AncientPages.com - On January 26, 1500, Brazil was discovered by Vicente Yañez Pinzóñ, a Spanish explorer who had once sailed with Columbus.
Interestingly, by that date, Brazil was already considered a Portuguese possession. Following the ruling of a previous pope, all lands in the Atlantic west of a specific point belonged to Portugal.
At the time, the ruling only applied to a few islands.
Pinzon, who had commanded the Nina during Christopher Columbus’ first expedition to the New World, reached the northeastern coast of Brazil during a voyage under his command. Pinzon’s journey produced the first recorded account of a European explorer sighting the Brazilian coast, though whether or not Brazil was previously known to Portuguese navigators is still in dispute.
Pinzon subsequently sailed down the Brazilian coast to the equator, where he briefly explored the mouth of the Amazon River.
The same year, Portuguese explorer Pedro Alvares Cabral claimed Brazil for Portugal. He argued that the territory fell into the Portuguese sphere of exploration as defined by the Treaty of Tordesillas signed in 1494.
This treaty was an agreement between Spain and Portugal to settle conflicts over newly discovered or explored lands by Christopher Columbus and other late 15th-century voyagers.
Not much was done to support this claim until the 1530s when Portuguese colonists established the first permanent European settlements in Brazil at Sao Vicente in Sao Paulo.
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