DP - Infante D. Henrique

DP - Infante D. Henrique" or "Prince Henri, the navigator" is a Silver edition, 2006, Portuguese geocoin whose aim is to discover new places.

Before describing in the course of the discoveries which were soon to render Portugal the foremost colonizing power in Europe it is necessary to indicate the main causes which contributed to that result. As the south-westernmost people of Europe, the Portuguese were the natural leaders of that work of exploration which had been carried on during the middle ages. The long shoreline of their country, with its fine harbors and rivers flowing westward to the ocean, had been the training-ground of a race of adventurous seamen. It was impossible, moreover, to expand or reach new markets except by sea: the interposition of Castile and Aragon, so often hostile, completely prevented direct land routes to other European countries. Consequently the Portuguese merchants sent their goods by sea to England, Flanders, or the Hanse towns. The whole history of the nation had also inspired a desire for fresh conquests among its leaders. Portugal had won and now held its independence by the sword. The long struggle to expel the Moors, with the influence of foreign Crusaders and the military orders, had given a religious sanction to the desire for martial fame. Nowhere was the ancient crusading spirit so active a political force. To make war upon Islam seemed to the Portuguese their natural destiny and their duty as Christians.

The Portuguese economy had benefited from its connections with advanced Muslim states. A money economy was well enough established for 15th-century workers in the countryside as well as in the towns to be paid in coin. The agriculture of the countryside had diversified to the point where grain was imported from Morocco (a symptom of an economy dependent upon Portugal's), while specialised crops occupied former grain-growing areas: vinyards, olives, or the sugar factories of the Algarve, later to be reproduced in Brazil (Braudel 1985). Most of all, the Aviz dynasty that had come to power in 1385 marked the semi-eclipse of the conservative land-oriented aristocracy (See The Consolidation of the Monarchy in Portugal.)

It was the genius of Prince Henry the Navigator that coordinated and utilized all these tendencies towards expansion. Prince Henry placed at the disposal of his captains the vast resources of the Order of Christ, of which he was the head, and the best information and most accurate instruments and maps that could be obtained. He sought to effect a junction with the half-fabulous Christian Empire of "Prester John" by way of the "Western Nile" (the Senegal), and, in alliance with that potentate, to crush the Turks and liberate Palestine. The conception of an ocean route to India appears to have originated after his death. On land he again defeated the Moors, who attempted to re-take Ceuta in 1418; but in an expedition to Tangier, undertaken in 1436 by King Edward (1433-1438), the Portuguese army was defeated, and could only escape destruction by surrendering as a hostage Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest brother. Ferdinand, known as "the Constant", from the fortitude with which he endured captivity, died unransomed in 1443. By sea Prince Henry's captains continued their exploration of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1433 Cape Bojador was doubled; in 1434 the first consignment of slaves was brought to Lisbon; and slave trading soon became one of the most profitable branches of Portuguese commerce. The Senegal was reached in 1445, Cape Verde was passed in the same year, and in 1446 Alvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as Sierra Leone. This was probably the farthest point reached before the Navigator died (1460).