1500, Bartholomeu and brother Diogo Dias are sailing separate ships with Cabral’s fleet as it rounds Cape of Good Hope. Bartholomeu’s ship goes missing in a storm, while Diogo’s is swept east to become the first European ship to land on the large island of Madagascar, Aug. 10.
Larger than the British Isles, it is only lightly populated, mostly by Austronesian people who crossed the Indian Ocean from the Sunda islands, probably 1,000 years earlier. Some Bantu people cross the 250 miles from Africa perhaps 500 years later.
It eventually becomes a source of captives for both the Atlantic and Indian ocean slave trades, but no stable European presence is established before the French found Fort-Dauphin on the southeast coast, 1643, and pirates establish a safe haven soon after at Nosy Boraha in the northeast.
1500, Sailing far to west to pick up best winds to run south on his way to India (his fleet is following up on Da Gama’s voyage), Pedro Álvares Cabral makes landfall on Bahian coast of Brazil, April. He claims it for Portugal.
1500, Promised religious tolerance when they surrendered Granada in 1492, Muslims come under heavy pressure to convert to Christianity in late 1499. They resist first in the city, but that is defused with little bloodshed.
But in February, Muslims in the Alpujarra foothills revolt in greater numbers. Ferdinand leads an army of 80,000, which suppresses the rebels village by village. Those who resist are treated harshly, with 3,000 prisoners massacred in Laujar de Andarax, including at least 200 women in children blown up in a mosque. At Velefique, all the men are killed and the women enslaved.
In 1501, after the near annihilation of a Castilian contingent, Ferdinand offers Muslims choice of baptism, death or exile. Most convert but continue to maintain their language and customs, to the great annoyance of the church.
1500-1540s, Waves of Mane people push west and south from collapsing Songhai Empire, battling with many tribes until they are slowed down by Susu people (in Sierra Leone). Migratory wars generate large numbers of captives, many of whom are sold to Portuguese factory on small island off present-day Dakar.
1501, Vespucci, now sailing for Portugal, commands his second voyage, which explores the coast of newly discovered Brazil. Vespucci becomes convinced that this is not Asia, but part of a previously unknown land mass.
1501, João da Nova, commanding Portugal’s third expedition to India, sights and names lonely Ascension island in the South Atlantic. A year later, on his return to Lisbon, he discovers, visits and names equally isolated St. Helena, which becomes a stopover for Europe-bound ships on Far East routes.
1502, Columbus’s Fourth Voyage clears Cádiz May 11 with four ships. Arrives Santo Domingo, June 29 amid signs of approaching hurricane. Against Columbus’s advice, governor allows his treasure fleet to sail. Twenty-five ships are lost to storm, with only one ship making it to Cádiz. Much of Santo Domingo also destroyed, to be rebuilt on opposite bank of Ozama river.
Columbus’s four ships survive in harbor and go on to present-day Panama in search of a strait to Asia. They come within 30 miles of Pacific (which no European suspects exists), then encounter Mayans with copperware and go on to the Mosquito Coast and Rio Belen. On return to Santo Domingo, Columbus abandons storm-battered, worm-eaten ships at Jamaica. Crews marooned for more than a year; rescued June 29, 1504.
Columbus returns to Sanlúcar, Nov. 7, 1504. Queen Isabella, his main supporter, dies at age 53, Nov. 26, in Medina del Campo.
From Isabella’s final will: “Do not give rise to or allow the Indians (in the New World) to receive any wrong in their persons and property, but rather that they be treated well and fairly, and if they have received any wrong, remedy it.”
1503, With his popular pamphlet, Mundus Novus, Amerigo Vespucci is the first to proclaim Brazil as part of a previously unknown land mass—if not a continent, still a truly New World. (Columbus believed it to be part of Asia.)
1503, With Columbus still missing, Ovando marches to western side of Hispaniola and traps Taíno caciques in a large hut where they are bound and burned to death. Anacoana, consort of the late Canaboa and herself a cacique, is hanged. Parts of the story are disputed, but she is revered in the Dominican Republic to this day.
1504, Columbus and his son return to Sanlúcar, Nov. 7, 1504. Queen Isabella, his main supporter, dies at age 53, Nov. 26, in Medina del Campo.
From Isabella’s final will: “Do not give rise to or allow the Indians (such as the Taíno and Carib) to receive any wrong in their persons and property, but rather that they be treated well and fairly, and if they have received any wrong, remedy it.”
Columbus dies at age 54 in Valladolid, May 20, 1506.
1506, Foundation stone is laid by Pope Julius II for a new St. Peter’s Basilica, to be the greatest church in Christendom. Donato Bramante, Rafael and Michelangelo are among the designers and artists engaged over the next 120 years.
But financing early construction through indulgences—payments to the church in exchange for absolution of past sins and quick release from purgatory of those already dead—provokes fierce dissent from Martin Luther (1517) and the Protestant Reformation to follow.
'America' in green.
1507, Influenced by Vespucci, a new world map published by Martin Waldseemüller and Matthias Ringman is the first to apply the name “America” to the new land mass.
1508, Spanish colony established on Puerto Rico by Juan Ponce de León, with San Juan founded a year later. Although a Taíno cacique is briefly designated governor, disease and a failed 1511 revolt drive native population down.
1509, Naval force under Francisco de Almeida wipes out a fleet of Muslim allies (with Venice providing galleys hauled across the Suez) in the port of Diu (178 miles northwest of Mumbai), Feb. 3.
Superior Portuguese ships, soldiers and armament sink or capture all of the Egyptian Mamluk, Ottoman and Gujarati ships. More than 1,700 Muslims die compared to 32 Portuguese (also 300 wounded).
Victory establishes Portuguese control of the Indian Ocean and domination of rich trade with the East for more than a century until they are challenged by Dutch.
1509, Diego Colón (Columbus’s son is the new Indies viceroy) sends Juan de Esquivel and 80 families from Hispaniola to settle Jamaica where De Esquivel founds Sevilla la Nueva on the north coast. Jamaica remains a backwater in the Spanish empire until British seize it in 1655.
1509, Diego Colón (Columbus’s son is the new Indies viceroy) sends Juan de Esquivel and 80 families from Hispaniola to settle Jamaica where De Esquivel founds Sevilla la Nueva on the north coast. Jamaica remains a backwater in the Spanish empire until British seize it in 1655.
1509, Spanish forces take Oran and Algiers and, a year later, Tripoli, in bloody attacks from the sea. Thousands of Muslims transported as slaves to Malta, Sicily and Spain.
Algiers is lost to Arab corsairs in 1516 (to become center of Barbary piracy and slave raiders). Tripoli taken by Ottoman Turks in 1551. Oran remains Spain’s until 1708, then goes back and forth until final departure of Spanish after 1790 earthquake.
1510, King Ferdinand authorizes a shipment of 50 enslaved Africans to be sent from Spain to Hispaniola, the beginning of regular trans-Atlantic movement of slaves to New World.
1510, Khoikhoi people inflict bloody defeat on Portuguese crews who put into Table Bay (Cape of Good Hope) to replenish water. Villagers, provoked by a landing party, ambush and kill Francisco de Almeida, the commander, 11 captains and 52 others at mouth of Salt River. De Almeida was returning to Lisbon after defeating Mamluk and Ottoman forces at Diu.
The fierce Khoikhoi convince hard-nosed Portuguese to avoid the Cape, which will open the way for Dutch to take control of the strategic region 42 years later.
1511, Diego Colón sends Diego Velázquez de Cuéllar and 300 men to conquer Cuba, January. After the bloody defeat of resident Taínos (and subjugation of survivors via the encomienda system), Velázquez founds Baracoa, Bayamo, Santiago de Cuba and Havana.
1511, Antonio de Montesinos, a Dominican friar, condemns treatment of Indians under the encomienda in an angry sermon to Santo Domingo settlers, Dec. 21. Diego Colón is outraged, but encomendero Bartolomé de las Casas is convinced to give up his Taíno slaves and take up their cause with the Spanish crown.
Montesinos quote: “(the Spanish colonists) are all in mortal sin, and live and die in it, because of the cruelty and tyranny they practice among these innocent peoples.”
Balboa.
1513, Vasco Núñez de Balboa scales a mountain ridge on the Panamanian isthmus to be the first European to set eyes on the Pacific Ocean from the American mainland, Sept. 25. Four days later, he enters the surf (at Gulf of San Miguel), and names and claims the Mar del Sur (Southern Sea) for Spain. The expedition began as a search for gold and Indian slaves, which were both found.
In 1510, Balboa was a leader in establishing Santa María (on the Caribbean-side Gulf of Uraba), the first European settlement on the American mainland.
1513, More African slaves arrive in Santo Domingo to be assigned to gold mining. Their numbers surge to 15,000 by 1555.
1515, Portuguese transport slaves to São Tomé and Príncipe from Elmina on Gold Coast, and later from Kongo and Angola. In a departure from usual prohibitions, São Tomé settlers are encouraged to marry slave women to maintain population (tropical diseases kill many). Wives and children are granted manumission by royal decree. Original male slaves win freedom in 1517.
These actions lead to development of forro (free people of color) communities.Forros win right to hold public office, 1520, and several go on to establish their own slave-worked plantations.
São Tomé soon develops into a major producer of sugar, with wealthy planters, eclipsing Madeira as Europe’s leading source by mid-1500s. At the same time, the island serves as a transfer port for African slaves ultimately bound for Caribbean and Brazil plantations.
De Las Casas.
1515, Bartolomé de las Casas, now a priest, travels to Spain on behalf of all Indian slaves. This begins long effort to end their subjugation and mistreatment throughout Spain’s New World empire. At first, he advocates replacing them with African slaves (as captives of “justified war”) and free Spanish peasants. Writes graphically of slaughter of Indians on Cuba and ultimately opposes all slavery.
Charles, king and emperor.
1516, Charles, 16, grandson of Isabella and Ferdinand, effectively becomes king of a united Spain (as Charles I) in place of his mother, Juana, who has been judged insane and has long been imprisoned in a convent.
Three years later, he inherits the Austria empire via his paternal grandfather and is also elected Holy Roman Emperor (as Charles V). He is recognized as the most powerful man in Europe.
1516, Oruç and Khizr Reis, Muslim corsairs famous for raiding Christian ports throughout the Mediterranean, and for seizing ships and hundreds of Christians for slaves, take Algiers from Spain. When Oruç dies in battle, 1518, Khizr takes his nickname, Barbarossa (“Redbeard”) and aligns Algiers with the Ottoman sultan, Selim I.
Barbarossa continues raids on Spanish, French and Italian Mediterranean coasts, and joins in Ottoman conquest of Rhodes, 1523. He transports 70,000 Mudéjars (Muslims now unwelcome in their native Spain) fleeing to Algiers in seven journeys, 1529. Many of them join his crews.
The 95 Theses.
1517, Martin Luther posts his 95 Theses against sale of church indulgences, launching the Reformation in a new division of the Christian world. He will soon be challenging the young Charles V (who, as the Holy Roman Emperor, will be the political leader of the Catholic response).
Map of New Slave Trade Route.
1518, Spain, needing more African slaves in New World (to replace Indians) but lacking direct access to Portugal’s slave factories, contracts (via the Asiento de Negros) with foreign merchants and companies to provide them to Spain’s colonies, and to pay the crown (young Charles I) for the right.
The first asiento calls for delivery of 4,000 slaves over eight years. Over the next 60 years, most asientos go to Portuguese merchants with entrée to the factories. Afterward, the British and Dutch also compete for Spain’s business.
1519, Taíno revolt is led by cacique Enriquillo, whose followers fight and hide for nearly 30 years in Bahoruco mountains of Hispaniola. Two years later, they are joined by black slaves rising up Christmas Day on Diego Colón’s plantation. Spanish forces confront 120 rebels, but most get away to the mountains.
Said to be the first New World insurrection of African slaves (believed to be Wolof), the first recorded slave cooperation with Indians, and creation of first maroon community of escaped slaves.
Cortéz at Tenochtitlan.
1519-1521, Departing Havana, Hernán Cortéz leads the Spanish conquest of Mexico, which becomes New Spain. With relatively few men (including six blacks, at least one of them a free soldier), and few guns and horses (the first to reach North American mainland), he wins Indian allies and overwhelms Aztec Empire.
Spanish also bring smallpox that ravages Indians of valley of Mexico, 1520. Their numbers are now estimated to have been anywhere between 10 and 25 million before the conquest (the greatest concentration of people in the Americas by far). But they plunge to less than 1.1 million by 1605, although mixed European-Indian (mestizo) population steadily increases.
More than 20,000 African slaves imported by 1570. Large groups of Afro-mestizos also develop.
1519, Panama City is founded by Pedro Arias de Ávila on the Pacific side of the isthmus, Aug. 15.
This is only six months after De Ávila arranged the trial and execution of Balboa, his predecessor as governor.
Panama City becomes the capital of the colony in 1524, the starting point for the Pizarro expedition into Peru and a key transit point for treasure for the next 200 years.
Map of Magellan's Voyage.
1519, Ferdinand Magellan departs Sanlúcar with five ships and 270 men, Sept. 20, on a voyage that crosses the South Atlantic, discovers present-day Strait of Magellan, then navigates a much, much larger-than-expected Pacific and eventually the Indian Ocean.
Magellan, an experienced Portuguese navigator, proposed to find a way around South America to fulfill Columbus’s dream of sailing west to the Far East. This was rejected by Portugal’s Manuel I, but accepted by Charles I of Spain.
Magellan dies in a fight with island people in present-day Philippines. Single surviving ship Victoria, with Juan Sebastian de Elcano and crew of 17, complete first circumnavigation of world, returning to Sanlúcar, Sept. 6, 1522.
1519-21, A Taíno uprising on Hispaniola is led by cacique Enriquillo, a nephew of Anacoana. He and his followers hide in the Bahoruco mountains, and hold off Spanish pursuit.
Two years later, during the Christmas season, black slaves rise up on Diego Colon’s Rio Nigua plantation. Colón’s men round up an unknown number who are executed, but most get away to the mountains, including some to Enriquillo’s camp. The latter maintains its freedom for 30 years.
This is said to be the first New World insurrection of African slaves (believed to be Muslim Wolof), the first recorded African slave cooperation with Indians, and the creation of the first cimarron communities of escaped slaves. The term is shortened to marron (in Spanish and French colonies) and to maroon in English colonies.
In January 1522 Diego Colón introduces early laws to suppress uprisings.
1522, An earthquake and mudslides destroy coastal Vila Franca do Campo, capital of the Azores on the island of São Miguel; 3,000 to 5,000 die, Oct. 20-21. The capital is moved west to Ponta Delgada.
1524, Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine sailing from Dieppe for France’s King Francis I, ranges along the North American East Coast from present-day Cape Fear to Pamlico Sound, New York Bay, and Narragansett and Cape Cod bays. Like Magellan, he seeks a passage to the Pacific, but without success.
Verrazzano undertakes a second voyage to touch Brazil and dies on a third voyage, in 1528, possibly at the hands of Carib Indians on Guadeloupe.
1527, Slave revolt on Puerto Rico ends with some blacks escaping to mountains to join remaining Taínos in maroon communities.
1527, More than 20,000 German mercenaries and Spanish troops, angered by lack of pay despite their recent success against the enemies of Holy Roman Emperor Charles, storm Rome May 6 to begin weeks of destruction, looting and massacre of thousands.
The 500-man Swiss Guard is all but wiped out defending the new St. Peter’s Basilica, still under construction, but they give Pope Clement VII time to escape into Castel Saint’Angelo. He receives little help from his allies (Milan, Venice, Florence and France). He pays a large ransom, and concedes considerable territory and basic leadership on church issues to to Charles.
The mutinous soldiers don’t leave until February when food runs low and plague breaks out. The city’s population drops from 55,000 to 10,000.
1529, Capt.-General Ambrosius Ehinger lands at Santa Ana de Coro to establish Klein-Venedig (Venezuela) on behalf of Welser banking family of Augsburg. Charles I has granted Welsers colonial rights to repay loans. Ehinger names Lake Maraicabo after defeated Coquivacoa chief. Welser forces spend years in futile search for El Dorado and gold.
Atahualpa captured.
1532, Francisco Pizarro leads Spanish conquest of Peru. As in Mexico, a small band of conquistadores is able to overwhelm vast Inca empire with horses, guns and alliances with the Inca’s enemies.
The Atahualpa Inca (king) is taken prisoner, held for ransom and garroted.
1533, Four blacks mount first recorded uprising on Cuba at new underground Jobabo gold mines, November, 20 years after initial arrival of enslaved Africans on island. They die fighting but others will escape to join Taíno maroon communities, called palenques in Spanish colonies.
As early as 1526, Spanish crown urges planters to permit faithful slaves to buy their liberty. African slaves are also encouraged to take part in Catholic church.
1534-1536, Jacques Cartier, commissioned by France’s Francis I, discovers Gulf of St. Lawrence and mouth of St. Lawrence river. Returns the following year and sails up river—which is tidal to present-day Québec City; salt to Lake St. Pierre—to Iroquois village of Hochelaga, site of present-day Montreal.
1534, Cortéz’s men open first consequential silver mine in Mexico, at Taxco (in present-day Guerrero). They also find tin and copper.
1534, Duarte Coelho is granted captaincy of Brazil’s Pernambuco where he defeats Indians and establishes settlement of Olinda, 1536. Sugar cane plantations initiated with erection of sugar mill at Recife, 1541.
Fighting to reclaim Tunis from Barbarossa.
1535, Emperor Charles V and Andrea Doria lead an allied fleet of 211 ships and 55 galleys in June to take Tunis, lost the previous year, back from Barbarossa. The latter is now an Ottoman admiral under Suleiman the Magnificent.
Chains protecting the harbor of La Golleta are broken by Portugal’s São João Baptista, a huge, early galleon with 366 guns.
Many of the Turkish galleys are manned by Jewish slaves, while Spanish galleys are said to be rowed by Protestant prisoners from the Netherlands. More than 30,000 massacred, mostly civilians; 9,000 Christian slaves are freed.
Barbarossa is long gone, taking command of another fleet at Boné, sacking Mahón on Menorca, and seizing 6,000 Christians there as slaves.
On galleons: Their design—longer, lower and usually smaller than carracks—allows them to be used as warships, as well as for cargo. Galleons are vital for all contending European nations throughout the Age of Exploration.
1535, Oyo empire, strongest of Yoruba states, is overthrown by Nupe people who sack the interior capital of Ilé-Ifè (in present-day Osun State, Nigeria). Oyo leaders struggle to rebound over next 80 years.
1536, At the request of João III, Pope Paul III authorizes the Portuguese Inquisition, which targets Jewish conversos and marranos, including many who came to Portugal from Spain.
The first auto-da-fé (“act of faith,” including death by fire) takes place in 1540. Over the next 254 years, 1,175 are burned at the stake, 633 are burned in effigy and nearly 30,000 others are assigned less drastic penance. This does not include tribunals in Brazil, on the Cape Verde Islands and Azores or in other overseas possessions.
1536, Barbados visited and named by Portugal’s Pedro a Campos on his way to Brazil.
1537, Spanish encomenderos establish sugar plantations around Vera Cruz, main port for Atlantic trade into Mexico, including African slaves. Over next 100 years, perhaps 200,000 are brought to Mexico, mainly from Senegambia and Guinea (according to present-day DNA analysis).
Slaves assigned to fields, and as domestics, artisans and as overseers of Indian workers in mines. Indian population eventually absorbs the African population as intermarriage takes place from nearly the beginning.
1537, Pope Paul III issues Sublimis Deus, a bull declaring that “Indians are human beings and not to be robbed of freedom or possessions,” June 2, and prescribes automatic excommunication for offenders.
Strong opposition from Spain leads Paul to annull the censure of excommunication the following year, but the original bull’s teaching that all humans are spiritually equal is not struck.
1538, Barbarossa’s Ottoman fleet of 122 galleys destroys a much larger Holy League fleet led by Andrea Doria off Preveza, on Greece’s Ionian coast, Sept. 28. Combined Spanish, Portuguese, Genoese and Venetian fleets lose 128 ships destroyed or boarded, thousands dead and 3,000 captured.
Barbarossa loses 400 killed and no ships in the greatest Ottoman naval victory over the Europeans. It solidifies Ottoman dominance of Aegean and Ionian seas, in addition to nominal control of the Barbary Coast states.
Equally disastrous is Charles V’s attempted siege of Algiers in the fall of 1541. Bad weather and disease hobble the mostly Spanish attackers, who lose 130 ships, 17,000 men killed and thousands more captured and sold into slavery. Among the surviving Spanish officers: Hernán Cortéz, 20 years after he conquered Mexico.
1539-1542, Hernando de Soto leads first European exploration deep into present U.S. South, starting from present-day Tampa Bay, ranging into North Carolina and then west through Alabama and across Mississippi river (1541) to Texas. He encounters populous communities of Mississippi mound-building Indians, kills 2,500 or more in a bloody battle near present-day Mobile.
Expedition also introduces smallpox and other European diseases, which are now believed to have killed as much as 90 percent of the Mississippian population. Much smaller groups of Indians are encountered decades later when Spanish return.
De Soto himself dies “of fever” on the west bank of the Mississippi, 1542. Expedition survivors finally reach Mexico in 1543.
1540, Antonio de Montesinos (who defended Indians on Hispaniola), appointed a protector of Indians, travels to Klein-Venedig (“Little Venice” or Venezuela) with German settlers related to the Welser banking family.
He dies by the hand of an officer affronted by his support of Indians, June 27.
1540-1580, Prolonged lack of rainfall in northern Mexico results in one of the most severe droughts in all of North America over the past 600 years, as measured by tree-ring data.
Brief wet periods coincide with mysterious, lethal “cocoliztli” epidemics that kill 5 to 15 million weakened indigenous people in 1545-1548 and another 2 million-plus in 1576-1578.
Cause: Descriptions of jaundice, convulsions, and bleeding from ears and nose rule out smallpox. One theory is that cocoliztli (an Aztec word for “pest”) was a native viral hemorrhagic fever (such as a hantavirus) borne by explosive expansions of rodents.
Smaller epidemics follow. By 1620, 100 years after the arrival of Cortés, the indigenous population of the valley of Mexico has plummeted from as many as 25 million to only 1.5 million, a demographic disaster far greater, proportionately, than the Black Death.
1540-1542, Francisco Vázquez de Coronado departs Compostela, on Mexico’s Pacific coast, with a force of 1,300 heading toward present-day Arizona in search of “Cibola” and its reported treasures.
He marches into New Mexico, across the Llano Estacado and deep into Kansas before turning back. He finds much buffalo and many Indians but no treasure, and loses more Spanish horses to the plains.
1540-1542, Meanwhile, in central Mexico, Caxcán people rise up in Mixtón War. They are still angry over brutal Spanish seizure of their land (north of Guadalajara) 10 years previously and are badly oppressed by the encomenderos, one of whom they kill, roast and eat. Caxcán, led by Tenamaztle, are ultimately defeated by a Spanish army of Indian allies, with thousands killed, thousands more enslaved for mining, and women and children assigned to encomendero haciendas. Tenamaztle flees to mountains to fight on.
This anticipates larger, longer Chichimeca War to come.
1542, Charles I issues New Laws, which prohibit enslavement of Indians in New Spain, Nov. 20, largely a result of efforts of De las Casas, now a bishop and author of A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies. They do not end encomenderos as De las Casas hoped, but will ease life for thousands of Indians enslaved in mines.
1545, In present-day Bolivia, Spanish begin mining high-altitude (13,420 feet) Cerro Rico de Potosí soon after silver is discovered by Diego Hualpa, an Indian miner (the Inca had long worked mines in region). Over the next 200 years, an estimated 80% of the world’s silver is drawn from Potosí’s mines, and refined and minted here.
More than 12,000 Indians are conscripted each year under a harsh Spanish version of the Inca mita system, in which men work for limited periods on public projects. High mortality rate due to falls while lifting heavy ore bags hundreds of feet via ladders. Black slaves not considered because of altitude requirements.
Transportation: Silver bars, and minted reals and pesos are transported down steep Andes slope by 3-month llama trains to Arica (and later Callao), then by ship to Panama City, then by mule train across the Isthmus to Nombre de Dios, where treasure fleet gathers annually.
The Potosí mines are still operating in 2021, having generated more than 60,000 tons of silver to date.
1546, Silver is discovered near what will become the city of Zacatecas on the desert plateau of north central Mexico. Soon a series of rich mines are established here in the Veta Grande (Great Vein). This follows opening of silver mines in at Guanajuato in 1530s, and precedes the fabulous silver strikes at San Louis Potosí (named after the rich Bolivian mine) in 1592.
1547, Spanish settlers on Hispaniola dismayed by proliferation of marron communities, with perhaps 3,000 total people who regularly pillage plantations. Leaders, including Lemba (said to be from the Congo), Diego Guzman and Diego de Ocampo, reject treaty proposed by Spanish Gov. Cerrato. He attacks and destroys Lemba’s enclave, but other marron groups survive.
Of 30 sugar mills, only 10 continue after fighting. Whites eventually abandon plantations, especially in north and west, and shift from sugar to cattle ranching. Fewer slaves are required, and they win much more autonomy. Marron communities will endure for generations and forge alliances later in the century with French and English buccaneers in north and west.
1549, King João III sends Tomé de Sousa with six ships, and 1,000 settlers and missionaries to establish Portugal’s authority over chaotic Brazil. This first governor-general founds and fortifies Salvador as the capital, works for peace with indigenous people and recommends settlement of Rio de Janeiro, far to the south.
He is later claimed to be a forefather of Francisco Félix de Sousa, who migrates from Brazil to Whydah in the early 19th century to become a leading slave trader bridging European and African cultures.
1549, A Wolof leader, Dece Fu Njogu, founds the coastal kingdom of Cayor, which includes Cape Verde, and declares it independent of the larger Wolof Empire. Soon thereafter, the Portuguese (who have also used nearby Gorée Island) set up a new factory at Rufisque (now part of Dakar) to trade for slaves with often-at-war Fu Njogu.