Portugal Trips
Thornton starts its book trying to explain the origins and reasons of the navigations in Atlantic, clarifying us that in some regions, as much Africa how much America, already knew and practised the commerce. For in such a way, Thornton leaves clearly that both the continents made use of fluvial routes for ends deal, mainly in the internal routes as the rivers and as well as the Europeans, in the attempt to expand its commerce, the Africans had also made attempts to sail for the Atlantic coast, however these attempts badly had been succeeded. The author still cites the theory of Ivan Van Sertima of that the diverse Africans would have fact trips to America since about 800 d.C., pointing out that this to occur would be necessary a more advanced naval technology and that the short African trips do not make possible this advance. However we can perceive that Thornton is ' ' encima of muro' ' when it says that these trips can have happened accidentally due the strong flow of the equatorial chain of the west of the Senegmbia to the Caribbean basin, leaving clear its position in relation to the theory does not dispatch by post. On the other hand the Europeans who of beginning they had not obtained to sail in the Atlantic, by the simple satisfaction of the discovery and to break the commercial monopoly of the mulumanos in the east, also had been financed by infant D. Enrique, the Navigator, prince of Portugal and Isabel queen of Spain, providing a fast advance in the naval technology, what it made possible so mentioned navigations of the Atlantic. It is well-known and important, therefore, the other point of view mentioned for the author, of the Portuguese historians Duarte Leite and Vitorino Magalhes-Godinho, who emphasize that the trips and the exploration had been carried through gradually for a long period of time and that they had been stimulated by the expectation of a great profit in short term.
Tags: history