I. The Opening Move
In July 1415, King João I of Portugal led over 240 ships to capture the North African port of Ceuta from the Marinid Sultanate. Historians mark Ceuta as the beginning of the Portuguese overseas empire — and by extension, the beginning of the European maritime expansion that would eventually reach West Africa, the Americas, and beyond.
II. The First Twelve
In 1441, a young captain named Antão Gonçalves, sailing under Prince Henry’s sponsorship, decided on his own initiative to capture Africans to bring home. He and a second captain, Nuno Tristão, took roughly twelve people. The captives were presented to Prince Henry as a curiosity. This is one of the earliest documented instances of Portuguese captains transporting captive Africans directly to Portugal.
III. Three Years From Curiosity to Commerce
In August 1444, a Lagos tax collector named Lançarote de Freitas landed 235 kidnapped Africans in a single shipment — the first large-scale importation of enslaved Africans into Europe. Eight years after that, Pope Nicholas V issued Dum Diversas. The Church did not invent the demand. It sanctioned a trade Portuguese merchants had already been actively scaling for over a decade.