Southward along the African coast
Portugal gradually connected North African war, island sugar, human trafficking, fortified trade and coastal navigation. By 1488, there was still no completed route to India—but southern Africa had been passed.
- 01.01Strait of Gibraltar · Conquest
Portugal takes Ceuta; expansion begins with conquest
A large royal expedition captures the North African port, joining crusading war, commercial hopes and the first durable Portuguese overseas garrison.
- 01.02West African coast · Route
Gil Eanes passes Cape Bojador
A recorded passage and return past a difficult cape accelerate Portuguese reconnaissance along the West African coast.
- 01.03Cabo Verde / Upper Guinea · Trade
Ribeira Grande develops an early Kriolu society
Forcibly transported West Africans, free Africans, European migrants and locally born people form a new language and society in a slave-trading port; cultural creation does not remove colonial power.
- 01.04Cabo Verde / West African waters · Route
Harmattan dust veils the waters around Cabo Verde
Dry continental flow carries Sahara and Sahel dust hundreds of kilometres over the ocean; it signals regional weather while obscuring coasts, the horizon and celestial observations.
- 01.05Sierra Leone / Upper Guinea · Trade
Sierra Leone's coastal artists carve Sapi-Portuguese ivories
Temne, Bullom and related artists reorganize commissioned European saltcellars, horns and heraldry through local figural, animal and geometric languages; the works enter royal gifts and collections.
- 01.06Madeira / West Africa · Trade
Sugar, gold and enslavement enter one Atlantic system
Madeira's sugar economy expands with enslaved labour, while the 1482 fort at Elmina anchors Portuguese access to West African gold networks.
- 01.07Canary Islands · Trade
Gran Canaria manages harvests in cliff granaries
Indigenous communities join granaries, terraces, water, paths and seasonal herding into a cultural landscape that Castilian conquest then violently transforms.
- 01.08Southern Africa · Route
Dias rounds southern Africa
The first recorded European expedition around Africa's southern turn demonstrates a navigable connection from the Atlantic toward the Indian Ocean.