The rivalry between Spain and Portugal in the "Age of Discovery"

(CASTIGADOR)

1. Spanish–Portuguese War (1762–63), known as the Fantastic War. Spanish–Portuguese

War (1776–77), fought over the border between Spanish and Portuguese South America. War of
the Oranges in 1801, when Spain and France defeated Portugal in the Iberian Peninsula,
while Portugal defeated Spain in South America.

2. The rivalry between Spain and Portugal in the "Age of Discovery" caused Spain, a rising power,
to seek a new route to Asia like the one Portugal had found around the southern tip of Africa.
This led Spain to be receptive to the claims of Christoper Columbus that he could get to India by
sailing west. The rivalry between Spain and Portugal, therefore, led to Columbus's arrival in
America.
The defeat of the Byzantine Empire by the Muslim Ottoman Empire was a great blow to
European trade with Asia. The Byzantines, who had been friendly towards European traders and
charged reasonable tolls for overland travel through their territories, were replaced with a more
hostile group. The Ottoman Empire demanded tolls for passage so high that they were taking
the profit out of trade with India and China. Further, Barbary pirates now roamed the
Mediterranean Sea, greatly adding to the risk to Europeans of sea passage to Asia.

The European nations were desperate for goods from the "Orient," such as spices and textiles
which they could not produce at home. Portugal, which had been improving its navigation
technologies, decided to find an alternate route to Asia that would avoid the Ottomans entirely.
They managed to discover a route around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean
to India. This made them a very wealthy and powerful nation.

3. Conquered defines as having been overcome or taken control of by military, while colonized is
defines as a group of settlers to a place and establish political control over it.
4. Under the leadership of Prince Henry the Navigator, Portugal took the principal role during most
of the fifteenth century in searching for a route to Asia by sailing south around Africa. In the
process, the Portuguese accumulated a wealth of knowledge about navigation and the
geography of the Atlantic Ocean.