Signs of Man
6459 Oltremare
Codice Casanatense 1889. Viaggi, avventure, conquiste dei Portoghesi nelle Indie
Duarte Barbosa. Texts by Fernand Braudel, Gianni Guadalupi, Ch.R. Boxer, R. Barchiesi
1984 / 208 PAGES.
Language: Italian edition
This volume contains the 1889 manuscript belonging to the Biblioteca Casanatense as a parallel to the Book of Duarte Barbosa, thus presenting the Portuguese colonial adventure discovering and exploring the Indies. The historic framework was overseen by Gianni Guadalupi and Charles R. Boxer.
The sea route to the Indies dates back approximately to the 15th century, when Portugal, under the influence of Prince Henry the Navigator (“discoverer of things unknown to other men”), insisted on pushing its fleets beyond the Canary Islands, at the time the limit of the known world. Sailors told of a sinister sea inhabited by sea monsters and thus impossible to sail. The encounter with the Indies, which soon became an attempt to rule their populations, is attested to by the pages of the Casanatense codex and the astonished gaze of Duarte Barbosa, whose Book describes marvellous customs and lands for “a universal advantage”.