Merchants
and Bankers From 1400-1450
[Previous page File 1a (1095AD-1400AD) ] [You are now on a page for 1400-1450 filed as (http://www.danbyrnes.com.au/merchants/merchants2.htm] [Next page File 3 - 1450-1500] -
This webpage updated 14 October 2014
Merchants
and Bankers This Merchants and Bankers Listings website is years old and is now (from 2009) undergoing a marked identity change. Its timeline material on economic history (for 1560-1930) is being moved to a website managed by Ken Cozens and Dan Byrnes, The Merchant Networks Project. This will empty many of this website's pages which have always been in series. In due course, Merchants and Bankers Listings will carry information from the Crusades on the early development of what became “capitalism” in Europe to 1560 or so. As well as a conglomeration of data on modern developments, mostly on modern/technical industry, computing, and for the future, today's climate change problems. The editor's view is that in the context of climate change, the views of Merchants and Bankers (and Economists), the keepers of matters economic, are due for a considerable shake-up. If this website can encourage the shake-up, and help inform it reliably, well and good. -Ed
Follows a partial
Descendancy chart for
FUGGER bankers of Germany
See R. Ehrenberg, Capital
and Finance
in the Age of the Renaissance: A Study of the Fuggers and their
Connexions. (Eng trans. by H. Lucas, 1928).
Many
book titles
in German are listed in Encyclopedia Britannica
entry on
Fuggers -Ed
1. FUGGER Progenitor
sp: NOTKNOWN Miss
2.
Weaver, Banker founder FUGGER Johann (d.1469)
sp: NOTKNOWN
Miss
3. FUGGER Senior
sp: NOTKNOWN Miss
4.
FUGGER Andreas
sp:
NOTKNOWN Miss
5. Fugger von Reh FUGGER Jakob
4.
FUGGER Jakob
3. Banker FUGGER Ulrich (b.1441;d.1510)
3. FUGGER
Georg
(b.1453;d.1506)
sp: UNKNOWN Miss
4. Banker FUGGER
Raimund
(b.1489;d.1535)
sp: NOTKNOWN Miss
5. Bishop of
Regensburg
FUGGER Sigmund
5. Banker FUGGER Johann Jakob (b.1516;d.1575)
5.
Banker FUGGER Ulrich (b.1526;d.1584)
5. Banker FUGGER Georg
(d.1579)
4. FUGGER Anton (b.1493;d.1560)
sp: NOTKNOWN
Miss
5.
Writer FUGGER Marcus (b.1529;d.1597)
5. FUGGER Johann (d.1598)
sp:
NOTKNOWN Miss
6. Fugger-Glott FUGGER Christoph (d.1615)
sp:
UNKNOWN Miss
7. FUGGER Junior
6. Fugger-Kirchheim
FUGGER
Marcus (d.1614)
6. Bishop of Constance FUGGER Jakob
(c.1604;d.1626)
5. FUGGER Jakob (d.1598)
3. Miner
FUGGER Jakob
(b.1459;d.1525)
Advertisement
 |
|
The history websites on this domain now have a companion website on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London). This website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with some attention to Sydney, Australia. |
1405-1433: The
magnificent failure of
Chinese mariner, Zheng He.
Zheng He was
a Moslem, son of a
rebel family, and captured as a boy by the Chinese army. As was
customary, he was castrated - a eunuch. But he had talents, and ended
in the household of great prince Zhu Di, uncle of the Chinese
emperor. The uncle conspired against the regime, won, and so became
China's Yongle emperor (died 1424). Shortly he sent out Zheng He as
an admiral to probe the world and demonstrate the worth of China to
the ignorant. He sailed out to "conquer the world".
"Between 1405 and 1433, Zheng He led seven major expeditions,
commanding the largest armada the world would see for the next five
centuries..." 28,000 sailors on 300 ships. The longest ship was
120 metres (as compared to Columbus' Santa Maria,
of 85 feet
length).
 PayPal - safe and secure |
|
If you value the information
posted here, |
These Chinese ships had advanced features such balanced rudders and watertight bulwark compartments. Zheng He's reach extended to East Africa, and contact with Arab traders. China then had no interest in trade with the backward Europeans, but wanted African products such as ivory, spices, medicines, wood. Kristol, researching Zheng He, found he had lived in Nanjing and was best remembered in Indonesia, as his voyages had helped stimulate Chinese migration to South-East Asia. He had also been distrusted by the elite Confucian scholars, who did not appreciate the opportunities of maritime endeavour. There had been a legend that a Chinese monk in the C5th had sailed to a "far east country" that to Kristol sounds like Mayan Mexico. By the C13th, Chinese ships sailed regularly to India (Calicut) and sometimes to East Africa - the coast of Kenya. But when his patron died in 1424, Zheng He lost out to power struggles, and records of his work were suppressed. To 1525, the Chinese government suppressed maritime endeavour and private marine trade, and reduced the navy. So China lost its opportunities to expand by naval activity and marine commerce. And it seems, the legacy today of Zheng He's work is a small clan of Chinese-influenced survivors - the Famao - on the island of Pate off Kenya, where a Chinese ship of this era once wrecked. There is also a legend that Zheng He brought back to China, giraffes from Africa, which some took to be the fabled Chinese Unicorn. (qilin). See article by Nicholas D. Kristol, Good Weekend, 23 October, 1999., pp. 42ff. See his co-written book, China Wakes.
1400: 1425: 1425: The Hussite Wars, and a drawing of the period shows a diver (with gunpowder mines?) wearing a suit with flippers - underwater warfare! A German military expert, Konrad Keyser has ideas of divers fighting underwater by 1400. (Source: James/Thorpe).
1400: Use of hand-held firearms in Europe.
C15th, London has a population of merely 40,000. European cities rarely had a population above 100,000 until the C17th.
1401: Mongol leader Tamerlane (Timur) conquers Damascus and Baghdad, disrupting existing land trade routes.
1402: Chinese mariners form an embassy to the newly-founded city of Malacca in what is now Malaysia. (In 1405 began the first of the great voyages of Chinese admiral, Zheng He. As the Chinese expand on the sea, there spring up, simultaneously, many new Muslim sultanates spring up in Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines.) (Item from text by Paul Lunde, in magazine Saudi Aramco World, The Indian Ocean and Global Trade, issue July/August 2005)
1402: Tamerlane defeats Ottomans at Ankara, and has conquered northern India, Persia and Syria.
1402: Zhu Di (who becomes third Ming emperor, known as Yong Le) marches south on Nanjing the imperial capital, at head of army, where mandarins hate the power of the eunuchs.The eunuchs side with Zhu Di's and throw open the city gates. Soon though, the aging Tamerlane at Samarkand on the Silk Route has decided to take China and Zhu Di decides to confront him. Zhu Di takes Ta-Tu or Beijing and builds the Forbidden City, a walled capital, some 15 hundred times the area of walled London and with 50 times the population of London. Zhu Di also resolves to repair the Great Wall built before 260BC. His ambition is also to do what Kublai Khan had never done, to build a maritime empire spanning the oceans. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
About 1403-1404, though never at sea, Zheng He becomes admiral of China's fleets and also decides to enlarge China's land trades via Silk Route. Zhu Di has doubled the size of the Longjiang shipyards near Nanjing. on the Yangtze. Seven large dry-docks are built, their remains still there. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
By 1403: In Korea, King Htai Tjong used cast-bronze type for printing. (View of historian Jared Diamond).
Advertisement
1404 Circa: Ming emperor Zhu Di in middle of Beijing builds a new astronomical observatory and has a 20-year-plan to enlarge China's trade and prestige. The stars are to be observed each night. Zhu Di also convinces Korea, the Shogun of Japan and the grandson of Tamerlane, Prince Ulegh Begh, to make observations of stars. In 1404 Zhu Di moves China's capital from Nanjing to Beijing; ten thousand households need to be moved. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1404-14106: Italy, Venice, Vicenza, Verona and Padua submit to control of Venice.
December 1404: Zhu Di in China orders great numbers of scholars to 2180 of them, with long-time advisers Yao Guang Xiao and Liu Chi to mount a program called Yong-le-Dadian to preserve all known knowledge and literature.The result is an encyclopedia of four thousand volumes, completed just before 2 Feb 1421. Other work of scholarship is organised. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition) Menzies writes that Henry V 1387-1422 had only six handwritten books, three loaned by a nunnery, and the wealthiest European merchant of this time, the Florentine Francesco Datini, has as many as 12 books, eight on religious subjects. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002, p. 36. - hardcover edition)
1405: Death of the Central Asian conqueror, Tamerlane (Timur). (Item from text by Paul Lunde, in magazine Saudi Aramco World, The Indian Ocean and Global Trade, issue July/August 2005)
1405: Clavijo makes an embassy to Mongol leader, Tamerlane. (From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 7.)
1405++: First in 1405 of Zheng He's trips to East Africa, epic voyages as Menzies calls them. Zheng He sails with 62 treasure ships manned by 27,800 men, to Cambodia, Java, Malacca, Ceylon, then Calicut in India. In 1416, on 16 November, Zheng He brings to China a giraffe, called a quilin. and presents it to Zhu Di. This becomes a propitious sign to solidify Zhu Di's reign, the Mandarins cease protest, some one million men work directly on reconstructing Beijing, and 3.5 million work indirectly. They are guarded by one million soldiers. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
January 1405, Tamerlane leaves Samarkand to try to take China. But he dies on 18 February, and his army breaks into factions and disperses. Zhu Di (his third son is Zhu Gaozhi) is having trouble feeding his people being shifted to Beijing, resolves that the Grand Canal needs repair to be able to handle grain shipments north. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1406: More to come
1407: Zheng He establishes a language school in Nanjing, (the Su-i-Quan - Si Yi Guan), to train interpreters. Learning Arabic, Persian, Swahili, Hindi, Tamil and other languages. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1407: The pillaging of the forests of Northern Vietnam and other Chinese incursions lead to a revolt in 1407 led by Le Qui Ly, a former minister of Court of Vietnam who usurped the throne and introduced reforms that win him support. His aim is to end China's subjugation of Vietnam. Zhu Di sends an army to quell him, but this fails. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1408: More to come
1409: China's third expedition of Treasure Fleets sail under Zheng He.
1409: Chinese discover that Malacca (Indonesian
spice
islands), has a chieftain only, no king, and is in control of Hsien
Lo of Thailand. In 1409, Zhu Di orders Zheng Ho to take control of
Malacca, which he does. Malacca is visited by Bengalis, Gujaratis,
Parsees, Arabs. Some 84 languages are spoken about Malacca. Some of
the goods traded are spices /pepper from Ternate and Tidore (the
spice islands), silk, batiks and tin from Malacca and Java, porcelain
from China, Indian gems, Venetian glass.
1410: Completion of Imago Mundi, printed in 1483, a work noted in geography, by scholastic geographer, Cardinal Pierre d'Ailly. This book influenced Columbus. (From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 8.)
1410: Thomas /Knolleys/ Mayor of London 1390 Thomas KNOLLES
elected in 1399. Thomas KNOLLES elected in 1410 second term.
(Item,
per Peter Western)
1411: China, Work continues on northern section of The Great Canal. The southern section, improved, is opened in 1415. Grain is carried in 3000 flat-bottomed barges. Loss of forests and other costs begin to produce revolts. Forests are felled in northern Vietnam and south of there. Later, each few years, Zhu Di sends out huge armadas to the known world, with gifts and trade goods, massive treasure ships with guns and moving armies of soldiers. to Africa for ostrich and leopards, gold cloth from Calicut of s/w India, tin and other goods from Siam/Thailand. Malacca is friendlier to Chinese and is favoured over Java and Sumatra. Cambodia is not as favoured as Siam. Korea is important to Chinese, so it Vietnam. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1411: Italy: Francesco Sforza marries Bianca Visconti, daughter of the last Visconti, Duke of Milan, the ugly Filippo Maria Visconti, died 1447, the last of the Viscontis in direct line. Thus, Sforza succeeds the Visconti in influence over Italy.
1412: Italy: Killing by Ghibelline partisans of the "insanely cruel" Giovanni Maria Visconti, Duke of Milan since 1402.
1413: Protest of the French Estates General against civil war. Revolt at Paris. Henry V is King of England.
1413: After 1409, next great Treasure Fleet sails from China for South East Asia. Some Chinese ships sail from Malacca for Bengal, Maldive Islands, Africa. Another aims for Arabian Sea and Hormuz on Persian Gulf.
1414-1423: Italy, Venice, Doge is Tommaso Mocenigo, control of the Veneto, Friuli and Dalmatia is now consolidated.
1414-1418: Council of Constance puts an end to the Great Schism of Christianity.
1414:1439: Italian Nicolo de Conti voyages in the Indian Ocean.
1415: Prince Henry (The Navigator), is entrusted with commend of the Portuguese attack on Ceuta, an Arab port on the north coast of Africa overlooking Strait of Gibraltar. A European victory over the Moors results. Capture of gold trade, and a port in Africa for Portugal/Europeans. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002., p. 47. - hardcover edition)
1415: Portuguese forces capture Ceuta, at the entrance to the Mediterranean and a key to the whole sea, on the Moroccan coast opposite Gibraltar. One motives is capture of the Saharan gold trade. (Item from text by Paul Lunde, in magazine Saudi Aramco World, The Indian Ocean and Global Trade, issue July/August 2005)
25 August, 1415: Portugal: The Church of Ceuta is wrested from the Moors (who had used it as a mosque) and is retained by Portugal. King John knights his three sons. A Portuguese fleet had sailed for this battle on 25 July, 1415. (From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, pp. 36ff.)
Advertisement
1415: English beat French in Battle of Agincourt.
1415 and before: Portugal. Belief in the mythical kingdom of
Prester John, a "Christian sovereign of the East", perhaps
in Tartary, or Cathay, or the mountains of Persia, perhaps a
descendant of one of the Three Wise Men, Melchior, Gaspar and
Balthasar. Or in Ethiopia, by the Red Sea? Or was the kingdom of
Prester John formed from the ancient empire of Meroe, which in the
days of the Trojan War had about 250,000 warriors. It is also said
there is gold on the West African coast. Navigators for Henry the
Navigator (now aged 18 or less) may have rounded Cape Non/Nao by now.
Henry the Navigator later admires navigators, the Genoese Antonio da
Nola, the Venetian Alvise de Cadamosto, and Valarte/Wollaert, a
vassal of the King of Norway who knows the seas between Scandinavia
and the coasts of Iceland and Greenland. A knowledgeable French
admiral is Jurien de la Graviere.
It is necessary for Henry
to
exercise the powers of the Order of Christ founded a century earlier
by King Denis, to get African gold to finance voyages to India. Henry
ponders the challenges.
Earlier, the Catalan Ramon Lull, had
predicted the regaining of Ceuta from the Moslems, and that the
conquest would be followed by the rounding of Africa. The
post-Crusades Venetian, Marino Sanuto had wanted to mount a general
assault against Islam, and to create a common fleet to gain dominion
over islands and coast of the Indian Ocean. From Renault, The
Caravels of Christ, pp. 38ff.
1415: English defeat French at Agincourt.
1416: John the Fearless, Duke Burgundy, recognizes Henry V as King of France.
1416: King of Malindi in Africa presents emperor of China with two giraffes.
1417 March: Beijing is almost ready to become new capital of China. In 1420 the Temple of Heaven is finished.
1417-1419: After 1413, next expedition for Chinese Treasure Fleets, visiting every port of Africa, Asia, India, and bringing back envoys to attend the 1421 inauguration of the Forbidden City of Beijing as new capital of China. About now, Admiral Yang Qing has to return other envoys to their home ports, and solve the problem of how to determine longitude. On this trip, Zheng He visits Semudera (modern Sumatra). Also this trip, separate fleets are under command of Grand Eunuch Hong Bao, Eunuch Zhou Man and Eunuch Zhou Wen.
December 1418, Zarco and Tristao Vaz Teixeira, Portuguese, are ordered by Henry the Navigator to explore the West African coast down to Guinea, two thousand miles south of Portugal. But they are blown off course and discover Madeira/Porto Santo.
1418: In Vietnam, further uprising against the Chinese, led by aristocrat landowner, Le L'oi, founder of a dynasty which is to rule Vietnam for 360 years. Zhu Di's armies cannot subdue him. Insurrection spreads through Annam (North Vietnam) and Vietnam. Entire red River delta area about Hanoi is in revolt. Le L'oi beats the Chinese armies, but does not achieve formal independence for Vietnam till 1428. Zhu Di effectively abandons Vietnam by July 1421. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1418: In Vietnam, further uprising against the Chinese, led by aristocrat landowner, Le L'oi, founder of a dynasty which is to rule Vietnam for 360 years. Zhu Di's armies cannot subdue him. Insurrection spreads through Annam (North Vietnam) and Vietnam. Entire red River delta area about Hanoi is in revolt. Le L'oi beats the Chinese armies, but does not achieve formal independence for Vietnam till 1428. Zhu Di effectively abandons Vietnam by July 1421. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1418ff: Portugal: Pedro the brother of Henry the Navigator travels the Mediterranean, researching trade between India and the Mediterranean, to London, Paris, Rome, Venice, Constantinople, Alexandria and Cairo, Jerusalem, Sinai, Mecca, Medina. Pedro explores trade implications for Germany as well. With sailing from Lisbon to India, the object of Portugal would be to break the commercial hegemony of Genoa, Barcelona, Marseilles, Florence and Ragusa (which had Venetian protection). From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, p. 82.
1419: Portuguese discover Madeira, then the Azores in 1431, Senegal in 1446, Cape Verde Islands in 1455.
1419: Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal moved to Sagres
to
set up an "establishment" for research into improvements in
navigation and seafaring; Sages, one of twin headlands of Cape St
Vincent, rollers from Atlantic, a "sacred headland", and
out there placelessly was Cape Bojador, supposed edge of the world,
and so what stopped sailors from going south down south-west Africa?
(Some historians dispute existence of any such "navigation
school.)
Cape Bojador is colony of Spanish Sahara, mainland
nearest the Canary Islands, it was difficult to pass in a
coast-hugging ship, and needed to pass it to get to India. so Henry
thought to have a ship go far west out into the Atlantic, then cut
back to the African coast, south of Bojador, and later Cabral went so
far west he discovered Brazil. Vasco da Gama ordered to make similar
sweeps west, then south east, and a mariner named Gil Eannes of Lagos
was first chosen to make such a sweep. first Henry had to design on
ocean-going ship, not a mere coast-hugger. which became the caravel.
Gil Eannes turned back twice, crew superstitious etc. Eannes made it
in 1433, made it south of Bojador and at a place where only living
thing was wildflowers. a great turning point for mankind, beginning
of Portugal's manifest destiny. (McIntyre, Secret Discovery
of
Australia, pp. 9-13ff.)
1400: 1425: 1425: The Hussite Wars, and a drawing of the period shows a diver (with gunpowder mines?) wearing a suit with flippers - underwater warfare! A German military expert, Konrad Keyser had ideas of divers fighting underwater by 1400. (Source: James/Thorpe).
1420: There are still Danish men who can recall colonies on Greenland, or Baffin Island. The Danes have a theory that there is a north-west passage beyond Baffin Island to China. (McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 28-29)
1420: France, Treaty of Troyes.
1420: Pope appoints Prince Henry (The Navigator) Grand Master of the Order of Christ.
1420: Portuguese ships sail to the Madeira Islands.
1421: China: Ming emperor Yung-lo moves his capital from Nanking to Peking, built on a chess-board pattern.
Advertisement
1421: An official brothel is opened in Venice, "to combat sexual perversion and marital infidelity". (R. Brasch, How Did Sex Begin?)
2 February 1421: December 1404: Zhu Di in China orders great numbers of scholars to 2180 of them, with long-time advisers Yao Guang Xiao and Liu Chi to mount a program called Yong-le-Dadian to preserve all known knowledge and literature.The result is an encyclopedia of four thousand volumes, completed just before 2 Feb 1421. Other work of scholarship is organised. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1421: The rise of Beijing, and now the imperial court is ready to move from Nanjing. The new capital is to be inaugurated on New Year's Day, 2 February 1421. (Only a few weeks later, Henry V marries Catherine of Valois.)
1421, China has also been trading with Ceylon, Persia, India, Chinese Turkestan is called Kotan which produces jade, ambergris from the Pacific, myrrh from Arabia, sandalwood from Spice Islands.
Late 1421: Menzies writes, by coincidence, as the Chinese treasure fleets arrive to Calicut, the Indian city is visited by young Venetian, Niccolo da Conti, (c1395-1469). He is a young trader who in 1414 left Venice for Alexandria. He converted to Islam and took a Muslim wife. Christians were not then permitted south of Cairo, as the Islamic world had decided to keep the Indian Ocean as "an Islamic lake". Da Conti travels as a Muslim merchant, to the Euphrates delta, then Calicut. Years later he is required by Pope Eugenius IV to relate his stories of his travels to papal secretary Poggio Bracciolini, who later had them published. At Calicut, da Conti had gone aboard at least one Chinese junk. Menzies thinks da Conti also met Chinese diarist of the voyage, Ma Huan, as their reports on Calicut are quite similar. Ma Huan went off the treasure fleet ships at Calicut and presumably later returned to China. Menzies believes that da Conti's stories later influenced European map makers. So Menzies feels da Conti spoke to more Chinese years later, when their geographical knowledge had improved. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002., p. 85. - hardcover edition)
December 1421: The Ottomans surrounding Byzantium cut off the great Silk Road leading from China across central Asia to the Middle East. By 6 December, 1421, the Mameluke Sultan Barsbey seizes power in Egypt and nationalizes the spice trade. This ruins merchants in the spice trade, seals Egypt's borders and severs the sea route through the Bosphorus to the western end of the Silk Route. The canal once linking the Red Sea and the Nile (completed in C10th), is also by now unusable. All land and sea routes for Europeans to the East are now closed.
1422: Accession of Henry VI, with his uncle, John, Duke of Bedford, as regent. Charles VII also claims the French throne.
1423: Death of Doge of Venice, Tommaso Mocenigo. A Venetian saying is: “Gold equals fear plus respect.” (Item from text by Paul Lunde, in magazine Saudi Aramco World, The Indian Ocean and Global Trade, issue July/August 2005)
1423-1457: Italy, Venice, Francesco Foscari is Doge, acquisition of Brescia and Bergamo. Ottoman Turks take Constantinople in 1453 - In 1454, Peace of Lodi among Italian states.
1424: 12 August, Ming emperor Zhu Di dies aged 64 and sixteen concubines are buried with him. He has still not subdued Mongol leader Arughtai. Menzies regards Zhu Di as one of the great visionaries and gamblers of history. His son Zhu Gaozhi (died 1425 after only a year as emperor and is succeeded by his son Zhu Zhanji died 1435 after embargoing all foreign contacts and trade) ascends the throne of China on 7 September and that day issues an edict stopping any voyages of treasure ships. In time, the mandarin Liu Daxia of Ministry of War seizes all records on treasure fleet voyages from the archives and destroys them. (Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)
1424: Traveller da Conti returns home from his travels, to Florence. Dom Pedro brother of Henry the navigator learns of what da Conti knows of Chinese voyages. Dom Pedro learns that Cathay and the Spice Islands can be reached by sailing westwards, not eastwards. So Dom Pedro in 1428 can take home to Portugal a revised map of the world. (A disputed claim as made in Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002., p. 47. - hardcover edition)
1425: More to come
1426: Egyptians gain control over Cyprus.
1427: Portuguese ships sail to the Azores.
1428: Attempted English advance southwards, siege of Orleans.
1429: Meeting of Joan of Arc and Dauphin Charles at Chinon. Capture of Orleans and coronation of Charles at Rheims.
1430: Printing: By 1430: the Dutch printer Laurens Janszoon uses wooden type with hand-carved letters.
1430: Peak of a period of colder, worsening climate, which begins in the later Middle Ages, with special effects on the Scandinavian world. (View of H. R. Lyon, Vikings in Britain, p. 20.)
1430: Joan of Arc fails to take Compiegne, and is captured by English.
1430: Possible high point of severity of a cold climatic change occurring in recent centuries. (H. R. Lyon, Vikings in Britain, p. 20).
1431: France, English imprison, interrogate, burn at the stake, Joan of Arc. In Paris, coronation of Henry VI as King.
1431: Portuguese colonize Puerto Rico and are still there by 1447.
1432: More to come
1433: Portugal: Henry the Navigator sends out his squire, Gil Eanes, to survey areas near the Canary Islands. In 1434-35, Afonso Goncalves Baldaia goes south further than the Canary Islands, to the modern area of Cape Garrett, where he found desert occupied by Moslems. Baldaia went further south in 1436 to Piedra de Galea. Soon, Joao (Zarco) Goncalves and Tristao Vaz Teixeira would discover the island of Porto Santo and later with Bartholomew Perestrelo, the island of Madeira. From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, pp. 48ff.
Duarte (Aviz), "The Eloquent". King Portugal 1433-1438.
1434: Slaves are taken from West Africa to Portugal as early as 1434. See W. Walton Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti, pp. 80ff.
1435: More to come
1436: More to come
13 September 1437: Portugal makes assaults on Tangier, which is defended by Sala ibn Sala. The Portuguese are reduced to eating their horses, lose, and are to return Ceuta to Moslem power. Henry the Navigator responds partly by moving more to thoughts of the sea. From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, pp. 52ff
Afonso V (Aviz), "The African", King Portugal 1438-1481.
1438: Castilian nobleman Pero Tafur, visits Venice in 1438, and at the sealoading facility, Venetian Arsenal, is amazed to see 10 galleys readied for sea in only three hours, all fully crewed and provisioned. (Item from text by Paul Lunde, in magazine Saudi Aramco World, The Indian Ocean and Global Trade, issue July/August 2005)
1438: Pero Tafur visits Venice.
1439: More to come
1440 circa: Drawing in Switzerland of the "Vinland Map" of Greenland. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 278ff.
1441: Portuguese mariner Nuno Tristao explores Cape Branco/White Cape, and in 1443 he is to the islands of Arguim and Hersons/Garcas. From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, p. 60.
1441: Return to Venice of Venetian trader/traveller Nicolo de'
Conti, from the world of Islam, in Mesopotamia, India, Burma and the
Indonesian archipelago, the approaches to the Red Sea and Egypt.
Conti then advised Poggio Bracciolini, secretary to Pope Eugenius IV.
In 1492 was published Bracciolini's work, India recognita,
or,
India Rediscovered. He also distinguished Ceylon and Sumatra. His
views influenced a Genoese world map of 1457.
From J. H.
Parry,
The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents.
London,
Macmillan, 1968., p. 36.
1442: More to come
Advertisement
1443AD: Japan: Zeami (1363-1443) Master playwright and performer of the Noh drama, dies. Ashikaga Yoshimasa, 8th Ashikaga Shogun builds "Silver Pavilion" (Ginkaku-ji) - unpainted bldg. (later temple) - an aesthetic of understatement, primitivism, rustification, less is more, minimalism, reverse snobbism, etc. represented by such terms as Shibui - "astringent" or unostentatious Sabi - rusty, rustic, rusticated, weathered or Wabi - forlorn, lonely, abandoned the concept of "elegance" or "miyabi" from the Heian Period is retained but without its sense of extravagance and ostentatiousness a "negative" or inverted aesthetic standard that reflects: declining military and economic control of central leaders state of constant change and uncertainty of the times mujo "impermanence, transience, ever-changing" Zen Buddhism: ideas of naturalness, self-sufficiency, anti- establishmentarianism (reinforced by Shinto taste) - tea ceremony (Sado, Ocha-no-yu) especially, the "wabi"-tea style of Rikyu Noh theater (Onoh, Noh-gaku) gardens (paradox: Nature (manipulated) made to look Natural flower arrangement (Ikebana, Kado) Donald Keene on 4 characteristics of Japanese taste: 1) suggestion, 2) irregularity, 3) simplicity, 4) perishability
1443: Florence, Italy: Establishment of the banking house of
Marchionni in Florence. They later invested in the first voyage of
Vasco da Gama.
From J. H. Parry, The European
Reconnaissance:
Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 23.
1443: Portugal: Nuno Tristao discovers Arguim on the West African Coast. Prince Henry in 1448 built a fort there for use by merchants. About 350 miles east is Wadan, an important desert market, and in 1487 as the Portuguese move into the African interior, they hoped to establish at Wadan a trading factory to link Arguim with the north-bound caravan traffic. By now, the Portuguese have begun to incite coastal tribes to rob people from tribes of the interior for the slave trade. There would also be a trade in Barbary horses. By 1448 the Portuguese had carried 927 slaves to Portugal, after which the slave trade grew rapidly; about 1000 slaves were taken annually. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 58-61. In 1443, in Portugal, Henry the Navigator promotes navigation, astronomy and cartography at Cape Sagrew.
Advertisement
1444: Portuguese mariner Lancarote finds the islands of Naar and Tider about West Africa. Tristao gets to Senegal. Later, Denis Dias gets to the Isle of Palms (Goree). From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, pp. 60-63.
1445: Portuguese mariner Alvaro Fernandes gets to the promontory called Cape of Masts/Red Cape. Later came the discoveries of the Casamance River and Bissagos Islands. Then the Cape Verde archipelago from 1457. Expeditions slackened off from 1448. (From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, p. 63.)
1446: Portuguese bring the first Negro slaves to Lisbon following discovery of Senegal.
1447: More to come
1448: More to come
1449: Northern Nomads bring chaos to the Mongol-Persian civilization.
1450: More to come
- Dan Byrnes
(otherwise indicated in these
pages as -Editor)
Note: You will find even greater detail than is
given here, for
specific periods in American - English - Australian history, with
regard to merchants, traders, bankers and financiers, as part of the
website, The Blackheath Connection... 
Stop Press: For late entries
View
these domain stats begun 18 December 2005
|
|
Advertisement
