Portugal and the Mediterranean trade: A Prelude to the discovery of the “new world”

Abstract

Before the century of great discoveries, and during most of the fifteenth century, the Portuguese developed important commercial activity in the Mediterranean. This is the central issue of this article as seen through two themes: the first is an assessment of the Portuguese organization of Mediterranean trade, with special attention given to the foodstuffs which were, and continued to be, a feature of such trade; and second, is to observe how Portuguese faced competition from others...