page_title: History of Lisbon
section_title: Lisbon, mistress of the seas
hierarchical_section_title: History of Lisbon / Lisbon, mistress of the seas
caption_attribution_description: English: Belém Tower, Lisbon Português: Torre de Belém, Lisboa Français&#160;: Tour de Belém, Lisbonne
context_page_description: The history of Lisbon, the capital city of Portugal, revolves around its strategic geographical position at the mouth of the Tagus, the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula. Its spacious and sheltered natural harbour made the city historically an important seaport for trade between the Mediterranean Sea and northern Europe. Lisbon has long enjoyed the commercial advantages of its proximity to southern and extreme western Europe, as well as to sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas, and today its waterfront is lined with miles of docks, wharfs, and drydock facilities that accommodate the largest oil tankers.
  During the Neolithic period, pre-Celtic peoples inhabited the region; remains of their stone monuments still exist today in the periphery of the city. Lisbon is one of the oldest cities in western Europe, with a history that stretches back to its original settlement by the indigenous Iberians, the Celts, and the eventual establishment of Phoenician and Greek trading posts, followed by successive occupations in the city of various peoples including the Carthaginians, Romans, Suebi, Visigoths, and Moors.
context_section_description: The prosperity of Lisbon was threatened when the Ottoman Empire invaded and conquered the Arab territories of North Africa, Egypt and the Middle East in the 15th century. The Turks were initially hostile to the interests of Lisbon and its allies in Venice and Genoa; consequently the trade in spices, gold, ivory and other goods suffered heavily. The merchants of Lisbon, many of them descendants of Jews or Muslims with links to North Africa, reacted by seeking to negotiate directly with the sources of these goods, without using Muslim mediators. The Portuguese Jews' connections with the Jews of the Maghreb, and the conquest of Ceuta, allowed the Lisbon merchants to spy on the Arab merchants. They learned that the gold, slaves and ivory brought to Morocco in the great caravans travelled through the Sahara desert  from the Sudan (which at that time included all the savannas south of the desert, the current Sahel). and that spices like black pepper were transported to Egyptian ports on the Red Sea from India. The new strategy of the merchants of Lisbon – Christian and Jewish Portuguese, Italian and Portuguese-Italian –  was to send ships to the sources of these valuable products.
  Prince Henry,  based in the city of Tomar, was the major proponent of this initiative,. As headquarters of the Order of Christ (formerly the Knights Templar), and with a large community of Jewish merchants, the city was also very connected to Lisbon by its trade in grains and nuts (one of Lisbon's main exports). The ready access to large amounts of capital and knowledge of the Orient that the Templars and the Jews had were key to achieving the objectives of the Lisbon merchants. Although Prince Henry was the driving force of this project, it was not actually of his own design, but rather had been conceived by the merchants of Lisbon. Those who supported the monarchy financially by the payment of taxes and customs tariffs, making it virtually independent of the resources of the territorial nobles, bent it to their own mercantilist purposes. Prince Henry was, however, the organiser of the state's policy of dirigisme (state-directed investment): the substantial risk involved and the capital needed to finance the opening of new trade routes required the cooperation of all merchants throughout the realm (just as today many large capital projects are undertaken with international cooperation). Henry organised and supervised preparations by the Portuguese merchant fleet to reach the sources of gold, ivory and slaves, efforts that the merchants themselves had managed inefficiently. Using funds made available by the Order of Christ, mariners' schools were founded to centralise the resources and practical knowledge of the merchants of Lisbon. Several expeditions were launched under contract to some of the most influential of the bourgeoisie in Lisbon, and the Gulf of Guinea was finally reached around 1460, the year Prince Henry died.
  After Henry's death, by which time the sea route was already open, the expansion of the African trade led to the rise of a private sector in the Portuguese economy. In 1469, Afonso V granted the Lisbon merchant Fernão Gomes the monopoly of this trade, in exchange for exploring 100 leagues southward on the West African coastline each year for five years, and payment of an annual rent of 200,000 reais. With his profits from the African trade, Gomes assisted Afonso in the conquests of Asilah, Alcácer Ceguer, and Tangier in Morocco, where he was knighted
  Meanwhile, there were new attempts by the remaining feudal nobles of northern Portugal to retake control of the kingdom, frustrated as they were by the growing prosperity of Lisbon's merchants in contrast to their own loss of income. Their purpose was to seek further conquest in North Africa, which offered the prospect of more and relatively easy victories. Such a campaign would be favorable to the interests of the feudal nobles, who stood to gain lands and tenants in Morocco by waging war, but was anathema to the merchant nobles and Jews in Lisbon who would be paying the extra taxes 
caption: Belém Tower
exif: {"Image Model": "Canon EOS 400D DIGITAL", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "300", "Image YResolution": "300", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 8.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2010:02:09 22:27:42", "Image Artist": "elek", "Image ExifOffset": "2310", "Image XPAuthor": "elek", "Image Padding": "[]", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "4690", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "6023", "EXIF ExposureTime": "199/100000", "EXIF FNumber": "1000001/100000", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "100", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2010:02:18 07:20:33", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2010:02:18 07:20:33", "EXIF FocalLength": "17", "EXIF SubSecTimeOriginal": "25", "EXIF SubSecTimeDigitized": "25", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3584", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2491", "EXIF Padding": "[]"}