E. Jr.. "Relations with Maritime Europe, 1514–1662," in The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, The Ming Dynasty, 1368–1644, Part 2, 333–375. Edited by Denis Twitchett and Frederick W. Mote. New York: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-24333-5. Nowe
Madeira
Madeira the Autonomous Region of Madeira, is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal. It is an archipelago situated in southwest of Portugal, its total population was estimated in 2011 at 267,785. The capital of Madeira is Funchal, located on the main island's south coast; the archipelago is just under 400 kilometres north of Canary Islands. Bermuda and Madeira, a few time zones apart, are the only land in the Atlantic on the 32nd parallel north, it includes the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo, the Desertas, administered together with the separate archipelago of the Savage Islands. The region has political and administrative autonomy through the Administrative Political Statue of the Autonomous Region of Madeira provided for in the Portuguese Constitution; the autonomous region is an integral part of the European Union as an outermost region. Madeira was claimed by Portuguese sailors in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator in 1419 and settled after 1420; the archipelago is considered to be the first territorial discovery of the exploratory period of the Age of Discovery.
Today, it is a popular year-round resort, being visited every year by about 1.4 million tourists five times its population. The region is noted for its Madeira wine, gastronomy and cultural value and fauna, landscapes that are classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, embroidery artisans; the main harbour in Funchal has long been the leading Portuguese port in cruise liner dockings, receiving more than half a million tourists through its main port in 2017, being an important stopover for commercial and trans-Atlantic passenger cruises between Europe, the Caribbean and North Africa. In addition, the International Business Centre of Madeira known as the Madeira Free Trade Zone, was created formally in the 1980s as a tool of regional economic policy, it consists of a set of incentives tax-related, granted with the objective of attracting foreign direct investment based on international services into Madeira. Plutarch in his Parallel Lives referring to the military commander Quintus Sertorius, relates that after his return to Cádiz, he met sailors who spoke of idyllic Atlantic islands: "The islands are said to be two in number separated by a narrow strait and lie 10,000 furlongs from Africa.
They are called the Isles of the Blest."Archeological evidence suggests that the islands may have been visited by the Vikings sometime between 900 and 1030. During the reign of King Edward III of England, lovers Robert Machim and Anna d'Arfet were said to have fled from England to France in 1346. Driven off course by a violent storm, their ship ran aground along the coast of an island that may have been Madeira; this legend was the basis of the naming of the city of Machico on the island, in memory of the young lovers. Knowledge of some Atlantic islands, such as Madeira, existed before their formal discovery and settlement, as the islands were shown on maps as early as 1339. In 1418, two captains under service to Prince Henry the Navigator, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, were driven off course by a storm to an island they named Porto Santo in gratitude for divine deliverance from a shipwreck; the following year, an organised expedition, under the captaincy of Zarco, Vaz Teixeira, Bartolomeu Perestrello, traveled to the island to claim it on behalf of the Portuguese Crown.
Subsequently, the new settlers observed "a heavy black cloud suspended to the southwest." Their investigation revealed it to be the larger island. The first Portuguese settlers began colonizing the islands around 1420 or 1425. Grain production began to fall and the ensuing crisis forced Henry the Navigator to order other commercial crops to be planted so that the islands could be profitable; these specialised plants, their associated industrial technology, created one of the major revolutions on the islands and fuelled Portuguese industry. Following the introduction of the first water-driven sugar mill on Madeira, sugar production increased to over 6,000 arrobas by 1455, using advisers from Sicily and financed by Genoese capital; the accessibility of Madeira attracted Genoese and Flemish traders, who were keen to bypass Venetian monopolies. "By 1480 Antwerp had some seventy ships engaged in the Madeira sugar trade, with the refining and distribution concentrated in Antwerp. By the 1490s Madeira had overtaken Cyprus as a producer of sugar."
Sugarcane production was the primary engine of the island's economy, increasing the demand for labour. African slaves were used during portions of the island's history to cultivate sugar cane, the proportion of imported slaves reached 10% of the total population of Madeira by the 16th century. Barbary corsairs from North Africa, who enslaved Europeans from ships and coastal communities throughout the Mediterranean region, captured 1,200 people in Porto Santo in 1617. After the 17th century, as Portuguese sugar production was shifted to Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe and elsewhere, Madeira's most important commodity product became its wine; the British first amicably occupied the island in 1801 whereafter Colonel William Henry Clinton became governor. A detachment of the 85th Regiment of Foot under Lieutenant-colonel James Willoughby Gordon garrisoned the island. After the Peace of Amiens, British troops withdrew in 1802, only to reoccupy Madeira in 1807 until the end of the Peninsular War in 1814.
On 31 December 1916, during the Great War, a Ge
