text:
History of Portugal (1415–1578)

The history of the Kingdom of Portugal from the Illustrious Generation of the early 15th century to the fall of the House of Aviz in the late 16th century has been named the "Portuguese golden age" (Portuguese: Século de Ouro; "golden century") and the "Portuguese Renaissance". During this period, Portugal was the first European power to begin building a colonial empire as during the Age of Exploration Portuguese sailors and explorers discovered an eastern route to India (that rounded the Cape of Good Hope) as well as several Atlantic archipelagos (like the Azores, Madeira, and Cape Verde) and colonized the African coast and Brazil. They also explored the Indian Ocean and established trading routes throughout most of southern Asia, sending the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to Ming China and to Japan, at the same time installing trading posts and the most important colony: Portuguese Macau (Only in East Asia). The Portuguese Renaissance produced a plethora of poets, historians, critics, theologians, and moralists. The Cancioneiro Geral by Garcia de Resende (printed 1516) is taken to mark the transition from Old Portuguese to the modern Portuguese language.

John I
John I of Portugal acceded in 1390 and ruled in peace, pursuing the economic development of his realm. The only significant military action was the siege and conquest of the city of Ceuta in 1415. By this step he aimed to control navigation of the African coast. But in the broader perspective, this was the first step opening the Arab world to medieval Europe, which in fact led to the Age of Discovery with Portuguese explorers sailing across the whole world.

Contemporaneous writers describe John as a man of wit, very keen on concentrating power on himself, but at the same time with a benevolent and kind personality. His love for knowledge and culture was passed to his sons, often collectively referred to by Portuguese historians as the "illustrious generation" (Ínclita Geração): Edward, the future king, was a poet and a writer; Peter, the Duke of Coimbra, was one of the most learned princes of his time; and Prince Henry the Navigator, the duke of Viseu, invested heavily in science and the development of nautical pursuits. In 1430, John's only surviving daughter, Isabella, married Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and enjoyed an extremely refined court culture in his lands; she was the mother of Charles the Bold.

Edward

Under king Edward, the colony at Ceuta rapidly became a drain on the Portuguese treasury, and it was realised that without the city of Tangier, possession of Ceuta was worthless. In 1437, Duarte's brothers Henry and Ferdinand persuaded him to launch an attack on the Marinid sultanate of Morocco. The expedition was not unanimously supported: Infante Peter, Duke of Coimbra, and the Infante John were both against the initiative; they preferred to avoid conflict with the king of Morocco. Their instincts proved to be justified. The resulting attack on Tangier, led by Henry, was a debacle. Failing to take the city in a series of assaults, the Portuguese siege camp was soon itself surrounded and starved into submission by a Moroccan relief army. In the resulting treaty, Henry promised to deliver Ceuta back to the Marinids in return for allowing the Portuguese army to depart unmolested. Duarte's youngest brother, Ferdinand, was handed over to the Marinids as a hostage for the final handover of the city.

Treaty of Tordesillas
Meanwhile, colonization progressed in the Azores and Madeira, where sugar and wine were now produced; above all, the gold brought home from Guinea stimulated the commercial energy of the Portuguese. It had become clear that, apart from their religious and scientific aspects, these voyages of discovery were highly profitable. Under Afonso V (1443–1481), surnamed the African, the Gulf of Guinea was explored as far as Cape St Catherine (Cabo Santa Catarina), and three expeditions (1458, 1461 and 1471) were sent to Morocco; in 1471 Arzila and Tangier were captured from the Moors. Under John II (1481–1495) the fortress of São Jorge da Mina, the modern Elmina, was founded for the protection of the Guinea trade. Diogo Cão, discovered the Congo in 1482 and reached Cape Cross in 1486; Bartolomeu Dias doubled the Cape of Good Hope in 1488, thus proving that the Indian Ocean was accessible by sea.

After 1492 the arrival of Christopher Columbus in the West Indies rendered desirable a delimitation of the Spanish and Portuguese spheres of exploration. This was accomplished by the Treaty of Tordesillas (June 7, 1494), which modified the delimitation authorized by Pope Alexander VI in two bulls issued on May 4, 1493. The treaty gave to Portugal all lands that might be discovered east of a straight line drawn from the Arctic Pole to the Antarctic, at a distance of 370 leagues west of Cape Verde. Spain received the lands discovered west of this line. The known means of measuring longitude were so inexact, however, that the line of demarcation could not in practice be determined (see J. de Andrade Corvo in Journal das Ciências Matemáticas, xxxi.147–176, Lisbon, 1881), so the treaty was subject to very diverse interpretations. On its provisions were based both the Portuguese claim to Brazil and the Spanish claim to the Moluccas (see History of East Indies). The treaty was chiefly valuable to the Portuguese as a recognition of the prestige they had acquired. That prestige was enormously enhanced when, in 1497–1499, Vasco da Gama completed the voyage to India.

The tendency to secrecy and falsification of dates casts doubts about the authenticity of many primary sources. Several historians have hypothesized that John II may have known of the existence of Brazil and North America as early as 1480, thus explaining his wish in 1494 at the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas to push the line of influence further west. Many historians suspect that the real documents would have been placed in the Library of Lisbon. Unfortunately, due to the fire following the earthquake of 1755, nearly all of the library's records were destroyed, but an extra copy available in Goa was transferred to Lisbon Tower of Tombo during the following 100 years. The Corpo Cronológico (Chronological Corpus), a collection of manuscripts on the Portuguese explorations and discoveries in Africa, Asia and Latin America, was inscribed on UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register in 2007 in recognition of its historical value "for acquiring knowledge of the political, diplomatic, military, economic and religious history of numerous countries at the time of the Portuguese Discoveries."

Afonsine Ordinances

While the Crown was thus acquiring new possessions, its authority in Portugal was temporarily overshadowed by the growth of aristocratic privilege. After the death of Edward, further attempts to curb the power of the nobles were made by his brother, D. Pedro, duke of Coimbra, who acted as regent during the minority of Afonso V of Portugal (1439–1448). The head of the aristocratic opposition was the Duke of Braganza, who contrived to secure the sympathy of the king and the dismissal of the regent. The quarrel led to civil war, and on 20 May 1449, D. Pedro was defeated and killed at the Battle of Alfarrobeira. Thenceforward the grants made by John I were renewed and extended on so lavish a scale that the Braganza estates alone comprised about a third of the whole kingdom.

An unwise foreign policy simultaneously injured the royal prestige, for Afonso married his own niece, Joanna, daughter of Henry IV of Castile, and claimed the kingdom of Castile in her name. At the Battle of Toro, in 1476, he fought an indecisive battle that made him realize that his claims to the Castilian throne were not achievable. However, Portugal defeated Castile in the naval war (1475–79) of the same conflict (War of the Castilian Succession), capturing a large Castilian fleet -full of gold- in the Battle of Guinea (1478).

In 1479 Ferdinand and Isabella and Afonso signed the Treaty of Alcáçovas, by which Joanna was relegated to a convent and Portugal won the hegemony in the Atlantic Ocean.

His successor, John II (1481–1495), reverted to the policy of matrimonial alliances with Castile and friendship with England. Finding, as he said, that the liberality of former kings had left the Crown "no estates except the high roads of Portugal," he determined to crush the feudal nobility and seize its territories. The Portuguese Cortes held at Évora (1481) empowered judges nominated by the Crown to administer justice in all feudal domains. The nobles resisted this infringement of their rights, but their leader, Fernando II, Duke of Braganza, was beheaded for high treason in 1483; in 1484 the king stabbed to death his own brother-in-law, Diogo, Duke of Viseu; and eighty other members of the aristocracy were executed afterwards. Thus John "the Perfect," as he was called, assured the supremacy of the Crown. He was succeeded in 1495 by Manuel I, who was named "the Great" or "the Fortunate," because in his reign the sea route to India was discovered and a Portuguese Empire founded.

Imperial expansion (1481–1557)

John II (r. 1481–1495) famously restored the policies of Atlantic exploration, reviving the work of his great-uncle, Henry the Navigator. The Portuguese explorations were his main priority in government, pushing south the known coast of Africa with the purpose of discovering the maritime route to India and breaking into the spice trade. Manuel I (r. 1495–1521) proved a worthy successor to his cousin John II, supporting Portuguese exploration of the Atlantic Ocean and the development of Portuguese commerce.

Under John III (r. 1521–1557), Portuguese possessions were extended in Asia and in the New World through the Portuguese colonization of Brazil. John III's policy of reinforcing Portugal's bases in India (such as Goa) secured Portugal's monopoly over the spice trade of cloves and nutmeg from the Maluku Islands. As a result, John III has been called the "Grocer King". On the eve of his death in 1557, the Portuguese empire spanned almost 1 billion acres (about 4 million square kilometers). During his reign, the Portuguese became the first Europeans to make contact with both China, under the Ming Dynasty, and Japan, during the Muromachi period (see Nanban trade). John III abandoned Muslim territories in North Africa in favor of trade with India and investment in Brazil. In Europe, he improved relations with the Baltic region and the Rhineland, hoping that this would bolster Portuguese trade.

Sebastian I
Sebastian of Portugal was the penultimate Portuguese monarch of the House of Aviz. He was the son of John Manuel, Prince of Portugal, and his wife, Joanna of Austria. Sebastian succeeded to the throne at the age of three, on the death of King John III, his paternal grandfather. Soon after his birth, his mother Joanna of Spain left her infant son to serve as Regent of Spain for her father, Emperor Charles V. After his abdication in 1556, she served in the same capacity for her brother Philip II of Spain. Joanna remained in Spain until her death in 1573, never to see her son again. Since Sebastian was still a child, the regency was handled first by his paternal grandmother, Catherine of Austria, and then by his great-uncle, Cardinal Henry of Évora. During this period Portugal continued colonial expansion in Angola, Mozambique, and Malacca, as well as the annexation of Macau in 1557.

During Sebastian's short personal reign, he strengthened ties with the Holy Roman Empire, England and France through diplomatic efforts. He also restructured much of the administrative, judicial and military life in his kingdom. In 1568, Sebastian created scholarships to provide financial assistance to students who wished to study medicine or pharmacy at the University of Coimbra. In 1569, Sebastian ordered Duarte Nunes de Leão to compile all the laws and legal documents of the kingdom in a collection of Leis Extravagantes known as Código Sebastiânico (Sebastian's code).

During the great plague of Lisbon in 1569, Sebastian sent for doctors from Seville to help the Portuguese doctors fight the plague. He created two hospitals in Lisbon to take care of the afflicted. In his concern for the widows and orphans of those killed by the plague, he created several Recolhimentos (shelters), known as the Recolhimento de Santa Marta (shelter of Santa Marta) and the Recolhimento dos Meninos (shelter of the children), and provided wet nurses to take care of the babies.

Sebastian created laws for the military, the Lei das Armas, that would become a military organization model. In 1570 Goa was attacked by the Indian army, but the Portuguese were successful in repulsing the assault. Also in 1570, Sebastian ordered that Brazilian Indians should not be used as slaves and ordered the release of those held in captivity.

The Celeiros Comuns (Communal Granaries) were inaugurated in 1576 on Sebastian's orders. These were lending institutions intended to help to poor farmers when farm production decreased, giving credit, lending seeds and commodities to the needy, and allowing them to pay back with farm products when they recovered from losses.

In 1577 Sebastian's ordinance Da nova ordem do juízo, sobre o abreviar das demandas, e execução dellas decreased the time for handling legal actions, regulated the action of lawyers, scribes and other court officials, and created fines for delays.

Sebastian disappeared (and was presumably killed in action) in the battle of Alcácer Quibir in 1578, after the brief reign of King Henry triggering the Portuguese succession crisis.

Dynastic crisis and union with Spain
Following the Portuguese crisis of succession, a dynastic union joined the crowns of Castile, Portugal and Aragon along with their respective colonial possessions, under the rule of the Habsburg dynasty

The unification of the peninsula had long been a goal of the region's monarchs with the intent of restoring the Visigothic monarchy. The history of Portugal from the dynastic crisis in 1578 to the first Braganza Dynasty monarchs was a period of transition. The Portuguese Empire's spice trade was peaking at the start of this period. It continued to enjoy widespread influence after Vasco da Gama had finally reached the East by sailing around Africa in 1497–98.

Reasons for exploration
Portugal's long shoreline, with its many harbours and rivers flowing westward to the Atlantic Ocean was the ideal environment to raise generations of adventurous seamen. As a seafaring people in the south-westernmost region of Europe, the Portuguese became natural leaders of exploration during the Middle Ages. Faced with the options of either accessing other European markets by sea (by exploiting its seafaring prowess) or by land (and facing the task of crossing Castile and Aragon territory) it is not surprising that goods were sent via the sea to England, Flanders, Italy and the Hanseatic league towns.

Having fought to achieve and to retain independence, the nation's leadership had also a desire for fresh conquests. Added to this was a long struggle to expel the Moors that was religiously sanctioned and influenced by foreign crusaders with a desire for martial fame. Making war on Islam seemed to the Portuguese both their natural destiny and their duty as Christians.

One important reason was the need to overcome the expensive eastern trade routes, dominated first by the republics of Venice and Genoa in the Mediterranean, and then controlled by the Ottoman Empire after the conquest of Constantinople in 1453, barring European access, and going through North Africa and the historically important combined-land-sea routes via the Red Sea. Both spice and silk were big businesses of the day, and arguably, spices which were used as medicine, drugs and preservatives was something of a necessity—at least to those Europeans of better than modest means.

The Portuguese economy had benefited from its connections with neighbouring Muslim states. A money economy was well enough established for 15th century workers in the countryside as well as in the towns to be paid in currency. The agriculture of the countryside had diversified to the point where grain was imported from Morocco (a symptom of an economy dependent upon Portugal's), while specialised crops occupied former grain-growing areas: vineyards, olives, or the sugar factories of the Algarve, later to be reproduced in Brazil (Braudel 1985). Most of all, the Aviz dynasty that had come to power in 1385 marked the semi-eclipse of the conservative land-oriented aristocracy (See The Consolidation of the Monarchy in Portugal.) A constant exchange of cultural ideals made Portugal a centre of knowledge and technological development. Due to these connections with Islamic kingdoms, many mathematicians and experts in naval technology appeared in Portugal. The Portuguese government impelled this even further by taking full advantage of this and by creating several important research centres in Portugal, where Portuguese and foreign experts made several breakthroughs in the fields of mathematics, cartography and naval technology. Sagres and Lagos in the Algarve become famous as such places.

Portuguese nautical science
The successive expeditions and experience of the pilots led to a fairly rapid evolution of Portuguese nautical science, creating an elite of astronomers, navigators, mathematicians and cartographers, among them stood Pedro Nunes with studies on how to determine the latitudes by the stars and João de Castro.

Ships

Until the 15th century, the Portuguese were limited to coastal cabotage navigation using barques and barinels (ancient cargo vessels used in the Mediterranean). These boats were small and fragile, with only one mast with a fixed quadrangular sail and did not have the capabilities to overcome the navigational difficulties associated with Southward oceanic exploration, as the strong winds, shoals and strong ocean currents easily overwhelmed their abilities. They are associated with the earliest discoveries, such as the Madeira Islands, the Azores, the Canaries, and to the early exploration of the north west African coast as far south as Arguim in the current Mauritania.

The ship that truly launched the first phase of the Portuguese discoveries along the African coast was the caravel, a development based on existing fishing boats. They were agile and easier to navigate, with a tonnage of 50 to 160 tons and 1 to 3 masts, with lateen triangular sails allowing luffing. The caravel benefited from a greater capacity to tack. The limited capacity for cargo and crew were their main drawbacks, but did not hinder its success. Limited crew and cargo space was acceptable, initially, because as exploratory ships, their "cargo" was what was in the explorer's feedback of a new territory, which only took up the space of one person. Among the famous caravels are Berrio and Caravela Annunciation.

With the start of long oceanic sailing also large ships developed. "Nau" was the Portuguese archaic synonym for any large ship, primarily merchant ships. Due to the piracy that plagued the coasts, they began to be used in the navy and were provided with cannon windows, which led to the classification of "naus" according to the power of its artillery. They were also adapted to the increasing maritime trade: from 200 tons capacity in the 15th century to 500, they become impressive in the 16th century, having usually two decks, stern castles fore and aft, two to four masts with overlapping sails. In India travels in the sixteenth century there were also used carracks, large merchant ships with a high edge and three masts with square sails, that reached 2000 tons.

Celestial navigation
In the thirteenth century celestial navigation was already known, guided by the sun position. For celestial navigation the Portuguese, like other Europeans, used Arab navigation tools, like the astrolabe and quadrant, which they made easier and simpler. They also created the cross-staff, or cane of Jacob, for measuring at sea the height of the sun and other stars. The Southern Cross become a reference upon arrival at the Southern hemisphere by João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar in 1471, starting the celestial navigation on this constellation. But the results varied throughout the year, which required corrections.

To this the Portuguese used the astronomical tables (Ephemeris), precious tools for oceanic navigation, which have experienced a remarkable diffusion in the fifteenth century. These tables revolutionized navigation, allowing to calculate latitude. The tables of the Almanach Perpetuum, by astronomer Abraham Zacuto, published in Leiria in 1496, were used along with its improved astrolabe, by Vasco da Gama and Pedro Álvares Cabral.

Sailing techniques
Besides coastal exploration, Portuguese also made trips off in the ocean to gather meteorological and oceanographic information (in these were discovered the archipelagos of Madeira and the Azores, and Sargasso Sea). The knowledge of wind patterns and currents, the trade winds and the oceanic gyres in the Atlantic, and the determination of latitude led to the discovery of the best ocean route back from Africa: crossing the Central Atlantic to the latitude of the Azores, using the permanent favorable winds and currents that spin clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere because of atmospheric circulation and the effect of Coriolis, facilitating the way to Lisbon and thus enabling the Portuguese venturing increasingly farther from shore, the maneuver that became known as the "volta do mar" (return of the sea).

Cartography
It is thought that Jehuda Cresques, son of the Catalan cartographer Abraham Cresques have been one of the notable cartographers at the service of Prince Henry. However the oldest signed Portuguese sea chart is a Portolan made by Pedro Reinel in 1485 representing the Western Europe and parts of Africa, reflecting the explorations made by Diogo Cão. Reinel was also author of the first nautical chart known with an indication of latitudes in 1504 and the first representation of a Wind rose.

With his son, cartographer Jorge Reinel and Lopo Homem, they participated in the making of the atlas known as "Lopo Homem-Reinés Atlas" or "Miller Atlas", in 1519. They were considered the best cartographers of their time, with Emperor Charles V wanting them to work for him. In 1517 King Manuel I of Portugal handed Lopo Homem a charter giving him the privilege to certify and amend all compass needles in vessels.

In the third phase of the former Portuguese nautical cartography, characterized by the abandonment of the influence of Ptolemy's representation of the East and more accuracy in the representation of lands and continents, stands out Fernão Vaz Dourado (Goa ~ 1520 – ~ 1580), whose work has extraordinary quality and beauty, giving him a reputation as one of the best cartographers of the time. Many of his charts are large scale.

Henry the Navigator
It was the genius of Prince Henry the Navigator that coordinated and utilized all these tendencies towards expansion. Prince Henry placed at the disposal of his captains the vast resources of the Order of Christ, of which he was the head, and the best information and most accurate instruments and maps that could be obtained. He sought to effect a meeting with the half-fabulous Christian Empire of "Prester John" by way of the "Western Nile" (the Sénégal River), and, in alliance with that potentate, to crush the Turks and liberate the Holy Land. The concept of an ocean route to India appears to have originated after his death. On land he again defeated the Moors, who attempted to retake Ceuta in 1418; but in an expedition to Tangier, undertaken in 1437 by King Edward (1433–1438), the Portuguese army was defeated, and could only escape destruction by surrendering as a hostage Prince Ferdinand, the king's youngest brother. Ferdinand, known as "the Constant", from the fortitude with which he endured captivity, died unransomed in 1443. By sea Prince Henry's captains continued their exploration of Africa and the Atlantic Ocean. In 1433 Cape Bojador was rounded; in 1434 the first consignment of slaves was brought to Lisbon; and slave trading soon became the most profitable branch of Portuguese commerce, until India was reached. The Senegal was reached in 1445, Cape Verde was passed in the same year, and in 1446 Álvaro Fernandes pushed on almost as far as Sierra Leone. This was probably the farthest point reached before the Navigator died in 1460. Another vector of the discoveries were the voyages westward, during which the Portuguese discovered the Sargasso Sea and possibly sighted the shores of Nova Scotia well before 1492.

Portuguese in Asia
The effort to colonize and maintain territories scattered around the entire coast of Africa and its surrounding islands, Brazil, India and Indic territories such as in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Japan, China, Indonesia and Timor was a challenge for a population of only one million. Combined with constant competition from the Spanish this led to a desire for secrecy about every trade route and every colony. As a consequence, many documents that could reach other European countries were in fact fake documents with fake dates and faked facts, to mislead any other nation's possible efforts.

Chronology of the Portuguese discoveries

 * 1336 — Possible first expedition to the Canary Islands with additional expeditions in 1340 and 1341, though this is disputed.
 * 1412 — Prince Henry, the Navigator, orders the first expeditions to the African Coast and Canary Islands.
 * 1419 — João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira discovered Porto Santo island, in the Madeira group.
 * 1420 — The same sailors and Bartolomeu Perestrelo discovered the island of Madeira, which at once began to be colonized.
 * 1422 — Cape Nao, the limit of Moorish navigation is passed as the African Coast is mapped.
 * 1427 — Diogo de Silves discovered the Azores, which was colonized in 1431 by Gonçalo Velho Cabral.
 * 1434 — Gil Eanes sailed round Cape Bojador, thus destroying the legends of the ‘Dark Sea’.
 * 1434 — the 32 point compass-card replaces the 12 points used until then.
 * 1435 — Gil Eanes and Afonso Gonçalves Baldaia discovered Garnet Bay (Angra dos Ruivos) and the latter reached the Gold River (Rio de Ouro).
 * 1441 — Nuno Tristão reached Cape White.
 * 1443 — Nuno Tristão penetrated the Arguim Gulf. Prince Pedro granted Henry the Navigator the monopoly of navigation, war and trade in the lands south of Cape Bojador.
 * 1444 — Dinis Dias reached Cape Green (Cabo Verde).
 * 1445 — Álvaro Fernandes sailed beyond Cabo Verde and reached Cabo dos Mastros (Cape Red)
 * 1446 — Álvaro Fernandes reached the northern Part of Portuguese Guinea
 * 1452 — Diogo de Teive discovers the Islands of Flores and Corvo.
 * 1458 — Alvise Cadamosto discovers the first Cape Verde Islands.
 * 1460 — Death of Prince Henry, the Navigator. His systematic mapping of the Atlantic reached 8° N on the African Coast and 40° W in the Atlantic (Sargasso Sea) in his lifetime.
 * 1461 — Diogo Gomes and António Noli discovered more of the Cape Verde Islands.
 * 1461 — Diogo Afonso discovered the western islands of the Cape Verde group.
 * 1471 — João de Santarém and Pedro Escobar crossed the Equator. The southern hemisphere was discovered and the sailors began to be guided by a new constellation, the Southern Cross. The discovery of the islands of São Tomé and Príncipe is also attributed to these same sailors.
 * 1479 — Treaty of Alcáçovas establishes Portuguese control of the Azores, Guinea, ElMina, Madeira and Cape Verde Islands and Castilian control of the Canary Islands.
 * 1482 — Diogo Cão reached the estuary of the Zaire (Congo) and placed a landmark there. Explored 150 km upriver to the Yellala Falls.
 * 1484 — Diogo Cão reached Walvis Bay, south of Namibia.
 * 1487 — Afonso de Paiva and Pero da Covilhã traveled overland from Lisbon in search of the Kingdom of Prester John. (Ethiopia)
 * 1488 — Bartolomeu Dias, crowning 50 years of effort and methodical expeditions, rounded the Cape of Good Hope and entered the Indian Ocean. They had found the "Flat Mountain" of Ptolemy's Geography.
 * 1489/92 — South Atlantic Voyages to map the winds
 * 1490 — Columbus leaves for Spain after his father-in-law's death.
 * 1492 — First exploration of the Indian Ocean.
 * 1494 — The Treaty of Tordesillas between Portugal and Spain divided the world into two parts, Spain claiming all non-Christian lands west of a north–south line 370 leagues west of the Azores, Portugal claiming all non-Christian lands east of that line.
 * 1495 — Voyage of João Fernandes, the Farmer, and Pedro Barcelos to Greenland. During their voyage they discovered the land to which they gave the name of Labrador (lavrador, farmer)
 * 1494 — First boats fitted with cannon doors and topsails.
 * 1498 — Vasco da Gama led the first fleet around Africa to India, arriving in Calicut.
 * 1498 — Duarte Pacheco Pereira explores the South Atlantic and the South American Coast North of the Amazon River.
 * 1500 — Pedro Álvares Cabral discovered Brazil on his way to India.
 * 1500 — Gaspar Corte-Real made his first voyage to Newfoundland, formerly known as Terras Corte-Real.
 * 1500 — Diogo Dias discovered an island they named after St Lawrence after the saint on whose feast day they had first sighted the island later known as Madagascar
 * 1502 — Returning from India, Vasco da Gama discovers the Amirante Islands (Seychelles).
 * 1502 — Miguel Corte-Real set out for New England in search of his brother, Gaspar. João da Nova discovered Saint Helena. Fernão de Noronha discovered the island which still bears his name.
 * 1503 — On his return from the East, Estêvão da Gama discovered Ascension Island.
 * 1505 — Gonçalo Álvares in the fleet of the first viceroy sailed south in the Atlantic to were "water and even wine froze" discovering an island named after him, modern Gough Island
 * 1505 — Lourenço de Almeida made the first Portuguese voyage to Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and established a settlement there.
 * 1506 — Tristão da Cunha discovered the island that bears his name. Portuguese sailors become the first Europeans to reach Madagascar.
 * 1509 — The Bay of Bengal crossed by Diogo Lopes de Sequeira. On the crossing he also reached Malacca.
 * 1511 — Duarte Fernandes is the first European to visit the Kingdom of Siam (Thailand), sent by Afonso de Albuquerque after the conquest of Malaca.
 * 1512 — António de Abreu discovered Timor island and reached Banda Islands, Ambon Island and Seram. Francisco Serrão reached the Moluccas.
 * 1512 — Pedro Mascarenhas discovered the island of Diego Garcia, he also encountered the Mauritius, although he may not have been the first to do so; expeditions by Diogo Dias and Afonso de Albuquerque in 1507 may have encountered the islands. In 1528 Diogo Rodrigues named the islands of Réunion, Mauritius, and Rodrigues the Mascarene Islands, after Mascarenhas.
 * 1512 — João de Lisboa and Estevão Frois reached the La Plata estuary or even perhaps the Gulf of San Matias in 42°S in modern Argentina between 1511 and 1514 (1512) according to the manuscript Newen Zeytung auss Pressilandt in the Fugger archives of the time. Christopher de Haro, the financier of the expedition, bears witness to the trip to La Plata (Rio da Prata) and the news of the "White King" to the interior and west, the Inca emperor – and the axe of silver obtained from the natives and offered to the king Manuel I.
 * 1513 — The first trading ship to touch the coasts of China, under Jorge Álvares and Rafael Perestrello later in the same year.
 * 1517 — Fernão Pires de Andrade and Tomé Pires were chosen by Manuel I of Portugal to sail to China to formally open relations between the Portuguese Empire and the Ming Dynasty during the reign of the Zhengde Emperor.
 * 1525 — Aleixo Garcia explored the Rio de la Plata in service to Spain, as a member of the expedition of Juan Díaz de Solís, and later – from Santa Catarina, Brazil – leading an expedition of some Europeans and 2,000 Guaraní Indians, explored Paraguay and Bolivia. Aleixo Garcia was the first European to cross the Chaco and even managed to penetrate the outer defenses of the Inca Empire on the hills of the Andes (near Sucre), in present-day Bolivia. He was the first European to do so, accomplishing this eight years before Francisco Pizarro.
 * 1526 — Discovery of New Guinea by Jorge de Meneses
 * 1528 — Diogo Rodrigues explores the Mascarene islands, that he names after his countryman Pedro Mascarenhas, he explored and named the islands of Réunion, Mauritius, and Rodrigues
 * 1529 — Treaty of Saragossa divides the eastern hemisphere between Spain and Portugal, stipulating that the dividing line should lie 297.5 leagues or 17° east of the Moluccas.
 * 1536 — Pedro A. Campos discovers Barbados, and finds it uninhabitable.
 * 1542 — The coast of California explored by João Rodrigues Cabrilho.
 * 1543 — António Mota, Francisco Zeimoto, and possibly Fernão Mendes Pinto became the first Europeans to reach Japan.
 * 1557 — Macau given to Portugal by the Emperor of China as a reward for services rendered against the pirates who infested the China Sea.

(missing data on Ormuz – from Socotra to Basra, including Muscat, Bahrain, islands in Strait of Hormuz, etc.)

title: History of Portugal (1415–1578)


text:
Ultramarine

Ultramarine is a deep blue color pigment which was originally made by grinding lapis lazuli into a powder. Its lengthy grinding and washing process makes the natural pigment quite valuable—roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes from and as expensive as gold.

The name ultramarine comes from the Latin ultramarinus. The word means 'beyond the sea', as the pigment was imported by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th centuries from mines in Afghanistan. Much of the expansion of ultramarine can be attributed to Venice which historically was the port of entry for lapis lazuli in Europe.

Ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue used by Renaissance painters. It was often used for the robes of the Virgin Mary and symbolized holiness and humility. It remained an extremely expensive pigment until a synthetic ultramarine was invented in 1826.

Ultramarine is a permanent pigment when under ideal preservation conditions. Otherwise, it is susceptible to discoloration and fading.

Structure
The pigment consists primarily of a zeolite-based mineral containing small amounts of polysulfides. It occurs in nature as a proximate component of lapis lazuli containing a blue cubic mineral called lazurite. In the Colour Index International, the pigment of ultramarine is identified as P. Blue 29 77007.

The major component of lazurite is a complex sulfur-containing sodium-silicate (Na8–10Al6Si6O24S2–4), which makes ultramarine the most complex of all mineral pigments. Some chloride is often present in the crystal lattice as well. The blue color of the pigment is due to the S3- radical anion, which contains an unpaired electron.

Visual properties
The best samples of ultramarine are a uniform deep blue while other specimens are of paler color.

Particle size distribution has been found to vary among samples of ultramarine from various workshops. Numerous grinding techniques used by painters have resulted in different pigment/medium ratios and particle size distributions. The grinding and purification process results in pigment with particles of various geometries. Different grades of pigment may have been used for different areas in a painting, a characteristic that is sometimes used in art authentication.

Shades and variations
International Klein Blue (IKB) a deep blue hue first mixed by the French artist Yves Klein.

Electric
Electric ultramarine is the tone of ultramarine that is halfway between blue and violet on the RGB (HSV) color wheel, the expression of the HSV color space of the RGB color model.

Natural production
Historically, lapis lazuli stone was mined in Afghanistan and shipped overseas to Europe.

A method to produce ultramarine from lapis lazuli was introduced and later described by Cennino Cennini in the 15th century. This process consisted of grinding the lapis lazuli mineral, mixing the ground material with melted wax, resins, and oils, wrapping the resulting mass in a cloth, and then kneading it in a dilute lye solution, a potassium carbonate solution prepared by combining wood ash with water. The blue lazurite particles collect at the bottom of the pot, while the colorless crystalline material and other impurities remain at the top. This process was performed at least three times, with each successive extraction generating a lower quality material. The final extraction, consisting largely of colorless material as well as a few blue particles, brings forth ultramarine ash which is prized as a glaze for its pale blue transparency. This extensive process was specific to ultramarine because the mineral it comes from has a combination of both blue and colorless pigments. If an artist were to simply grind and wash lapis lazuli, the resulting powder would be a greyish-blue color that lacks purity and depth of color since lapis lazuli contains a high proportion of colorless material.

Although the lapis lazuli stone itself is relatively inexpensive, the lengthy process of pulverizing, sifting, and washing to produce ultramarine makes the natural pigment quite valuable and roughly ten times more expensive than the stone it comes from. The high cost of the imported raw material and the long laborious process of extraction combined has been said to make high-quality ultramarine as expensive as gold.

Synthetic production
In 1990, an estimated 20,000 tons of ultramarine were produced industrially. The raw materials used in the manufacture of synthetic ultramarine are the following:

 * white kaolin,
 * anhydrous sodium sulfate (Na2SO4),
 * anhydrous sodium carbonate (Na2CO3),
 * powdered sulfur,
 * powdered charcoal or relatively ash-free coal, or colophony in lumps.

The preparation is typically made in steps:

 * The first part of the process takes place at 700 to 750 °C in a closed furnace, so that sulfur, carbon and organic substances give reducing conditions. This yields a yellow-green product sometimes used as a pigment.
 * In the second step, air or sulfur dioxide at 350 to 450 °C is used to oxidize sulfide in the intermediate product to S2 and Sn chromophore molecules, resulting in the blue (or purple, pink or red) pigment.
 * The mixture is heated in a kiln, sometimes in brick-sized amounts.
 * The resultant solids are then ground and washed, as is the case in any other insoluble pigment's manufacturing process; the chemical reaction produces large amounts of sulfur dioxide. (Flue-gas desulfurization is thus essential to its manufacture where SO2 pollution is regulated.)

Ultramarine poor in silica is obtained by fusing a mixture of soft clay, sodium sulfate, charcoal, sodium carbonate, and sulfur. The product is at first white, but soon turns green "green ultramarine" when it is mixed with sulfur and heated. The sulfur burns, and a fine blue pigment is obtained. Ultramarine rich in silica is generally obtained by heating a mixture of pure clay, very fine white sand, sulfur, and charcoal in a muffle furnace. A blue product is obtained at once, but a red tinge often results. The different ultramarines—green, blue, red, and violet—are finely ground and washed with water.

Synthetic ultramarine is a more vivid blue than natural ultramarine, since the particles in synthetic ultramarine are smaller and more uniform than the particles in natural ultramarine and therefore diffuse light more evenly. Its color is unaffected by light nor by contact with oil or lime as used in painting. Hydrochloric acid immediately bleaches it with liberation of hydrogen sulfide. Even a small addition of zinc oxide to the reddish varieties especially causes a considerable diminution in the intensity of the color. Modern, synthetic ultramarine blue is a non-toxic, soft pigment that does not need much mulling to disperse into a paint formulation.

Structure and classification
Ultramarine is the aluminosilicate zeolite with a sodalite structure. Sodalite consists of interconnected aluminosilicate cages. Some of these cages contain polysulfide groups that are the chromophore (color centre). The negative charge on these ions is balanced by ions that also occupy these cages.

The chromophore is proposed to be or S4.

Antiquity and Middle Ages
The name derives from Middle Latin ultramarinus, literally "beyond the sea" because it was imported from Asia by sea. In the past, it has also been known as azzurrum ultramarine, azzurrum transmarinum, azzuro oltramarino, azur d'Acre, pierre d'azur, Lazurstein. The current terminology for ultramarine includes natural ultramarine (English), outremer lapis (French), Ultramarin echt (German), oltremare genuino (Italian), and ultramarino verdadero (Spanish). The first recorded use of ultramarine as a color name in English was in 1598.

The first noted use of lapis lazuli as a pigment can be seen in 6th and 7th-century paintings in Zoroastrian and Buddhist cave temples in Afghanistan, near the most famous source of the mineral. Lapis lazuli has been identified in Chinese paintings from the 10th and 11th centuries, in Indian mural paintings from the 11th, 12th, and 17th centuries, and on Anglo-Saxon and Norman illuminated manuscripts from c. 1100.

Ancient Egyptians used lapis lazuli in solid form for ornamental applications in jewelry, however, there is no record of them successfully formulating lapis lazuli into paint. Archaeological evidence and early literature reveal that lapis lazuli was used as a semi-precious stone and decorative building stone from early Egyptian times. The mineral is described by the classical authors Theophrastus and Pliny. There is no evidence that lapis lazuli was used ground as a painting pigment by ancient Greeks and Romans. Like ancient Egyptians, they had access to a satisfactory blue colorant in the synthetic copper silicate pigment, Egyptian blue.

Renaissance
Venice was central to both the manufacturing and distribution of ultramarine during the early modern period. The pigment was imported by Italian traders during the 14th and 15th centuries from mines in Afghanistan. Other European countries employed the pigment less extensively than in Italy; the pigment was not used even by wealthy painters in Spain at that time.

During the Renaissance, ultramarine was the finest and most expensive blue that could be used by painters. Color infrared photogenic studies of ultramarine in 13th and 14th-century Sienese panel paintings have revealed that historically, ultramarine has been diluted with white lead pigment in an effort to use the color more sparingly given its high price. The 15th century artist Cennino Cennini wrote in his painters' handbook: "Ultramarine blue is a glorious, lovely and absolutely perfect pigment beyond all the pigments. It would not be possible to say anything about or do anything to it which would not make it more so." Natural ultramarine is a difficult pigment to grind by hand, and for all except the highest quality of mineral, sheer grinding and washing produces only a pale grayish blue powder.

The pigment was most extensively used during the 14th through 15th centuries, as its brilliance complemented the vermilion and gold of illuminated manuscripts and Italian panel paintings. It was valued chiefly on account of its brilliancy of tone and its inertness in opposition to sunlight, oil, and slaked lime. It is, however, extremely susceptible to even minute and dilute mineral acids and acid vapors. Dilute HCl, HNO3, and H2SO4 rapidly destroy the blue color, producing hydrogen sulfide (H2S) in the process. Acetic acid attacks the pigment at a much slower rate than mineral acids.

Ultramarine was only used for frescoes when it was applied secco because frescoes' absorption rate made its use cost prohibitive. The pigment was mixed with a binding medium like egg to form a tempera and applied over dry plaster, such as in Giotto di Bondone's frescos in the Cappella degli Scrovegni or the Arena Chapel in Padua.

European artists used the pigment sparingly, reserving their highest quality blues for the robes of Mary and the Christ child, possibly in an effort to show piety, spending as a means of expressing devotion. As a result of the high price, artists sometimes economized by using a cheaper blue, azurite, for under painting. Most likely imported to Europe through Venice, the pigment was seldom seen in German art or art from countries north of Italy. Due to a shortage of azurite in the late 16th and 17th century, the price for the already-expensive ultramarine increased dramatically.

17th and 18th centuries
Johannes Vermeer made extensive use of ultramarine in his paintings. The turban of the Girl with a Pearl Earring is painted with a mixture of ultramarine and lead white, with a thin glaze of pure ultramarine over it. In Lady Standing at a Virginal, the young woman's dress is painted with a mixture of ultramarine and green earth, and ultramarine was used to add shadows in the flesh tones. Scientific analysis by the National Gallery in London of Lady Standing at a Virginal showed that the ultramarine in the blue seat cushion in the foreground had degraded and become paler with time; it would have been a deeper blue when originally painted.

19th century (invention of synthetic ultramarine)
The beginning of the development of artificial ultramarine blue is known from Goethe. In about 1787, he observed the blue deposits on the walls of lime kilns near Palermo in Sicily. He was aware of the use of these glassy deposits as a substitute for lapis lazuli in decorative applications. He did not mention if it was suitable to grind for a pigment.

In 1814, Tassaert observed the spontaneous formation of a blue compound, very similar to ultramarine, if not identical with it, in a lime kiln at St. Gobain. In 1824, this caused the Societé pour l'Encouragement d'Industrie to offer a prize for the artificial production of the precious color. Processes were devised by Jean Baptiste Guimet (1826) and by Christian Gmelin (1828), then professor of chemistry in Tübingen. While Guimet kept his process a secret, Gmelin published his, and became the originator of the "artificial ultramarine" industry.

Permanence
Easel paintings and illuminated manuscripts have revealed natural ultramarine in a perfect state of preservation even though the art may be several centuries old. In general, ultramarine is a permanent pigment. Although it is a sulfur-containing compound from which sulfur is readily emitted as H2S, historically, it has been mixed with lead white with no reported occurrences of the lead pigment blackening to become lead sulfide.

A plague known as "ultramarine sickness" has occasionally been observed among ultramarine oil paintings as a grayish or yellowish gray discoloration of the paint surface. This can occur with artificial ultramarine that is used industrially. The cause of this has been debated among experts, however, potential causes include atmospheric sulfur dioxide and moisture, acidity of an oil- or oleo-resinous paint medium, or slow drying of the oil during which time water may have been absorbed, creating swelling, opacity of the medium, and therefore whitening of the paint film.

Both natural and artificial ultramarine are stable to ammonia and caustic alkalis in ordinary conditions. Artificial ultramarine has been found to fade when in contact with lime when it is used to color concrete or plaster. These observations have led experts to speculate if the natural pigment’s fading may be the result of contact with the lime plaster of fresco paintings.

Synthetic applications
Synthetic ultramarine, being very cheap, is used for wall painting, the printing of paper hangings, and calico. It also is used as a corrective for the yellowish tinge often present in things meant to be white, such as linen and paper. Bluing or "laundry blue" is a suspension of synthetic ultramarine, or the chemically different Prussian blue, that is used for this purpose when washing white clothes. It is often found in makeup such as mascaras or eye shadows.

Large quantities are used in the manufacture of paper, and especially for producing a kind of pale blue writing paper which was popular in Britain. During World War I, the RAF painted the outer roundels with a color made from ultramarine blue. This became BS 108(381C) aircraft blue. It was replaced in the 1960s by a new color made on phthalocyanine blue, called BS110(381C) roundel blue.

Terminology
Ultramarine is a blue made from natural lapis lazuli, or its synthetic equivalent which is sometimes called "French Ultramarine". More generally "ultramarine blue" can refer to a vivid blue.

The term ultramarine can also refer to other pigments. Variants of the pigment such as "ultramarine red," "ultramarine green," and "ultramarine violet" all resemble ultramarine with respect to their chemistry and crystal structure.

The term "ultramarine green" indicates a dark green while barium chromate is sometimes referred to as "ultramarine yellow". Ultramarine pigment has also been termed "Gmelin's Blue," "Guimet's Blue," "New blue," "Oriental Blue," and "Permanent Blue".

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Ultramarine


text:
Tennessee Williams

Thomas Lanier Williams III (March 26, 1911 – February 25, 1983), known by his pen name Tennessee Williams, was an American playwright and screenwriter. Along with contemporaries Eugene O'Neill and Arthur Miller, he is considered among the three foremost playwrights of 20th-century American drama.

At age 33, after years of obscurity, Williams suddenly became famous with the success of The Glass Menagerie (1944) in New York City. It was the first of a string of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Sweet Bird of Youth (1959), and The Night of the Iguana (1961). With his later work, Williams attempted a new style that did not appeal as widely to audiences. His drama A Streetcar Named Desire is often numbered on short lists of the finest American plays of the 20th century alongside Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman.

Much of Williams's most acclaimed work has been adapted for the cinema. He also wrote short stories, poetry, essays, and a volume of memoirs. In 1979, four years before his death, Williams was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Early life
Thomas Lanier Williams III was born in Columbus, Mississippi, of English, Welsh, and Huguenot ancestry, the second child of Edwina Dakin (August 9, 1884 – June 1, 1980) and Cornelius Coffin "C. C." Williams (August 21, 1879 – March 27, 1957). His father was a traveling shoe salesman who became an alcoholic and was frequently away from home. His mother, Edwina, was the daughter of Rose O. Dakin, a music teacher, and the Reverend Walter Dakin, an Episcopal priest from Illinois who was assigned to a parish in Clarksdale, Mississippi, shortly after Williams's birth. Williams lived in his grandfather's Episcopalian rectory with his family for much of his early childhood and was close to his grandparents. Among his ancestors was musician and poet Sidney Lanier.

He had two siblings, older sister Rose Isabel Williams (1909–1996) and younger brother Walter Dakin Williams (1919 –2008). As a young child, Williams nearly died from a case of diphtheria that left him frail and virtually confined to his house during a year of recuperation. At least partly due to his illness, he was considered a weak child by his father. Cornelius Williams, a descendant of East Tennessee pioneers, had a violent temper and was prone to use his fists. He regarded what he thought was his son's effeminacy with disdain. Edwina, locked in an unhappy marriage, focused her attention almost entirely on her frail young son. Critics and historians agree that Williams drew from his own dysfunctional family in much of his writing and that his desire to break free from his puritan upbringing propelled him towards writing.

When Williams was eight years old, his father was promoted to a job at the home office of the International Shoe Company in St. Louis. His mother's continual search for a more appropriate home, as well as his father's heavy drinking and loudly turbulent behavior, caused them to move numerous times around St. Louis. Williams attended Soldan High School, a setting he referred to in his play The Glass Menagerie. Later he studied at University City High School. At age 16, Williams won third prize for an essay published in Smart Set, titled "Can a Good Wife Be a Good Sport?" A year later, his short story "The Vengeance of Nitocris" was published (as by "Thomas Lanier Williams") in the August 1928 issue of the magazine Weird Tales. These early publications did not lead to any significant recognition or appreciation of Williams's talent, and he would struggle for more than a decade to establish his writing career. Later, in 1928, Williams first visited Europe with his maternal grandfather Dakin.

Education
From 1929 to 1931, Williams attended the University of Missouri in Columbia, where he enrolled in journalism classes. He was bored by his classes and distracted by unrequited love for a girl. Soon he began entering his poetry, essays, stories, and plays in writing contests, hoping to earn extra income. His first submitted play was Beauty Is the Word (1930), followed by Hot Milk at Three in the Morning (1932). As recognition for Beauty, a play about rebellion against religious upbringing, he became the first freshman to receive honorable mention in a writing competition.

At University of Missouri, Williams joined the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity, but he did not fit in well with his fraternity brothers. After he failed a military training course in his junior year, his father pulled him out of school and put him to work at the International Shoe Company factory. Although Williams hated the monotony, the job forced him out of the gentility of his upbringing. His dislike of his new 9-to-5 routine drove Williams to write prodigiously. He set a goal of writing one story a week. Williams often worked on weekends and late into the night. His mother recalled his intensity:

"Tom would go to his room with black coffee and cigarettes and I would hear the typewriter clicking away at night in the silent house. Some mornings when I walked in to wake him for work, I would find him sprawled fully dressed across the bed, too tired to remove his clothes."

Overworked, unhappy, and lacking further success with his writing, by his 24th birthday Williams had suffered a nervous breakdown and left his job. Memories of this period and of a particular factory co-worker would contribute to the character Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. By the mid-1930s his mother separated from his father due to his worsening alcoholism and abusive temper. They agreed to a legal separation in 1946 but never divorced.

In 1936, Williams enrolled at Washington University in St. Louis where he wrote the play Me, Vashya (1937). After not winning the school's poetry prize, he decided to drop out. In the autumn of 1937, he transferred to the University of Iowa in Iowa City, where he graduated with a B.A. in English in August 1938. He later studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York City. Speaking of his early days as a playwright and an early collaborative play called Cairo, Shanghai, Bombay!, Williams wrote, "The laughter ... enchanted me. Then and there the theatre and I found each other for better and for worse. I know it's the only thing that saved my life." Around 1939, he adopted Tennessee Williams as his professional name, in acknowledgement of his Southern accent and roots.

Literary influences
Williams's writings reference some of the poets and writers he most admired in his early years: Hart Crane, Arthur Rimbaud, Anton Chekhov, William Shakespeare, Clarence Darrow, D. H. Lawrence, Katherine Mansfield, August Strindberg, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, Emily Dickinson, William Inge, James Joyce, and, according to some, Ernest Hemingway.

Career
As Williams was struggling to gain production and an audience for his work in the late 1930s, he worked at a string of menial jobs that included a stint as caretaker on a chicken ranch in Laguna Beach, California. In 1939, with the help of his agent Audrey Wood, Williams was awarded a $1,000 grant from the Rockefeller Foundation in recognition of his play Battle of Angels. It was produced in Boston, Massachusetts in 1940 and was poorly received.

Using some of the Rockefeller funds, Williams moved to New Orleans in 1939 to write for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), a federally funded program of the New Deal era. Williams lived for a time in New Orleans' French Quarter, including 722 Toulouse Street, the setting of his 1977 play Vieux Carré. The building is now part of The Historic New Orleans Collection. The Rockefeller grant brought him to the attention of the Hollywood film industry and Williams received a six-month contract as a writer from the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film studio, earning $250 weekly.

During the winter of 1944–45, his memory play The Glass Menagerie, developed from his 1943 short story "Portrait of a Girl in Glass", was produced in Chicago and garnered good reviews. It moved to New York where it became an instant hit and enjoyed a long Broadway run. Elia Kazan (who directed many of Williams's greatest successes) said of Williams: "Everything in his life is in his plays, and everything in his plays is in his life." The Glass Menagerie won the award for the best play of the season, the New York Drama Critics' Circle Award.

The huge success of his next play, A Streetcar Named Desire, cemented his reputation as a great playwright in 1947. During the late 1940s and 1950s, Williams began to travel widely with his partner Frank Merlo (1922 – September 21, 1963), often spending summers in Europe. He moved often to stimulate his writing, living in New York, New Orleans, Key West, Rome, Barcelona, and London. Williams wrote, "Only some radical change can divert the downward course of my spirit, some startling new place or people to arrest the drift, the drag."

Between 1948 and 1959 Williams had seven of his plays produced on Broadway: Summer and Smoke (1948), The Rose Tattoo (1951), Camino Real (1953), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955), Orpheus Descending (1957), Garden District (1958), and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). By 1959, he had earned two Pulitzer Prizes, three New York Drama Critics' Circle Awards, three Donaldson Awards, and a Tony Award.

Williams's work reached wider audiences in the early 1950s when The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire were adapted into motion pictures. Later plays also adapted for the screen included Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, The Rose Tattoo, Orpheus Descending, The Night of the Iguana, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Summer and Smoke.

After the extraordinary successes of the 1940s and 1950s, he had more personal turmoil and theatrical failures in the 1960s and 1970s. Although he continued to write every day, the quality of his work suffered from his increasing alcohol and drug consumption, as well as occasional poor choices of collaborators. In 1963, his partner Frank Merlo died.

Consumed by depression over the loss, and in and out of treatment facilities while under the control of his mother and brother Dakin, Williams spiraled downward. His plays Kingdom of Earth (1967), In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969), Small Craft Warnings (1973), The Two Character Play (also called Out Cry, 1973), The Red Devil Battery Sign (1976), Vieux Carré (1978), Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980), and others were all box office failures. Negative press notices wore down his spirit. His last play, A House Not Meant to Stand, was produced in Chicago in 1982. Despite largely positive reviews, it ran for only 40 performances.

In 1974, Williams received the St. Louis Literary Award from the Saint Louis University Library Associates. In 1979, four years before his death, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.

Personal life
Throughout his life Williams remained close to his sister, Rose, who was diagnosed with schizophrenia as a young woman. In 1943, as her behavior became increasingly disturbing, she was subjected to a lobotomy, requiring her to be institutionalised for the rest of her life. As soon as he was financially able, Williams moved Rose to a private institution just north of New York City, where he often visited her. He gave her a percentage interest in several of his most successful plays, the royalties from which were applied toward her care. The devastating effects of Rose's treatment may have contributed to Williams's alcoholism and his dependence on various combinations of amphetamines and barbiturates.

After some early attempts at relationships with women, by the late 1930s, Williams began exploring his homosexuality. In New York City, he joined a gay social circle that included fellow writer and close friend Donald Windham (1920–2010) and Windham's then-boyfriend Fred Melton. In the summer of 1940, Williams initiated a relationship with Kip Kiernan (1918–1944), a young dancer he met in Provincetown, Massachusetts. When Kiernan left him to marry a woman, Williams was distraught. Kiernan's death four years later at age 26 was another heavy blow.

On a 1945 visit to Taos, New Mexico, Williams met Pancho Rodríguez y González, a hotel clerk of Mexican heritage. Rodríguez was prone to jealous rages and excessive drinking, and their relationship was tempestuous. In February 1946, Rodríguez left New Mexico to join Williams in his New Orleans apartment. They lived and traveled together until late 1947, when Williams ended the relationship. Rodríguez and Williams remained friends, however, and were in contact as late as the 1970s.

Williams spent the spring and summer of 1948 in Rome in the company of a young man named "Rafaello" in Williams' Memoirs. He provided financial assistance to the younger man for several years afterward. Williams drew from this for his first novel, The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone.

When he returned to New York City, Williams met and fell in love with Frank Merlo (1921–1963). An occasional actor of Sicilian ancestry, he had served in the U.S. Navy during World War II. This was the enduring romantic relationship of Williams's life, and it lasted 14 years until infidelities and drug abuse on both sides ended it. Merlo, who had become Williams's personal secretary, took on most of the details of their domestic life. He provided a period of happiness and stability, acting as a balance to the playwright's frequent bouts with depression. Williams feared that, like his sister Rose, he would fall into insanity. His years with Merlo, in an apartment in Manhattan and a modest house in Key West, Florida were Williams's happiest and most productive. Shortly after their breakup, Merlo was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer. Williams returned to him and cared for him until his death on September 20, 1963.

In the years following Merlo's death, Williams descended into a period of nearly catatonic depression and increasing drug use, which resulted in several hospitalizations and commitments to mental health facilities. He submitted to injections by Dr. Max Jacobson, known popularly as Dr. Feelgood, who used increasing amounts of amphetamines to overcome his depression. Jacobson combined these with prescriptions for the sedative Seconal to relieve his insomnia. During this time, influenced by his brother, a Roman Catholic convert, Williams joined the Catholic Church, however he never attributed much significance to religion in his personal life. He was never truly able to recoup his earlier success, or to entirely overcome his dependence on prescription drugs.

As Williams grew older, he felt increasingly alone; he feared old age and losing his sexual appeal to younger gay men. In the 1970s, when he was in his 60s, Williams had a lengthy relationship with Robert Carroll, a Vietnam War veteran and aspiring writer in his 20s. Williams had deep affection for Carroll and respect for what he saw as the younger man's talents. Along with Williams's sister Rose, Carroll was one of the two people who received a bequest in Williams's will. Williams described Carroll's behavior as a combination of "sweetness" and "beastliness". Because Carroll had a drug problem, as did Williams, friends including Maria Britneva saw the relationship as destructive. Williams wrote that Carroll played on his "acute loneliness" as an aging gay man. When the two men broke up in 1979, Williams called Carroll a "twerp", but they remained friends until Williams died four years later.

Death
On February 25, 1983, Williams was found dead at age 71 in his suite at the Hotel Elysée in New York City. Chief Medical Examiner of New York City Elliot M. Gross reported that Williams had choked to death from inhaling the plastic cap of a bottle of the type used on bottles of nasal spray or eye solution. The report was later corrected on August 14, 1983, to state that Williams had been using the plastic cap found in his mouth to ingest barbiturates and had actually died from a toxic level of Seconal.

He wrote in his will in 1972:

"I, Thomas Lanier (Tennessee) Williams, being in sound mind upon this subject, and having declared this wish repeatedly to my close friends-do hereby state my desire to be buried at sea. More specifically, I wish to be buried at sea at as close a possible point as the American poet Hart Crane died by choice in the sea; this would be ascrnatible [sic], this geographic point, by the various books (biographical) upon his life and death. I wish to be sewn up in a canvas sack and dropped overboard, as stated above, as close as possible to where Hart Crane was given by himself to the great mother of life which is the sea: the Caribbean, specifically, if that fits the geography of his death. Otherwise—whereever fits it [sic]."

However, his brother Dakin Williams arranged for him to be buried at Calvary Cemetery in St. Louis, Missouri, where his mother is buried.

According to the New York Times, "most of his estate was left to the University of the South in Sewanee, Tenn., with the bulk of it to remain in trust for his sister during her lifetime." Rose Williams, Tennessee's sister, died in 1996 after many years in a mental institution in New York state; the university subsequently received about $7 million, which supports a creative writing program.

Posthumous recognition
From February 1 to July 21, 2011, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birth, the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the home of Williams's archive, exhibited 250 of his personal items. The exhibit, titled "Becoming Tennessee Williams", included a collection of Williams manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and artwork. The Ransom Center holds the earliest and largest collections of Williams's papers, including all of his earliest manuscripts, the papers of his mother Edwina Williams, and those of his long-time agent Audrey Wood.

In late 2009, Williams was inducted into the Poets' Corner at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York. Performers and artists who took part in his induction included Vanessa Redgrave, playwright John Guare, Eli Wallach, Sylvia Miles, Gregory Mosher, and Ben (Griessmeyer) Berry.

The Tennessee Williams Theatre in Key West, Florida, is named for him. The Tennessee Williams Key West Exhibit on Truman Avenue houses rare Williams memorabilia, photographs, and pictures including his famous typewriter.

At the time of his death, Williams had been working on a final play, In Masks Outrageous and Austere, which attempted to reconcile certain forces and facts of his own life. This was a continuing theme in his work. As of September 2007, author Gore Vidal was completing the play, and Peter Bogdanovich was slated to direct its Broadway debut. The play received its world premiere in New York City in April 2012, directed by David Schweizer and starring Shirley Knight as Babe.

The rectory of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in Columbus, Mississippi, where Williams's grandfather Dakin was rector at the time of Williams's birth, was moved to another location in 1993 for preservation. It was newly renovated in 2010 for use by the City of Columbus as the Tennessee Williams Welcome Center.

Williams's literary legacy is represented by the literary agency headed by Georges Borchardt.

In 1985, French author-composer Michel Berger wrote a song dedicated to Tennessee Williams, "Quelque chose de Tennessee" (Something of Tennessee), for Johnny Hallyday. It became one of the singer's more famous songs.

Since 1986, the Tennessee Williams New Orleans Literary Festival has been held annually in New Orleans, Louisiana, in commemoration of the playwright. The festival takes place at the end of March to coincide with Williams's birthday.

The Tennessee Williams Songbook is a one woman show written and directed by David Kaplan, a Williams scholar and curator of Provincetown's Tennessee Williams Festival, and starring Tony Award nominated actress Alison Fraser. The show features songs taken from plays of Williams's canon, woven together with text to create a new narrative. The show premiered at the Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The show was recorded on CD and distributed by Ghostlight Records.

In 2014 Williams was one of the inaugural honorees in the Rainbow Honor Walk, a walk of fame in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood noting LGBTQ people who have "made significant contributions in their fields."

In 2015, The Tennessee Williams Theatre Company of New Orleans was founded by Co-Artistic Directors Nick Shackleford and Augustin J Correro. The New Orleans based non-profit theatre company is the first year-round professional theatre company that focuses exclusively on the works of Williams.

Since 2016, St. Louis, Missouri has held an annual Tennessee Williams Festival, featuring a main production and related events such as literary discussions and new plays inspired by his work. In 2018 the festival produced A Streetcar Named Desire.

The U.S. Postal Service honored Williams on a stamp issued on October 13, 1995 as part of its literary arts series.

Williams is honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. He is also inducted into the Clarksdale Walk of Fame.

On October 17, 2019, the Mississippi Writers Trail installed a historical marker commemorating William's literary contributions during his namesake festival produced by the City of Clarksdale, Mississippi.

Works
Characters in his plays are often seen as representations of his family members. Laura Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie is thought to be modeled on his sister Rose. Some biographers believed that the character of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire also is based on her and that the mental deterioration of Blanche's character is inspired by Rose's mental health struggles.

Amanda Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie generally was taken to represent Williams's mother Edwina. Characters such as Tom Wingfield in The Glass Menagerie and Sebastian in Suddenly, Last Summer were understood to represent Williams himself. In addition, he used a lobotomy as a motif in Suddenly, Last Summer.

The Pulitzer Prize for Drama was awarded to A Streetcar Named Desire in 1948 and to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955. These two plays later were adapted as highly successful films by noted directors Elia Kazan (Streetcar), with whom Williams developed a very close artistic relationship, and Richard Brooks (Cat). Both plays included references to elements of Williams's life such as homosexuality, mental instability, and alcoholism.

Although The Flowering Peach by Clifford Odets was the preferred choice of the Pulitzer Prize jury in 1955, and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was at first considered the weakest of the five shortlisted nominees, Joseph Pulitzer Jr., chairman of the Board, had seen Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and thought it worthy of the drama prize. The Board went along with him after considerable discussion.

Williams wrote The Parade, or Approaching the End of a Summer when he was 29, and worked on it sporadically throughout his life. A semi-autobiographical depiction of his 1940 romance with Kip Kiernan in Provincetown, Massachusetts, it was produced for the first time on October 1, 2006, in Provincetown by the Shakespeare on the Cape production company. This was part of the First Annual Provincetown Tennessee Williams Festival. Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981) is also based on his memories of Provincetown in the 1940s.

His last play went through many drafts as he was trying to reconcile what would be the end of his life. There are many versions of it, but it is referred to as In Masks Outrageous and Austere.

Plays

 * Candles to the Sun (1936)
 * Fugitive Kind (1937)
 * Spring Storm (1937)
 * Me Vashya (1937)
 * Not About Nightingales (1938)
 * Battle of Angels (1940)
 * I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix (1941)
 * The Glass Menagerie (1944)
 * You Touched Me (1945)
 * Stairs to the Roof (1947)

 * A Streetcar Named Desire (1947)
 * Summer and Smoke (1948)
 * The Rose Tattoo (1951)
 * Camino Real (1953)
 * Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955)
 * Orpheus Descending (1957)
 * Suddenly Last Summer (1958)
 * Sweet Bird of Youth (1959)
 * Period of Adjustment (1960)
 * The Night of the Iguana (1961)
 * The Eccentricities of a Nightingale (1962, rewriting of Summer and Smoke)
 * The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (1963)
 * The Mutilated (1965)
 * The Seven Descents of Myrtle (1968, aka Kingdom of Earth)
 * In the Bar of a Tokyo Hotel (1969)
 * Will Mr. Merriweather Return from Memphis? (1969)
 * Small Craft Warnings (1972)
 * The Two-Character Play (1973)
 * Out Cry (1973, rewriting of The Two-Character Play)
 * The Red Devil Battery Sign (1975)
 * This Is (An Entertainment) (1976)
 * Vieux Carré (1977)
 * Tiger Tail (1978)
 * A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur (1979)
 * Clothes for a Summer Hotel (1980)
 * The Notebook of Trigorin (1980)
 * Something Cloudy, Something Clear (1981)
 * A House Not Meant to Stand (1982)
 * In Masks Outrageous and Austere (1983)

Novels

 * The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1950, adapted for films in 1961 and 2003)
 * Moise and the World of Reason  (1975)

Screenplays and teleplays

 * The Glass Menagerie (1950)
 * A Streetcar Named Desire (1951)
 * The Rose Tattoo (1955)
 * Baby Doll (1956)
 * Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958)
 * Suddenly, Last Summer (1959)
 * The Fugitive Kind (1959)
 * Ten Blocks on the Camino Real (1966)
 * Boom! (1968)
 * Stopped Rocking and Other Screenplays (1984)
 * The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (2009; screenplay from 1957)

Short stories

 * "The Vengeance of Nitocris" (1928)
 * "The Field of Blue Children" (1939)
 * "Oriflamme" (1944)
 * "The Resemblance Between a Violin Case and a Coffin" (1951)
 * One Arm and Other Stories (1948)
 * "One Arm"
 * "The Malediction"
 * "The Poet"
 * "Chronicle of a Demise"
 * "Desire and the Black Masseur"
 * "Portrait of a Girl in Glass"
 * "The Important Thing"
 * "The Angel in the Alcove"
 * "The Field of Blue Children"
 * "The Night of the Iguana"
 * "The Yellow Bird"
 * Hard Candy: A Book of Stories (1954)
 * "Three Players of a Summer Game"
 * "Two on a Party"
 * "The Resemblance between a Violin Case and a Coffin"
 * "Hard Candy"
 * "Rubio y Morena"
 * "The Mattress by the Tomato Patch"
 * "The Coming of Something to the Widow Holly"
 * "The Vine"
 * "The Mysteries of the Joy Rio "
 * The Knightly Quest: a Novella and Four Short Stories (1966)
 * "The Knightly Quest"
 * "Mama's Old Stucco House"
 * "Man Bring This Up Road"
 * "The Kingdom of Earth"
 * "Grand"
 * Eight Mortal Ladies Possessed: a Book of Stories (1974)
 * "Happy August the Tenth"
 * "The Inventory at Fontana Belle"
 * "Miss Coynte of Greeme"
 * "Sabbatha and Solitude"
 * "Completed"
 * "Oriflamme"
 * "Tent Worms" (1980)
 * It Happened the Day the Sun Rose (1981), published by Sylvester & Orphanos
 * Collected Stories (1985) (New Directions)

One-act plays
Williams wrote more than 70 one-act plays during his lifetime. The one-acts explored many of the same themes that dominated his longer works. Williams's major collections are published by New Directions in New York City.
 * American Blues (1948)
 * Mister Paradise and Other One-Act Plays (2005)
 * Dragon Country: a book of one-act plays (1970)
 * The Traveling Companion and Other Plays (2008)
 * The Magic Tower and Other One-Act Plays (2011)
 * At Liberty (1939)
 * The Magic Tower (1936)
 * Me, Vashya (1937)
 * Curtains for the Gentleman (1936)
 * In Our Profession (1938)
 * Every Twenty Minutes (1938)
 * Honor the Living (1937)
 * The Case of the Crushed Petunias (1941)
 * Moony's Kid Don't Cry (1936)
 * The Dark Room (1939)
 * The Pretty Trap (1944)
 * Interior: Panic (1946)
 * Kingdom of Earth (1967)
 * I Never Get Dressed Till After Dark on Sundays (1973)
 * Some Problems for the Moose Lodge (1980)
 * 27 Wagons Full of Cotton and Other Plays (1946 and 1953)
 * «Something wild...» (introduction) (1953)
 * 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946 and 1953)
 * The Purification (1946 and 1953)
 * The Lady of Larkspur Lotion (1946 and 1953)
 * The Last of My Solid Gold Watches (1946 and 1953)
 * Portrait of a Madonna (1946 and 1953)
 * Auto-da-Fé (1946 and 1953)
 * Lord Byron's Love Letter (1946 and 1953)
 * The Strangest Kind of Romance (1946 and 1953)
 * The Long Goodbye (1946 and 1953)
 * At Liberty (1946)
 * Moony's Kid Don't Cry (1946)
 * Hello from Bertha (1946 and 1953)
 * This Property Is Condemned (1946 and 1953)
 * Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen... (1953)
 * Something Unspoken (1953)
 * Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws and Other One-Act Plays (2016)
 * A Recluse and His Guest (1982)
 * Now the Cats with Jeweled Claws (1981)
 * Steps Must Be Gentle (1980)
 * Ivan's Widow (1982)
 * This Is the Peaceable Kingdom (1981)
 * Aimez-vous Ionesco? (c.1975)
 * The Demolition Downtown (1971)
 * Lifeboat Drill (1979)
 * Once in a Lifetime (1939)
 * The Strange Play (1939)
 * The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume VI
 * The Theatre of Tennessee Williams, Volume VII

Poetry

 * In the Winter of Cities (1956)
 * Androgyne, Mon Amour (1977)
 * The Collected Poems of Tennessee Williams (2002)

Non-fiction

 * Memoirs (1975)
 * New Selected Essays: Where I Live (2009)

Selected works

 * Gussow, Mel and Holditch, Kenneth, eds. Tennessee Williams, Plays 1937–1955 (Library of America, 2000) ISBN 978-1-883011-86-4.
 * Spring Storm
 * Not About Nightingales
 * Battle of Angels
 * I Rise in Flame, Cried the Phoenix
 * From 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1946)
 * 27 Wagons Full of Cotton
 * The Lady of Larkspur Lotion
 * The Last of My Solid Gold Watches
 * Portrait of a Madonna
 * Auto-da-Fé
 * Lord Byron's Love Letter
 * This Property Is Condemned
 * The Glass Menagerie
 * A Streetcar Named Desire
 * Summer and Smoke
 * The Rose Tattoo
 * Camino Real
 * From 27 Wagons Full of Cotton (1953)
 * "Something Wild"
 * Talk to Me Like the Rain and Let Me Listen
 * Something Unspoken
 * Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
 * Gussow, Mel, and Holditch, Kenneth, eds. Tennessee Williams, Plays 1957–1980 (Library of America, 2000) ISBN 978-1-883011-87-1.
 * Orpheus Descending
 * Suddenly, Last Summer
 * Sweet Bird of Youth
 * Period of Adjustment
 * The Night of the Iguana
 * The Eccentricities of a Nightingale
 * The Milk Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore
 * The Mutilated
 * Kingdom of Earth (The Seven Descents of Myrtle)
 * Small Craft Warnings
 * Out Cry
 * Vieux Carré
 * A Lovely Sunday for Creve Coeur
 * "Crazy Night"

title: Tennessee Williams