ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the correspondences of Michel de Seure and Jean Nicot, the French ambassadors to Portugal during the 1550s and 1560s, to study the French-Portuguese interchange of maritime knowledge during a pivotal period marked by official and unofficial confrontations in Brazil and West Africa. The study demonstrates how French overseas imperial ambitions were closely linked to French espionage and the acquisition of Portuguese maritime knowledge in Portugal, and how this connects to earlier French-Portuguese maritime rivalry.
