HENRY THE FIRST WHITE VISIT AFRICA (Prince Henry, known as the Navigator)

 The Phoenicians explored North Africa, establishing a number of colonies, the most prominent of which was Carthage. Carthage itself conducted exploration of West Africa. The first circumnavigation of the African continent was probably made by Phoenician sailors, in an expedition commissioned by Egyptian pharaoh Necho II, circa 600 BC which took three years. A report of this expedition is provided by Herodotus (4.37). They sailed south, rounded the Cape heading west, made their way north to the Mediterranean, and then returned home. He states that they paused each year to sow and harvest grain. Herodotus himself is sceptical of the historicity of this feat, which would have taken place about 120 years before his birth; however, the reason he gives for disbelieving the story is the sailors' reported claim that when they sailed along the southern coast of Africa, they found the Sun stood to their right, in the north; Herodotus, who was unaware of the spherical shape of the Earth found this impossible to believe. Some commentators took this circumstance as proof that the voyage is historical, but other scholars still dismiss the report as unlikely.

The West African coast may have been explored by Hanno the Navigator in an expedition c.500 BC. The report of this voyage survives in a short Periplus in Greek, which was first cited by Greek authors in the 3rd century BC.^162–3 There is some uncertainty as to how far precisely Hanno reached; he clearly sailed as far as Sierra Leone, and may have continued as far as Guinea or even Gabon. However, Robin Law notes that some commentators have argued that Hanno's exploration may have taken him no farther than southern Morocco.

Africa is named for the Afri people who settled in the area of current-day Tunisia. The Roman province of Africa spanned the Mediterranean coast of what is now Libya, Tunisia, and Algeria. The parts of North Africa north of the Sahara were well known in antiquity. Prior to the 2nd century BC, however, Greek geographers were unaware that the landmass then known as Libya expanded south of the Sahara, assuming that the desert bounded on the outer Ocean. Indeed, Alexander the Great, according to Plutarchus' Lives, considered sailing from the mouths of the Indus back to Macedonia passing south of Africa as a shortcut compared to the land route. Even Eratosthenes around 200 BC still assumed an extent of the landmass no further south than the Horn of Africa.

By the Roman imperial period, the Horn of Africa was well-known to Mediterranean geographers. The trading post of Rhapta, described as "the last marketplace of Azania," may correspond to the coast of Tanzania. The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, dated to the 1st century AD, appears to extend geographical knowledge further south, to Southeast Africa. Ptolemy's world map of the 2nd century is well aware that the African continent extends significantly further south than the Horn of Africa, but has no geographic detail south of the equator (it is unclear whether it is aware of the Gulf of Guinea)


VISITING AFRICA

Portuguese explorer Prince Henry, known as the Navigator, was the first European to methodically explore Africa and the oceanic route to the Indies. From his residence in the Algarve region of southern Portugal, he directed successive expeditions to circumnavigate Africa and reach India. In 1420, Henry sent an expedition to secure the uninhabited but strategic island of Madeira. In 1425, he tried to secure the Canary Islands as well, but these were already under firm Castilian control. In 1431, another Portuguese expedition reached and annexed the Azores.

Naval charts of 1339 show that the Canary Islands were already known to Europeans. In 1341, Portuguese and Italian explorers prepared a joint expedition. In 1342 the Catalans organized an expedition captained by Francesc Desvalers to the Canary Islands that set sail from Majorca. In 1344, Pope Clement VI named French admiral Luis de la Cerda Prince of Fortune, and sent him to conquer the Canaries. In 1402, Jean de Bethencourt and Gadifer de la Salle sailed to conquer the Canary Islands but found them already plundered by the Castilians. Although they did conquer the isles, Bethencourt's nephew was forced to cede them to Castile in 1418.

In 1455 and 1456 two Italian explorers, Alvise Cadamosto from Venice and Antoniotto Usodimare from Genoa, together with an unnamed Portuguese captain and working for Prince Henry of Portugal, followed the Gambia river, visiting the land of Senegal, while another Italian sailor from Genoa, Antonio de Noli, also on behalf of Prince Henry, explored the Bijagós islands, and, together with the Portuguese Diogo Gomes, the Cape Verde archipelago. Antonio de Noli, who became the first governor of Cape Verde (and the first European colonial governor in Sub-Saharan Africa), is also considered the discoverer of the First Islands of Cape Verde.

Along the western and eastern coasts of Africa, progress was also steady; Portuguese sailors reached Cape Bojador in 1434 and Cape Blanco in 1441. In 1443, they built a fortress on the island of Arguin, in modern-day Mauritania, trading European wheat and cloth for African gold and slaves. It was the first time that the semi-mythic gold of the Sudan reached Europe without Muslim mediation. Most of the slaves were sent to Madeira, which became, after thorough deforestation, the first European plantation colony. Between 1444 and 1447, the Portuguese explored the coasts of Senegal, Gambia, and Guinea. In 1456, the Venetian captain Alvise Cadamosto, under Portuguese command, explored the islands of Cape Verde. In 1462, two years after Prince Henry's death, Portuguese sailors explored the Bissau islands and named Serra Leoa (Lioness Mountains).