O Descobrimento do Brazil Prioridade dos Portugueses no Descobrimento da America

A lively 1911 lecture unfolds in São Paulo’s historic institute, where scholars, diplomats and members of the Portuguese community gathered to hear a passionate defence of Portugal’s role in the Age of Discovery. The speaker recounts a recent journey through the Mediterranean that led him to a forgotten volume by Faustino da Fonseca, a work that challenges the familiar narratives surrounding Columbus and Cabral.

Drawing on royal grants, treaty excerpts, correspondence and early maps preserved in Portuguese and Spanish archives, the presenter argues that Portuguese sailors reached the New World years before the famed voyages of Genoa and Lisbon. He invites listeners to reconsider long‑held myths and to recognize the broader, earlier Portuguese contributions to the unfolding of the Americas, offering a fresh perspective grounded in archival research.