Manuel I of Portugal
Manuel I ruled Portugal from 1495 to 1521, during which its ships reached India, Brazil and China and the crown became the richest in Europe. Born in 1469, he was a cousin of João II and inherited only through a series of deaths, including the killing of his own brother by the king; he was called the Fortunate for it. He resumed the voyages his predecessor had prepared. Vasco da Gama reached Calicut in May 1498, opening the sea route to India and breaking the Venetian and Mamluk monopoly on the spice trade. Pedro Álvares Cabral made landfall in Brazil in 1500. Afonso de Albuquerque took Goa in 1510, Malacca in 1511 and Hormuz in 1515, building a chain of fortified trading posts from East Africa to the Malay peninsula, and Portuguese ships reached Guangzhou in 1513. The pepper trade was made a royal monopoly, and the resulting revenue funded the Jerónimos monastery, the Belém tower and the elaborate Manueline architectural style, which uses maritime motifs — rope, coral, armillary spheres — as ornament. The record has a very dark side. To marry Isabella of Castile he agreed in 1496 to expel the Jews. He then found that he needed their skills and capital, blocked their departure, and had tens of thousands forcibly baptised in 1497, creating the New Christian population that the Inquisition later persecuted. In 1506 a Lisbon mob murdered some two thousand of them. He reformed the law with the Ordenações Manuelinas, and granted new municipal charters throughout the kingdom. He died of plague in 1521.
- Lived: 1469 CE – 1521 CE
- Nationality: Portuguese
- Roles: king, head_of_state
