Kirkus Best Book of 2025
How the early Portuguese Empire facilitated the modern slave trade.
The Portuguese conquered the challenges of sailing the unforgiving Atlantic Ocean, extending their colonial empire along Africa's western shores. With their dedication to developing new sailing techniques and groundbreaking new knowledge of weather patterns and ocean currents, Portuguese mariners set the tone for the Age of Exploration. But their navigational achievements had horrific consequences for the people of western Africa: subjection to the slave trade.
Patricia Seed examines the historical and climatic odds that Portuguese seafarers overcame to be the first Europeans to tame the Atlantic. Using insights from fields ranging from oceanography to ethnography, she recounts how the Portuguese rapidly innovated and achieved profound new understandings of the ocean and sailing. At the same time, she foregrounds the reality that these innovations enabled them to inflict unimaginable cruelty as, against sometimes violent resistance, they forged what became their spoils of empire: the lucrative trade in human cargo that enslaved millions across Africa and beyond. Sails and Shadows is a history of incredible ingenuity outweighed and overshadowed by the horrors it wrought.
eBook - PDF
Sails and Shadows
How the Portuguese Opened the Atlantic and Launched the Slave Trade
- 257 pages
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
eBook - PDF
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Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction
- 1. Nature Intervenes
- 2. Around the Bulge: Bojador, 1434
- 3. From Mistaken Expectations to Conquests: The Sahara, 1434–1444
- 4. How Trading Replaced Conquest, 1444–1460
- 5. Language: How Enslaved Interpreters Established Trade
- 6. A Painted Ship upon a Painted Ocean, 1460–1470
- 7. Gold at Last: The Route to Mina, 1470–1480
- 8. A Star to Steer Her By
- 9. The Deepest River and the Oldest Desert, 1480–1486
- 10. A First Glimpse of the Indian Ocean, 1486–1488
- 11. Crisscrossing the Atlantic, 1497
- 12. Encounters Along the African Coast and in India
- 13. A Dreadful Mistake: The Return from India
- 14. The Salty Tears of the Atlantic
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
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Yes, you can access Sails and Shadows by Patricia Seed in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in History & Historical Geography. We have over 1.5 million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.