Cabral sights the coast of Brazil
Pedro Álvares Cabral, commanding the second India fleet and sailing the wide westward arc of the volta do mar largo through the South Atlantic, raised land on the South American coast and claimed it for Portugal before continuing to India. Whether the swing west was navigational routine or deliberate reconnaissance has been argued since the sixteenth century. Either way the encounter fell on the Portuguese side of the Tordesillas line, and the largest state in South America speaks Portuguese because of a sailing technique for catching the wind.
Uncertain — sources disagree, or the dating is contested. Stated here, not resolved.
Subjects
- Volta do mar (the return by sea) · process · Atlantic Ocean · not located
- The Cape route (Carreira da Índia) · trade route · Atlantic and Indian Oceans — Lisbon to Malabar via the Cape of Good Hope · not located
Evidence
Partly verified — Core facts are sourced; some optional detail is deliberately absent.
The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825
The standard single-volume account of Portuguese expansion: Ceuta, the African coast, the Cape route, the carreira da Índia, the Estado da Índia and the institutions that ran them. V55 verification basis: NOT consulted in this session. Boxer is a mid-twentieth-century imperial history and its framing has been substantially revised by later work, particularly on Asian agency and on the limits of Portuguese control; this pack uses it for structure, not for interpretation.
Hutchinson · 1969 · Partly verified
Charles R. Boxer, The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825 (London: Hutchinson, 1969)
Recorded on Volta do mar (the return by sea)
- Gil Eanes passes Cape Bojador
- Dias rounds the southern tip of Africa
- Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut
- Cabral sights the coast of Brazil
- Albuquerque takes Malacca
Related
Related because they share a subject in the Atlas — never because the text looks similar.
- Albuquerque takes Malacca · 1511-08
- Vasco da Gama reaches Calicut · 1498-05-20
- Dias rounds the southern tip of Africa · 1488
- Gil Eanes passes Cape Bojador · 1434