I had never heard of Bartolomeu Dias until this class. Researching him was definitely something I had to do. Who was this Dias character? What did he do that made him a part of remembered history? In this paper I will discuss some of the answers to these questions. Hopefully through this we might not only know who Bartolomeu Dias is, but what made him important and how he helped contribute to our present World. .
Let us start at the beginning or as far back as we can go in Bartolomeu Dias' life. Surprisingly enough there is not much people know about the childhood of Dias. He was born in the 1450's (according to some 1457) in Portugal. It is said that Bartolomeu was born from a noble family, his father was believed to have been a part of the Portuguese court, which then leads to Bartolomeu being a part of the court. Because of his being born into a noble family it is very likely that Bartolomeu was educated in many different things that would benefit him while traveling around the world. 1481 is the next time anyone had recorded of Bartolomeu's life. At this time Bartolomeu joined a man by the name of Diogo d'Azambuja in an exploration to the Gold Coast of Africa. This might have been a reason why the king of Portugal chose Dias to go on the expedition to find a sea route to India.
On October 10, 1486 King John II, appointed Bartolomeu as the head of the journey around the Cape of Good Hope. Something I found interesting was that one of the reasons the King wanted to have someone go on this exploration was to find the Christian, Prester John, who was the king of Ethiopia. Although the King of Portugal had sent explorers on land, Dias was assigned to the exploration around Africa's southern tip (Cape of Good Hope) to see if there really was a way to go around. Kudos to Dias for not throwing a fit about being the one to search for a way around the bottom of Africa, especially when he did not know if there was a way or not.
The Modern World we live in exists in a state of cultural, political and economic globalization. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries two nations, Portugal and Spain pioneered the European discovery of sea routes that became the first channels of interaction between all of the world's contin...
