The Alleged Pre-Columbian Discovery of America

Abstract

SENHOR JAIME CORTESAO'S article in the January Journal on the discovery of America is based upon four main arguments, which may be summarized thus: (i) it was easier for the Portuguese of the fifteenth century to make trans-oceanic voyages than to coast along the shores of West Africa; (2) Portuguese official policy was to suppress all records of geographical discoveries in order to prevent them becoming generally known; (3) there is sufficient evidence to justify the conclusion that Newfoundland had been discovered by them before 1492 at the latest; (4) the Portuguese were aware of the existence of a continent to the south-west of the Cape Verde Islands before I492, and secured an alteration in the Treaty of Tordesillas to preserve this discovery for their country. These four arguments are all open to considerable objections, and it is suggested here that these are sufficiently weighty to require, at least for the present, a suspension of judgment on the problem of the pre-Columbian discovery of America. With regard to the first argument, it is difficult to accept the statement that a trans-oceanic voyage was easier than the coasting voyages along Western Africa. In the first place, trans-oceanic voyagers would be launching out into the unknown; on the African voyages the proximity of land, both as a possible refuge and as a guide to general direction, would inspire confidence, and, what is perhaps of more importance, they were venturing along a traderoute of which they had some previous knowledge. It is not possible here to go into the details of the historical geography of Western Africa before the fifteenth century, but many of them will be found in a paper by Professor E. G. R. Taylor.' It is sufficient to note that there is evidence of Moorish trading activity along this coast before Portuguese expansion began, and it is admitted by the Portuguese chroniclers that Prince Henry collected information on this subject for the guidance of his captains.z It must also be remembered that in these voyages the Portuguese had a definite objective, known to them from the traders who had reached it overland: the goldproducing regions of the Western Sudan. The work of recent scholars has made it clear that the cartography of the fourteenth century, as portrayed, for example, in the Catalan Atlas of 1375, was based upon actual, if confused, facts of north-west African geography. There is a considerable difference between embarking upon voyages into an unknown ocean and coasting along a region, of which some knowledge already existed, towards a definite objective. The physical conditions of the two oceanic areas are different. The southern route lay for the first part in the belt of the north-east trade winds, and off the