ABSTRACT
The first voyage around the globe was undertaken by a Portuguese sailor, Ferdinand Magellan. Magellan, though, sailed under the Spanish flag and his voyage was intended to further Spanish claims in the Far East. The Portuguese, with an established record of maritime travel along the African coast during the fifteenth century, would be the first European power to arrive at India, land at Brazil, and circumnavigate the world. The Portuguese overseas empire, by the earliest days of the sixteenth century, extended from Africa to India, through Java, and onward to China and Japan. The world, dominated by Portuguese and Spanish ships, grew much larger—at least in the imaginations of Europeans—when in 1513 Vasco Nunez de Balboa saw the Pacific Ocean at Panama. Technological innovation, careful planning, outright exploitation, and the perfection of overseas transportation were keys to Portuguese success.
