Duarte Pacheco Pereira
Encyclopedia
Duarte Pacheco Pereira, called the Great, was a 15th century Portuguese
sea captain, soldier, explorer and cartographer
. He travelled particularly in the central Atlantic Ocean
west of the Cape Verde
islands, along the coast of West Africa
and to India
. His accomplishments in strategic warfare, exploration, mathematics and astronomy were of an exceptional level.
in the Gulf of Guinea
by Bartolomeu Dias
when Dias was returning from rounding the Cape of Good Hope
for the first time.
The knowledge he collected from Dias expedition as well as his own explorations granted him the post of official geographer of the Portuguese monarch. In 1494 he signed the Pope-sanctioned Treaty of Tordesillas
, which shared the non-Christian world between Portugal and Spain.
by Afonso de Albuquerque
. In 1504, he was placed in charge of the defence of Cochin, a Portuguese protectorate in India, from a series of attacks between March and July 1504 by the ruling Zamorin of Calicut. (see Battle of Cochin (1504)
). Having only 150 Portuguese and a small number of Malabarese auxiliaries at his disposal, Cochin was vastly outnumbered by the Zamorin's army of 60,000. Nonetheless, by clever positioning, individual heroics and a lot of luck, Duarte Pacheco successfully resisted attacks for five months, until the humiliated Zamorin finally called off his forces. His son Lisuarte (or Jusarte) took a leading part in the fight.
For his exploits in the defense of Cochin, Duarte Pacheco was given a grant of arms by the Trimumpara Raja of Cochin, and greeted with honors the King Manuel I of Portugal
and public festivities upon his return to Lisbon in 1505.
s built their own rudimentary tools.
Between 1505 and 1508 Duarte Pacheco Pereira composed a book, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, inspired on Pomponius Mela
's De situ Orbis, which has been described as one of the first major scientific works "reporting on what was observed and experimented in the newly 'discovered' environment." Never completed, it was not published until 1892, possibly to avoid giving others information about Portugal's valuable Guinea trade.
(The meaning of the 'esmeraldo' in the title has been much speculated. Among the proposals, it is a reference to the emerald green of the sea; that it is an anagram combining the names 'Emmanuel' (for King Manuel I of Portugal
) and 'Eduardus' (of Duarte Pacheco), that Esmeralda might have been the name (or nickname) of the ship Duarte Pacheco sailed to India, that it is a corruption of the Spanish word esmerado (meaning "guide"), that in Malayalam, an emerald
gemstone is known as pache or pachec, and thus Esmeraldo is a pun on his own name (thus, "Pacheco's De Situ Orbis").
In 1508, Duarte Pacheco was commissioned by the Portuguese king to give chase to Mondragon
French privateer
which operated between the Azores
and the Portuguese coast, where they attacked the ships coming from Portuguese India
. Duarte Pacheco located and cornered Mondragon off Cape Finisterre
in 1509, and defeated and captured him.
Later in life, while away governing São Jorge da Mina, he was slandered by his enemies at court with accusations of theft and corruption. He was recalled to the capital and briefly imprisoned until he was exonerated by the Crown being proved innocent. But the damage was done as he had lost his governorship, his wealth, and influence. Although he was acquitted his protector, King João II of Portugal had died and been replaced by a king who didn't acknowledge the value of Duarte Pacheco. Duarte Pacheco had served the previous king as a squire, and had served King Manuel merely as a high ranking servant. His distance from Lisbon
and his success meant he had many enemies abroad, and few friends in the capital to defend him. He died alone and penniless.
According to one of its most important biographers, the Portuguese historian Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho, who lived in exile in Brazil
in the 1960s, Duarte Pacheco was a genius comparable to Leonardo da Vinci
. With the anticipation of more than two centuries, the cosmographer was responsible for calculating the value of the degree of the meridian arc
with a margin of error of only 4%.
Portugal
Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...
sea captain, soldier, explorer and cartographer
Cartography
Cartography is the study and practice of making maps. Combining science, aesthetics, and technique, cartography builds on the premise that reality can be modeled in ways that communicate spatial information effectively.The fundamental problems of traditional cartography are to:*Set the map's...
. He travelled particularly in the central Atlantic Ocean
Atlantic Ocean
The Atlantic Ocean is the second-largest of the world's oceanic divisions. With a total area of about , it covers approximately 20% of the Earth's surface and about 26% of its water surface area...
west of the Cape Verde
Cape Verde
The Republic of Cape Verde is an island country, spanning an archipelago of 10 islands located in the central Atlantic Ocean, 570 kilometres off the coast of Western Africa...
islands, along the coast of West Africa
Africa
Africa is the world's second largest and second most populous continent, after Asia. At about 30.2 million km² including adjacent islands, it covers 6% of the Earth's total surface area and 20.4% of the total land area...
and to India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...
. His accomplishments in strategic warfare, exploration, mathematics and astronomy were of an exceptional level.
Background
Pacheco Pereira was the son of João Pacheco and Isabel Pereira. In his youth he served as the King of Portugal's personal squire. In the year of 1455, having graduated with honors, he was awarded a study fellowship from the monarch himself. Later on, in 1488 he explored the west coast of Africa. His expedition fell ill with fever and lost their ship. Pacheco Pereira was rescued from the island of PríncipePríncipe
Príncipe is the northern and smaller of the two major islands of the country of São Tomé and Príncipe lying off the west coast of Africa. It has an area of 136 km² and a population of approximately 5,000. The island is a heavily eroded volcano over three million years old, surrounded by other...
in the Gulf of Guinea
Gulf of Guinea
The Gulf of Guinea is the northeasternmost part of the tropical Atlantic Ocean between Cape Lopez in Gabon, north and west to Cape Palmas in Liberia. The intersection of the Equator and Prime Meridian is in the gulf....
by Bartolomeu Dias
Bartolomeu Dias
Bartolomeu Dias , a nobleman of the Portuguese royal household, was a Portuguese explorer who sailed around the southernmost tip of Africa in 1488, the first European known to have done so.-Purposes of the Dias expedition:...
when Dias was returning from rounding the Cape of Good Hope
Cape of Good Hope
The Cape of Good Hope is a rocky headland on the Atlantic coast of the Cape Peninsula, South Africa.There is a misconception that the Cape of Good Hope is the southern tip of Africa, because it was once believed to be the dividing point between the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In fact, the...
for the first time.
The knowledge he collected from Dias expedition as well as his own explorations granted him the post of official geographer of the Portuguese monarch. In 1494 he signed the Pope-sanctioned Treaty of Tordesillas
Treaty of Tordesillas
The Treaty of Tordesillas , signed at Tordesillas , , divided the newly discovered lands outside Europe between Spain and Portugal along a meridian 370 leagueswest of the Cape Verde islands...
, which shared the non-Christian world between Portugal and Spain.
Pacheco in India
In 1503 Duarte Pacheco Pereira departed for India as captain of Espírito Santo, one of the three ships in the fleet headed5th Portuguese India Armada (Albuquerque, 1503)
The Fifth India Armada was assembled in 1503 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque. It was Albuquerque's first trip to India. It was not a particularly successful armada - navigational mistakes scattered the fleet on the outward journey...
by Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque
Afonso de Albuquerque[p][n] was a Portuguese fidalgo, or nobleman, an admiral whose military and administrative activities as second governor of Portuguese India conquered and established the Portuguese colonial empire in the Indian Ocean...
. In 1504, he was placed in charge of the defence of Cochin, a Portuguese protectorate in India, from a series of attacks between March and July 1504 by the ruling Zamorin of Calicut. (see Battle of Cochin (1504)
Battle of Cochin (1504)
The Battle of Cochin sometimes referred as the Second Siege of Cochin was a series of confrontations, between March and July 1504, fought on land and sea, principally between the Portuguese garrison at Cochin, allied to the Trimumpara Raja, and the armies of the Zamorin of Calicut and vassal...
). Having only 150 Portuguese and a small number of Malabarese auxiliaries at his disposal, Cochin was vastly outnumbered by the Zamorin's army of 60,000. Nonetheless, by clever positioning, individual heroics and a lot of luck, Duarte Pacheco successfully resisted attacks for five months, until the humiliated Zamorin finally called off his forces. His son Lisuarte (or Jusarte) took a leading part in the fight.
For his exploits in the defense of Cochin, Duarte Pacheco was given a grant of arms by the Trimumpara Raja of Cochin, and greeted with honors the King Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
and public festivities upon his return to Lisbon in 1505.
After India
His diary (1506), preserved in the Portuguese National Archive (Torre do Tombo), is probably the first European document to acknowledge that chimpanzeeChimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s built their own rudimentary tools.
Between 1505 and 1508 Duarte Pacheco Pereira composed a book, Esmeraldo de situ orbis, inspired on Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela
Pomponius Mela, who wrote around AD 43, was the earliest Roman geographer. He was born in Tingentera and died c. AD 45.His short work occupies less than one hundred pages of ordinary print. It is laconic in style and deficient in method, but of pure Latinity, and occasionally relieved by pleasing...
's De situ Orbis, which has been described as one of the first major scientific works "reporting on what was observed and experimented in the newly 'discovered' environment." Never completed, it was not published until 1892, possibly to avoid giving others information about Portugal's valuable Guinea trade.
(The meaning of the 'esmeraldo' in the title has been much speculated. Among the proposals, it is a reference to the emerald green of the sea; that it is an anagram combining the names 'Emmanuel' (for King Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I , the Fortunate , 14th king of Portugal and the Algarves was the son of Infante Ferdinand, Duke of Viseu, , by his wife, Infanta Beatrice of Portugal...
) and 'Eduardus' (of Duarte Pacheco), that Esmeralda might have been the name (or nickname) of the ship Duarte Pacheco sailed to India, that it is a corruption of the Spanish word esmerado (meaning "guide"), that in Malayalam, an emerald
Emerald
Emerald is a variety of the mineral beryl colored green by trace amounts of chromium and sometimes vanadium. Beryl has a hardness of 7.5–8 on the 10 point Mohs scale of mineral hardness...
gemstone is known as pache or pachec, and thus Esmeraldo is a pun on his own name (thus, "Pacheco's De Situ Orbis").
In 1508, Duarte Pacheco was commissioned by the Portuguese king to give chase to Mondragon
Mondragon
-Places:* Mondragon, Vaucluse, a town and commune in France.* Mondragon, Northern Samar, a municipality in the Philippines.* Mondragón/Arrasate, a town and municipality in the Basque region of Spain, famous for its cooperative movement....
French privateer
Privateer
A privateer is a private person or ship authorized by a government by letters of marque to attack foreign shipping during wartime. Privateering was a way of mobilizing armed ships and sailors without having to spend public money or commit naval officers...
which operated between the Azores
Azores
The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...
and the Portuguese coast, where they attacked the ships coming from Portuguese India
Portuguese India
The Portuguese Viceroyalty of India , later the Portuguese State of India , was the aggregate of Portugal's colonial holdings in India.The government started in 1505, six years after the discovery of a sea route to India by Vasco da Gama, with the nomination of the first Viceroy Francisco de...
. Duarte Pacheco located and cornered Mondragon off Cape Finisterre
Cape Finisterre
right|thumb|300px|Position of Cape Finisterre on the [[Iberian Peninsula]]Cape Finisterre is a rock-bound peninsula on the west coast of Galicia, Spain....
in 1509, and defeated and captured him.
Later in life, while away governing São Jorge da Mina, he was slandered by his enemies at court with accusations of theft and corruption. He was recalled to the capital and briefly imprisoned until he was exonerated by the Crown being proved innocent. But the damage was done as he had lost his governorship, his wealth, and influence. Although he was acquitted his protector, King João II of Portugal had died and been replaced by a king who didn't acknowledge the value of Duarte Pacheco. Duarte Pacheco had served the previous king as a squire, and had served King Manuel merely as a high ranking servant. His distance from Lisbon
Lisbon
Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...
and his success meant he had many enemies abroad, and few friends in the capital to defend him. He died alone and penniless.
According to one of its most important biographers, the Portuguese historian Joaquim Barradas de Carvalho, who lived in exile in Brazil
Brazil
Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...
in the 1960s, Duarte Pacheco was a genius comparable to Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, scientist, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance...
. With the anticipation of more than two centuries, the cosmographer was responsible for calculating the value of the degree of the meridian arc
Meridian arc
In geodesy, a meridian arc measurement is a highly accurate determination of the distance between two points with the same longitude. Two or more such determinations at different locations then specify the shape of the reference ellipsoid which best approximates the shape of the geoid. This...
with a margin of error of only 4%.
Possible discovery of Brazil
It has also been suggested that Pereira discovered Brazil in 1498. In the book Foundations of the Portuguese empire, 1415-1580 the authors make the following comment:"What really is important," Duarte Leite says, is "to know whether Pacheco arrived in Brazil before Alvares Cabral" (April 22, 1500). In agreement with Luciano Pereira, such modern Portuguese historians as "Faustino da Fonseca, Brito Rebelo, Lopes de Mendonça, and Jaime Cortesão say he did. as does . . . Vignaud; and I believe he does not lack supporters in Brazil." However, says Leite, if Pacheco did discover areas east of the Line of Demarcation and did bring back news of this to Manuel, "the reason which induced Don Manuel to keep secret. . . such an important discovery escapes me."' As soon as Cabral returned in 1501, Manuel announced the discovery of Brazil to Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain. Why would he not in 1499, after the return of Vasco da Gama, make a similar announcement if Pacheco had already discovered Brazil? "No objection could come on the part of Spain," given the division made by the Treaty of Tordesillas, as "indeed none came in 1501" when Cabral's discovery was announced. "I am persuaded that Pacheco neither discovered Brazil in 1498 nor was present two years later at its discovery by Cabral.""
Marriage and descendants
He married Antónia de Albuquerque, daughter of Jorge Garcês and wife Isabel de Albuquerque Galvão, only daughter of Duarte Galvão by first wife Catarina de Sousa e Albuquerque, and had eight children:- João Fernandes Pacheco, who married Dona Maria da Silva, without issue and had a bastard daughter married with issue
- Jerónimo Pacheco, who died unmarried and without issue in TangierTangierTangier, also Tangiers is a city in northern Morocco with a population of about 700,000 . It lies on the North African coast at the western entrance to the Strait of Gibraltar where the Mediterranean meets the Atlantic Ocean off Cape Spartel...
- Maria de Albuquerque, married to João da Silva, AlcaideAlcaldeAlcalde , or Alcalde ordinario, is the traditional Spanish municipal magistrate, who had both judicial and administrative functions. An alcalde was, in the absence of a corregidor, the presiding officer of the Castilian cabildo and judge of first instance of a town...
-Mór of Soure, and had a daughter married and with issue - Isabel de Albuquerque
- Garcia Pacheco
- Gaspar Pacheco
- Duarte Pacheco
- Lisuarte Pacheco, a bastard son according to records. He fought and died at the age of thirty after being shot with an arrow between his temple and neck during a hopeless battle. He was raised and trained by his father as a squire, and mastered various weapons. He was a strong man with a husky build. He was famous for his feats in India while under his father's command, and was knighted at the age of 20. He later commanded a ship against the Egyptian fleet and was gravely wounded, but continued to fight more years in various continents and countries until his death. Information about any possible marriage or children is unknown. His father named him after the character King Lisuarte of the Amadis de GaulaAmadis de GaulaAmadis de Gaula is a landmark work among the knight-errantry tales which were in vogue in 16th century Iberian Peninsula, and formed the earliest reading of many Renaissance and Baroque writers, although it was written at the onset of the 14th century.The first known printed edition was published...
stories.
See also
- Battle of Cochin (1504)Battle of Cochin (1504)The Battle of Cochin sometimes referred as the Second Siege of Cochin was a series of confrontations, between March and July 1504, fought on land and sea, principally between the Portuguese garrison at Cochin, allied to the Trimumpara Raja, and the armies of the Zamorin of Calicut and vassal...
- 5th Portuguese India Armada (Albuquerque, 1503)5th Portuguese India Armada (Albuquerque, 1503)The Fifth India Armada was assembled in 1503 on the order of King Manuel I of Portugal and placed under the command of Afonso de Albuquerque. It was Albuquerque's first trip to India. It was not a particularly successful armada - navigational mistakes scattered the fleet on the outward journey...
- Controversies about the discovery of Brazil