Explorers & agents · Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis, c. 1505–08
Duarte Pacheco Pereira
Portuguese navigator and cosmographer whose rutter describes the Grain Coast's trade, peoples and hazards.
Biography
Pacheco Pereira sailed the Guinea coast and wrote the Esmeraldo as a practical sailing directory with an ethnographic appetite: where to water, what to buy, whom to deal with, and what the surf will do to a boat.
For the Liberian coast he records the malagueta trade, the strength of the surf, the reliability of provisioning and the character of specific landings — the kind of operational detail that only a working seaman produces.
Historical significance
Independent early confirmation of an organised coastal trade economy at the very start of European contact.
Timeline
- 1480s–90sVoyages along the Guinea coast
- c. 1505–08Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis written
- 1892First printed edition
Related entries
References
- Pacheco Pereira, Duarte. Esmeraldo de Situ Orbis (trans. Kimble, Hakluyt Society, 1937).
- Rodney, Walter (1970). A History of the Upper Guinea Coast.
Suggested reading
- Kimble's Hakluyt translation (1937).