Prince Henry the Navigator: A Life (Peter Russell)

Of the prince (never king) who, with his iron will and fierce determination, singlehandedly began the Age of Exploration, in which Europe conquered the globe, and thereby created the modern world. And of what his life says for the renewal of our own time.

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"Henry the Navigator, prince of Portugal, never king although he often acted as if he were, made the modern world. He lived from 1394 to 1460, and it was through him that Europe began its unprecedented domination of the globe. By sheer strength of will he initiated the Age of Exploration, so for half a millennium he was therefore seen, quite correctly, as a hero all should emulate. In our own decayed age, to be sure, he is forgotten, and if mentioned castigated. No matter; this excellent biography broadly shows how America can relaunch itself. Most of all, it demonstrates how the attitudes of elites can be guided by the right leader, who can thereby determine the course of history." . . .

[Chordus_Gaius]

Being Brazilian myself, I can see Henry as a figure to imitate

[niciassmith]

I have this book but haven't got to read it yet

[binalcensored]

The most important scholars of Renaissance humanism consider Prince Henry the Navigator to be the most important man in European history.
As attested by a letter written by the Italian sage Poggio Bracciolini to the Infante, in 1448-1449. The literate Italian compares his achievements to those of Alexander the Great, or those of Julius Caesar, praising them even more for being conquests of places unknown to all Humanity. Poggio Bracciolini (1380 – Florence, 1459), was one of the most important humanists of the Italian Renaissance.
Without a doubt, no one else in history has managed to make their actions change the world as much as Prince Henry. He transformed the old world of small villages frozen in time, into a world where the entire planet is part, where all cultures become part of human knowledge.
Especially poor old Europe, full of famine, will benefit most from this. Until then, rich Arab and Asian merchants said that Europe was so poor that the only valuable merchandise were white European slaves.
The world becomes truly global. However, in the 19th century the war for European national pride will make other countries that were looking for the scepter of glory in European history, try to destroy the importance of Henry the Navigator to assume the throne of global history themselves and the only way to achieve this was by accusing him of having "invented" slavery, which is totally false and scandalously shameful on the part of all those who wrote books full of lies just to try to impose slavery on him.
It is so criminally false that there is not a single true document linking it to slavery.
Only after the death of Henry the navigator in 1460 did slavery become necessary for the Americas, which had not yet been discovered at the time of Henry's death.
Therefore, the only way to denigrate him was to say that he took the slaves to the sugar plantations in Madeira. But at the time of his death, Madeira produced little more than cereals. It was the Flemish, Jewish and Genoese who introduced sugar to Madeira. They had already exploited sugar and slaves for over 100 years in the Mediterranean and especially in Sicily.
The Portuguese did not know about sugar and even less about the slavery of Africans.
In 1441, the first black people arrived in Portugal, who were brought by Antão Gonçalves, in the Rio do Ouro region. The captives and not slaves, as the racists like to call them, were treated very well, but Andahu, the native chief, constantly asked to be allowed to return to his land. Infante D. Henrique acceded to his wish, and Antão Gonçalves, when he went back to the Coast of Africa, took the black leader with him.
The relationship with the king of Congo was so good that the Congolese elites began to adopt noble titles, that is, they wanted to be called counts and even dukes.
In the following centuries, the Dutch and companies of German-Jewish capital arrived, and from then until the Belgian king's hands were cut off, the situation of the Portuguese was completely reversed.
Unfortunately, anti-Catholic and anti-Lusophone propaganda spends millions of dollars every year, just to "sow" false stories, designed to praise profit maximization, perpetuating human exploitation and destruction of the planet, through financing books, written intentionally to blame others for their own atrocities.
However, there is a big difference between what Europeans read and what they see when they get to know Portugal and the Portuguese.
The difference between mere dogmatic theory and knowledge through experience was precisely what the Discoveries introduced and that was what made humanity evolve like never before. Therefore, if we go back to blindly believing in mere propagandistic theory, we will be going back 500 years.
What everyone can really see is that the world has completely changed from before to after Henry the Navigator!