Lectures on Modern History - Faculty of Social Sciences

<strong>Lectures</strong> on Modern History/43the reign of force and constant wrong, that, in the rapid change but slowprogress of four hundred years, liberty has been preserved, and secured,and extended, and finally understood.II. The New WorldGreater changes than those which were wrought by governments orarmies on the battlefield of Italy were accomplished at the same time,thousands of miles away, by solitary adventurers, with the future of theworld in their hands. The Portuguese were the first Europeans to understandthat the ocean is not a limit, but the universal waterway that unitesmankind. Shut in by Spain, they could not extend on land, and had noopening but the Atlantic. Their arid soil gave little scope to the territorialmagnate, who was excluded from politics by the growing absolutismof the dynasty, and the government found it well to employ at adistance forces that might be turbulent at home.The great national work of exploration did not proceed from theState. The Infante Henry had served in the African wars, and his thoughtswere drawn towards distant lands. He was not a navigator himself; butfrom his home at Sagres, on the Sacred Promontory, he watched theships that passed between the great maritime centre at the mouth of theTagus and the regions that were to compose the Portuguese empire. AsGrandmaster of the Order of Christ he had the means to equip them, andhe rapidly occupied the groups of islands that lie between Africa andmid Atlantic, and that were a welcome accession to the narrow territoryof Portugal. Then he sent his mariners to explore the coast of the unknownand dreaded continent. When they reached the Senegal and theGambia, still more, when the coast of Guinea trended to the East, theyremembered Prester John, and dreamed of finding a way to his fictitiousrealm which would afford convenient leverage for Christendom, at theback of the dark world that faced the Mediterranean.As the trade of the country did not cover the outlay. Henry began in1442 to capture negroes, who were imported as slaves, or sold withadvantage to local chiefs. In five years, 927 blacks from Senegambiareached the Lisbon market; and, later on, the Guinea coast suppliedabout a thousand every year. That domestic institution was fast disappearingfrom Europe when it was thus revived; and there was somefeeling against the Infante, and some temporary sympathy for his victims.On the other side, there were eminent divines who thought that thepeople of hot countries may properly be enslaved. Henry the Navigator