Prince Henry the Navigator

Sir Peter Russell's excellent biography of Prince Henry, the Navigator (1394-1460) provides the reader with multiple insights into a complex historical figure's role in Portuguese maritime exploration. The author draws his information from archival material, contemporary accounts of the Prince's ventures, as well as modern scholarship. A good deal of the text is a thoughtful and critical analysis of contemporary chronicles, as well as a broader perspective on Mediterranean statecraft, knowledge geography of north Africa (both the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts) that served as the Prince's sphere of activity. The reader gains an understanding of relationships between Portugal and other Iberian kingdoms, especially the rivalry with Castile, as well as negotiations with the papacy in the "Conciliar Era," and the years subsequent to the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453. This study places Prince Henry within historical context, and within his family relationships, which are critical to an appraisal of his historical role.Prince Henry is best understood as a medieval knight, infused with Christian chivalric crusading ideal, concepts likely learned from his English mother, Philippa of Lancaster, married to King John I. For most of his adult life he served as administrator of the Order of Christ, a crusading order. It is telling that, at his death, the full regalia as a Knight of the Garter are included in the inventory of his relatively few possessions. As a warrior, he aimed to seize territory from Muslim control in North Africa, such as Ceuta, captured by a Portuguese army under his leadership in 1415. Attempts to conquer Tangier in 1437 met with disaster, and (the ultimately fatal) imprisonment of Henry's brother, Fernando, to guarantee the peace. He also participated in capture of the minor fortress at Alcacer-Ceguer in 1458. In these ventures Prince Henry often emerges as a headstrong warrior, taking rash actions not always in the best interest of the military enterprise. After the fall of Constantinople, Prince Henry was considered as the leader for a crusade sponsored by Pope Callixtus III to retake that city, although this effort did not materialize. The author analyzes the complex diplomatic reasoning to justify expeditions to North African Muslim territory as well as to the Guinea coast, the justification being that these ventures sought to aid the cause Christian conversion while the opportunity to profit from commercial ventures went unmentioned or unreported.It is as a navigator, and therefore, seaborne exploration and commerce, that Prince Henry is often recognized. Understanding the Prince's exact role in the history of navigation is much more complex than the triumphal statute in Lisbon facing the river Tagus or the supposed school of navigation he is said to have assembled at Sagres at the great fortress facing the Atlantic. Russell's biography sheds considerable light on Prince Henry's sponsorship of ventures along the Atlantic coast of Africa, gradually going further and further south of Cape Bojador, previously presumed to be the furthest point south that it is possible to sail without danger (although the Phoenicians penetrated this area, circumnavigating Africa 1,500 years earlier, information subsequently lost to succeeding centuries). Russell documents Portuguese voyages, made possible by the perfection of the caravel, ships able safely to transit the ocean, adapting concepts earlier utilized in the Mediterranean and Red Seas by Phoenician and Arab seamen centuries earlier. The success of one voyage contributed to subsequent ventures as knowledge of ocean currents and prevailing winds could be harnessed by the caravel captains to successfully sail southward and, most important, safely return to the port of Lagos. It is in the caravel that Portuguese mariners sailed to Madeira, the Azores, the Canaries, and Cape Verde islands, as well as sailed up some of the larger African rivers in search of gold, items of commercial value, and slaves. Prince Henry obtained royal warrants for these ventures, obtaining (usually) one-fifth of the value of commerce obtained by each voyage. He also challenged others or went beyond his royal warrant in navigation for Atlantic commerce, exploration, or competition with the Muslim caravan route in the slave trade. Caravels transported horses in exchange for slaves obtained on the Guinea Coast.The Infante Dom Henrique, therefore, financed and authorized many of the Portuguese activities. Ironically (except for military campaigns) he did not sail on the Atlantic voyages. This is likely why the author titles this book, Prince Henry, "the Navigator." It is as a sponsor of exploration, an agent who encouraged commercial ventures and sought to profit from their success, within the broader context of a crusader, and the success of the Order of Christ, that this book reveals Prince Henry's contribution to navigation.Thanks to Peter Russell's research and skilful writing, this is a truly excellent book, essential for an understanding of early modern history and the history of exploration and the foundation of Portuguese expansion overseas. The book contains a series of plates with images of maps and the Prince and a comprehensive bibliography. The only minor disappointment is an absence of more detailed maps concerning the Atlantic and African river ventures of navigators that sailed under the aegis of Prince Henry.

As a boy given a Eurocentric education, I was enamored with the great explorers of the world - Columbus, Cabot, Magellan, Drake, et al. Prince Henry the Navigator was among the "et al", but I don't recall much of what I learned about him as a boy other than that he was a genius of open seas navigation who pushed Portuguese seafarers beyond the bounds of the known pre-Columbian flat earth. Now, a half century later, Sir Peter Russell tells me that that was partly myth.Perhaps the greatest misimpression about Henry (b. 1394, d. 1460) was that he was a skilled seaman. In truth, while he was a sponsor of Portuguese exploration down the western coast of Africa and an avid student of navigational science, he did not personally participate in any voyages of exploration and discovery. Still, he is an historical figure of considerable if not overriding importance and one who merits the sort of knowledgeable and well-written study that Russell has given us.Among other things, Henry was an ardent Crusader against the Muslim infidel (it is primarily due to Henry's zeal along these lines that Portugal ended up with possessions and colonies in Northwest Africa), he was thoroughly imbued with and practiced the ethos of chivalry, he was an early champion of organized and crown-sponsored oceanic discovery, and he was a driving force behind the model of commercial exploitation of discovered/conquered lands that evolved into European colonialism. He also promoted and profited from slave-trading.It is primarily because of his role in the expansion of slave-trading that Henry's current stature in history is as much villain as hero. And the rationale by which he, as a devout Christian, justified slave raiding and trading is scarcely believable at this remove. "The Prince * * * thought of his role in turning Portugal into a major slave-trading country as an evangelizing achievement of which he could be proud, and one which would make a major contribution to his posthumous fame in history as a tireless battler to bring the Christian message to infidels and pagans." For Henry, conversion and enslavement were essentially interchangeable terms. "[A]ny `inconveniences' the converted slave might have to endure in this life being as nothing when compared with the certainty of eternal salvation that conversion brings with it." Russell believes that Henry actually believed this malarkey. But lest we overheap opprobrium on Henry, it should be noted that he and the Portuguese did not initiate the Atlantic slave trade: before the first Portuguese slave-raiding expedition landed with its human cargo in Lagos in 1444, Genoese, Catalan, and Castilian merchants had long been in the habit of buying in the Atlantic ports of Morocco black slaves imported from the Sudan by trans-Saharan caravans.PRINCE HENRY `THE NAVIGATOR' is solid history. It also, in its magisterial way, is very British history. But even for British history, it is very well-written. Here is one example from early in the book: "A more certain contributory cause of the Prince's future relentless pursuit of personal fame was his status as a third son; from an early age he seems to have made it plain to those around him that he was unlikely to turn out to be a man content to settle for the subordinate role that this accident of birth seemed to have assigned to him."At one point, Russell describes Henry as "a thoroughly traditional late-medieval Christian of his time". That sort of person is now quite alien. Much of the value of this book inheres in its explication of just what is entailed by "a thoroughly traditional late-medieval Christian" of the early 15th Century. PRINCE HENRY `THE NAVIGATOR' is not only a biography of a notable figure from history, it also is a profile of an age. I cannot pretend that it in any way is "essential reading", but no reader would be poorer for the experience.P.S.: Javier Marías dedicated his magnum opus, the three-volume novel "Your Face Tomorrow", to Sir Peter Russell. Russell, who when he wrote PRINCE HENRY (in his 80s) was the most distinguished scholar in the English-speaking world on matters of Iberian history, had been a mentor of sorts to Marías. Russell also was the thinly disguised model for Sir Peter Wheeler, who is the wise elderly mentor to the protagonist Jaime Deza in "Your Face Tomorrow".P.S.S.: The quote used as the title for this review is from Shakespeare's "King Henry the Fourth, Part I". Russell used it as an epigraph to the book and it does encapsulate the complexity of Prince Henry, something this review cannot begin to approximate.

supposedly a book about a pioneer of navigation. no entries in the index for Latitude, Longitude, Quadrant, Astrolabe, Compass and nothing about the Mallorcan map-makers. the bits on Navigation refer only to river navigation! very perplexing.

This is a very well-balanced book on a person whose life has become bigger than perhaps it warranted. Because many of his siblings died in disgrace or young, Henry had the opportunity to become the epitome of the chivalric Portuguese Dom, looking after his men, exploring the Atlantic world, encouraging science, chivalristic expeditions into Morocco. And he made sure he benefited from his doings, and made sure he got the kudos from the Pope for doing it.That said, that doesn't mean he was a bad person. He was most definitely a man of his times - his father had become the King after civil war in Portugal and their dynasty was new and still finding its feet - there were nobles to be placated, fortunes to be made, and it was the Age of Expansion - all while keeping Castile out of the Portuguese territories and maintaining the medieval values in a changing world.It seems a shame that we don't really even know what Dom Henrique looked like - it would be good to put a face to the name of someone who has left such a legacy.Very well worth reading.

The most detailed and informative account of the real life of Prince Henry the Navigator in English language. The book delves through the mythical persona of Henry the Navigator to the real Infante Henrique, with all his achievements and successes and his obsessions and failures.It really captures the complexity of the person of Henry, who much like his time and his country, was a very hard to define mixture of medieval chivalry and trade entrepreneurship, crusading zeal and scientific approach, accented religious morality and unapologetic profiteer of slavery.The author draws on numerous comprehensive primary sources like chronicles and royal documents and letters, as well as numerous academic works both in english and in portuguese to provide a readable overview of Henry.The book itself, as author himself states, is probably not the best to read about the Henrican voyages themselves as it is not the goal. I would recommend it to a more advanced reader, preferably one already familiar with prince Henry (and his family) beyond the stereotypical image of him as a hero who started up Age of Exploration, and one who wants to find the truth, or as close as we can get for now, about Henry's personality.

The best biography of Henry the Navigator

Interesting book about one of the most influential characters of the European History. It is easy to read and provides a lot of valuable information.