Controversies about the European discovery of Brazil

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Please help improve this article or section by expanding it.
Further information might be found on the talk page or at requests for expansion.
This article has been tagged since January 2007.

The claim that the Portuguese explorer and navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral was the first European to discover Brazil, in April 22, 1500, is contested.

One theory is a Portuguese navigator know by the name of Sancho Brandão (also known as, or mistaken for Saint Brandon in other, fable-alike versions of his journey), discovered Brazil around 1341 and that this was described in a secret letter sent to King Afonso IV of Portugal.

Recent research gives some evidence to the claim that an expedition ordered by King Manuel I of Portugal and led by Duarte Pacheco Pereira arrived in Maranhão, on the northeastern coast of Brazil, in 1498. However, this expedition would have been intentionally kept secret by the Portuguese Crown. Before the Treaty of Tordesillas, the Pope had signed a Bull treaty that would have given the rights of the newly found Brazil to Castille and not to Portugal. Accordingly, the theory is this: Sancho Brandão did discover Brazil in 1341, but since Portugal could not claim Brazil as theirs, they requested an extension of the imaginary line which separated the world in two halves. The Pope did extend the line towards the west, and they called it the Tordesilles Treaty. With this treaty, the imaginary line would leave part of the land in Brazil to Portugal. Then in 1500, secretly knowing that Brazil was there, Portugal sent Pedro Álvares Cabral (at the time known as Pedro Alvares Gouvêia), on an expedition to the land discovered by Sancho Brandão in 1341.

It is uncertain if Pedro Álvares Cabral was blown westwards to the Brazilian coast while navigating to the Cape of Good Hope, or the whole expedition was a secret mission to find new lands in the Atlantic as a response to the Spanish claims that Amerigo Vespucci had visited the Brazilian north coast in July 1499 and Vicente Yáñez Pinzón in November 1499. According to the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), Spain could not claim the lands.