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2009
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Situated on the West Coast of Africa in the Western Sahara, Cape Bojador (26° 07' 37"N; ° 29' 57"W) constituted for many years a physical and conceptual obstacle to the progress of Portuguese navigation of the Atlantic. Gil Eanes` achievement, the discovery of a passable route around it, was a decisive step in overcoming the mental barriers inherited from antiquity and a landmark in the overseas expansion movement. From geographers of antiquity, such as Ptolemy in the 2nd Century A.D., to medieval authors, such as Sacrobosco in the 12th Century A.D., geographical and cosmographical thinking was limited by spacial interdictions that were both physical - the geography - and mental - the prevailing beliefs. The habitable world was understood to be simply a small portion of a greater reality, defined by impassable oceans and uninhabitable lands, which could not possibly be explored and known. The boundaries of the inhabited world constituted real psychological barriers, being closely linked to the view of the sacred that haunted the European imagination. Thus, the geographical imagination had indelibly shaped and influenced the construction of a worldview that, in turn, was characterized by a compartmentalized, hierarchical vision, contrasting a known, ordered world with the chaos of the unknown, where the natural elements were radicalized. In light of this dichotomy, the ocean emerged as a fronteer.
Due to its coastal location at the passage to the unknown world of sub-Saharan Africa, which was described as a torrid, uninhabitable region, Cape Bojador traditionally represented one of the sacred barriers that occupied the geographical imagination of the Late Middle Ages. Navigation beyond this latitude was deemed dangerous, even impossible. Such a situation was due in great measure to the winds, and strong currents as well as the sandbars and cliffs, which rendered traditional coastal navigation risky.
In face of these difficulties, navigating beyond Cape Bojador in 1434 represented the corollary to a slow process, which was promoted by Prince Henry the Navigator´s patronage. In fact, for more than a decade before Gil Eanes´ successful expedition, several failed attempts at surpassing this obstacle, at finding a secure passage through the forbidden region are mentioned. The feat, achieved via navigation away from the coast, which averted the greatest dangers, represented a conceptual leap: not only did it lift the mental interdictions associated with Cape Bojador, but it also proved that the ocean south of this region could be navigated and was not a boiling world of chaos that was populated by monsters.
Navigation beyond Cape Bojador was a fundamental step in the lengthy process of progressively overcoming the traditional fears that were a legacy of the imagination of antiquity, due to the acquisition of knowledge that resulted from the voyages of overseas exploration. Thus it became a landmark in the long-term process of evolution undergone by the perceptions of the unknown and of the earth´s geography. The passing beyond the Cape also allowed for ongoing Portuguese voyages along the West African Coast, which would gain ever greater significance throughout the following decades.
Bibliography:
COSTA, João Paulo, Henrique, o Infante, Lisboa, Esfera dos Livros, 2009. RANDLES, W. G. L., "La signification cosmographique du passage du cap Bojador" in Studia, nº 8, 1961, pp. 221-256.
Author: José Ferreira Translated by: Maria João Pimentel
Due to its coastal location at the passage to the unknown world of sub-Saharan Africa, which was described as a torrid, uninhabitable region, Cape Bojador traditionally represented one of the sacred barriers that occupied the geographical imagination of the Late Middle Ages. Navigation beyond this latitude was deemed dangerous, even impossible. Such a situation was due in great measure to the winds, and strong currents as well as the sandbars and cliffs, which rendered traditional coastal navigation risky.
In face of these difficulties, navigating beyond Cape Bojador in 1434 represented the corollary to a slow process, which was promoted by Prince Henry the Navigator´s patronage. In fact, for more than a decade before Gil Eanes´ successful expedition, several failed attempts at surpassing this obstacle, at finding a secure passage through the forbidden region are mentioned. The feat, achieved via navigation away from the coast, which averted the greatest dangers, represented a conceptual leap: not only did it lift the mental interdictions associated with Cape Bojador, but it also proved that the ocean south of this region could be navigated and was not a boiling world of chaos that was populated by monsters.
Navigation beyond Cape Bojador was a fundamental step in the lengthy process of progressively overcoming the traditional fears that were a legacy of the imagination of antiquity, due to the acquisition of knowledge that resulted from the voyages of overseas exploration. Thus it became a landmark in the long-term process of evolution undergone by the perceptions of the unknown and of the earth´s geography. The passing beyond the Cape also allowed for ongoing Portuguese voyages along the West African Coast, which would gain ever greater significance throughout the following decades.
Bibliography:
COSTA, João Paulo, Henrique, o Infante, Lisboa, Esfera dos Livros, 2009. RANDLES, W. G. L., "La signification cosmographique du passage du cap Bojador" in Studia, nº 8, 1961, pp. 221-256.
Author: José Ferreira Translated by: Maria João Pimentel