Cueta~ A broad canvas.

I was recently chasing some literature on Sugar and slavery
and came across this informative passage, that may interest
those of the Portuguese Afficianado collective.
(Mr. Tracy?

It is rather long, but gave this reader at least, some background
into the outposts of Cueta and Melilla.
Source: J.H Parry "Europe and a wider world 1415-1715"
1949 Hutchinson Univesity Library.

In those countries, crusading was in the blood of most men of gentle
birth and adventurous impulses. This was nowhere more true than in
Portugal, a poor and small country which owed its national existence
to a long Crusade, and in Spain, where the Crusade was still going
on. The frustration of the greater Crusade in the Near East led to
attempts to find means of attacking Muslim power elsewhere. If not
by land, then by sea; if the Infidel were proof against frontal attack,
he might be outflanked or taken in the rear; and if the strength of the
European Crusaders were inadequate, then alliances might be sought
with other Christian princes. Stories were current of powerful though
forgotten Christian kingdoms, perhaps in East Africa, perhaps
somewhere in Asia. If communications could be established with the
East, moreover, by some route outside Turkish control, then the
oriental trade which supplied the Turk with much of his wealth might
be diverted into Christian channels.

War and trade went hand-in-hand in the later Crusades. Portugal
possessed a long ocean sea-board, a considerable fishing and
seafaring population, and a powerful commercial class largely
emancipated from feudal interference. Portuguese shippers were able
and eager to graduate from an Atlantic trade in wine, fish and salt to
more widespread and lucrative ventures in slaves, gold and spices.
The first and obvious object of Portuguese military and commercial
expansion was North-West Africa, where a large and prosperous
Muslim community was living almost within hailing distance.
Operations began with a sea-borne attack on the town and fortress of
Ceuta in 1415.

The expedition to Ceuta was a genuine Crusade, though with a
limited and temporary object. It was organised by King John I, partly
in order to strike a blow against the Moors by sacking one of their
principal harbours-the key to the Mediterranean, Azurara called it;
partly to give his sons, who were candidates for knighthood, an
opportunity to win their spurs in real battle rather than in the artificial
fighting of the tournament. The operation was a brilliant success and
the fall of Ceuta struck a resounding blow throughout Europe. Its
importance lay, not merely in the fact of the capture, but also in the
bold decision to hold the place with a Portuguese garrison instead of
razing it to the ground. A European state was undertaking, as a State,
the defence and the administration of an overseas possession in
Muslim territory.

Ceuta offered many possibilities: a base for advance into Morocco, or
for an attack on Gibraltar, the other great Moorish fortress in the
western Mediterranean; the incentive, and probably to some extent
the information, needed for the beginning of systematic African
exploration and trade. With the capture of Ceuta the crusading
movement passed from its mediaeval to its modern phase; from a war
against Islam in the Mediterranean basin to a general struggle to carry
the Christian faith and European commerce and arms round the
world.

The most outstanding figure in the first stages of Portuguese- and
indeed of European-overseas expansion was Prince Henry of
Portugal, nicknamed by English historians 'the Navigator'. Prince
Henry served with great distinction at Ceuta, not only at the capture
in 1415, but also three years later when he relieved the Portuguese
garrison from a Moorish counter-attack. He was intimately concerned
with the Crusade in both its forms: its older, narrower form of a
Mediterranean war against Moor or Turk, and its newer form of a
world-wide strategy for the encirclement of Islam, a strategy in which
the exploration of the West African coast and the Atlantic islands
was only the first move. He is chiefly remembered now as the
organiser of African exploration; but for him the African voyages
were a new means to an old end. His many-sided character summed
up the best of old and new in the changing times in which he lived.
He was both recluse and man of affairs; ascetic and generous host;
Governor of the knightly Order of Christ, and friend of seamen,
merchants, cartographers, instrument makers; a Catholic Christian of
deep and orthodox piety, and a patron of much that was new in
learning and science. Under such leadership the beginning of
European expansion by sea was no sudden break with the past, but
the natural outcome of centuries of crusading hope and frustration.
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