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Portuguese Travels and the Meeting of Civilizations
The Portuguese Renaissance was a period of exploration during which Portuguese sailors discovered Atlantic archipelagos like the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde, explored and colonized the African coast, discovered an eastern route to India that rounded Africa, discovered Brazil, explored the Indian Ocean and established trading routes throughout southern Asia, and sent the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to Ming China and to Japan.
Years: 1415 — 1543
Luís de Camões (1524/25 - June 10, 1580) was Portugal’s great national poet, author of the epic poem Os Lusíadas (1572), which describes Vasco da Gama’s discovery of the sea route to India. Camões had a permanent and unparalleled impact on Portuguese and Brazilian literature alike, due not only to his epic but also to his posthumously published lyric poetry.
This is the hostel of humanity,
Who, not content in overweening pride
Only to bear the hard ground’s injury,
The perils of the unstable deeps have tried.
You will mark various regions which the sea,
Raging, dissevers, in which parts reside
The various nations, whose several kings their reign
With different customs, different laws, maintain.
As Lusiadas, X, 91
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