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There were a number of factors that influenced Prince Henry's voyages of exploration. But along with these emerged another, more pragmatic, reason to explore. Although the Portuguese had long viewed the Atlantic as their major trading area and they had few business interests in the Mediterranean, Prince Henry saw Africa as a rich market teeming with natural resources and raw materials.
Portugal exported salt, wine, fresh and dried fruit, oil, honey, dried shellfish, cork, hops, and other raw materials to northern Europe in exchange for grain and flour, dried and salted fish, dairy products, metals, wood and other forest products for shipbuilding, textiles and other manufactured goods. Although the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries are noted as a period of expansion of European influence, it is important to note that this era of commercial and colonial expansion was not the first. In fact, commercial trade enjoyed a long and extensive history in the Mediterranean and the Atlantic, both in luxury items and articles of general consumption.
At the time of its conquest by the Portuguese, Ceuta was home to approximately 24,000 commercial establishments - some amounted to no more than market stalls - dealing in precious metals, silks, spices, and weapons, but since the Portuguese occupation of the city, trade gradually diminished to nothing. There were two ways to revitalise the city: either the Portuguese could establish a lasting peace with the North Africans, or they could conquer the territory around Ceuta to provide the city with an economic hinterland from which they could draw resources and markets. Because conflict between Islam and European Christianity prohibited a lasting peace from being established, in later years the Portuguese would try to gain control of the economic hinterland with disastrous results.
As we have seen, there were a number of reasons that Prince Henry began his voyages of exploration. Azurara, one of Prince Henry's contemporaries and chroniclers, summarised them as:
1. The desire to know the country beyond Cape Bojador. 2. To establish trade relations advantageous to Portugal. 3. To determine the strength of his enemies in the region. 4. To seek allies to help wage battles against the enemies of Christianity. 5. To spread Christianity. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the fifth century did not bring with it the decline of commerce and trade in North Africa. Indeed, control of trade had merely fallen into local hands. When Portugal attempted to re-enter the North African trade, they discovered that they had to rely on a great number of intermediaries to do business, denying them the indispensable source of travel to gather information about African geography. The capture of Ceuta in 1415 meant, however, that Portuguese settlers were exposed to a larger number of stories about the interior of Africa. Denied the opportunity to explore the interior of Africa by land, Henry began to set his mind to an alternate approach; instead of exploring Africa directly, Prince Henry would attempt an encirclement, and would explore Africa by sea.
The two captains Prince Henry chose for his first expedition to explore Cape Bojador were not experienced sailors. Perhaps the selection was deliberate, for it seemed unlikely that any experienced sailor who had come into contact with the myths and legends surrounding sea travel would willingly sail into the unknown.
The Age of Exploration marked the apogee of Portuguese imperial power and wealth. At the beginning of the fifteenth century Portugal had a population of one and a quarter million and an economy dependent on maritime trade with Northern Europe. Although Portugal lacked the wealth and population of its contemporaries, it would lead the European community in the exploration of sea routes to the African continent, the Atlantic Islands, and to Asia and South America over the course of the sixteenth century.