Arrival of the Portuguese

1444 · Cap-Vert

In 1444, a Portuguese navigator named Dinis Dias reached the shores of Cap-Vert, at the westernmost tip of Africa. It was the first time Europeans set foot on these Senegalese shores. The peoples living there continued to trade by their own laws. But this contact would open, a century later, the door to the slave trade.

Sources

• Encyclopaedia of Portuguese Expansion — Dinis Dias
• Cairn — D. T. Niane, Histoire des Mandingues de l’Ouest, ch. II « Les Blancs arrivent par la mer »
• Cairn — « Les réseaux de la traite ibérique dans l’Atlantique nord (1440-1640) » (Annales, 2008)
• OpenEdition — « Les Portugais et le premier Atlantique (XVe et XVIe siècles) » (PUR)

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