The Danish discover the Americas

According to Wikipedia:

In 1925 Soren Larsen wrote a book claiming that a joint Danish-Portuguese expedition landed in Newfoundland or Labrador in 1473 and again in 1476. Larsen claimed that Didrik Pining and Hans Pothorst served as captains, while João Vaz Corte-Real and the possibly mythical John Scolvus served as navigators, accompanied by Alvaro Martins.[35] Nothing beyond circumstantial evidence has been found to support Larsen's claims.[36]

What if this was real, and Danes and Portuguese discovered the New World?

Also on the pseudohistory front:

1. Portuguese Policy of Secrecy or Silence. This controversial historical thesis, formulated in the first quarter of the 20th century by various historians, primarily Portuguese, states that Portugal made many voyages and discoveries in the Atlantic Ocean, including the discovery of the Americas sometime before 1492, but chose to keep those discoveries secret.

Before the 19th century, the historical record contains many gaps and breaks. This condition certainly applies to the surviving records from the Great Age of Discovery. None of the original logs for Christopher Columbus's four voyages survived, although a partial transcript exists for the first voyage. John Cabot's voyages to North America in 1497 are practically without any contemporary documentation and the same situation applies to Bartolomeu Dias's discovery in 1487 of the Cape of Good Hope. Such losses of primary sources are tragic but all too common and they usually occur quite innocently as the result of accidents or neglect. Some historians, however, have questioned whether the gaps in the Portuguese records are all that random. They suggest that some design or policy may lie behind the disappearance of some documents.

The thesis of a deliberate and systematic Portuguese government policy of secrecy concerning overseas exploration is a product of 20th-century historians. Jaime Cortesao, a Portuguese historian, first formulated the thesis in 1924. He contended that the surviving Portuguese chronicles about overseas explorations show definite signs of truncation and censorship.

If one is inclined to believe Cortesao, quite a lot of information was suppressed, including a Portuguese discovery of America prior to 1448. Jaime Cortesao was not alone in his support for the existence of a policy of secrecy. In Portugal the thesis has become a historical orthodoxy and a pillar of national pride. School textbooks at all levels teach it as fact. Lisbon's city government has even decorated its Avenida de Liberdade with a mosaic inscription which reads "Descoberta da America 1472 Joao Vaz Corte - Real Descobridor da America."

Outside of Portugal, historians, including Samuel Eliot Morison, generally reject Cortesao's thesis of a policy of secrecy and its various claims of monumental but previously uncredited Portuguese achievements during the 15th century. Dissent exists even in the Portuguese historical community where the respected historian Duarte Liete attacked Cortesao's theory as early as 1936. But in spite of all the controversy, the thesis of a Portuguese policy of secrecy still possesses enthusiastic supporters, and so continues to attract equally determined opponents.

The basic complaint of skeptical historians concerning the policy of secrecy is the almost complete absence of solid evidence for its existence. Historians admit that monarchs and countries throughout history have attempted to protect their overseas commerce by maintaining secrecy about the how and the where of their sources. But ultimately these efforts have failed. Supporters of the policy of secrecy reply that the lack of evidence is in itself evidence of the existence of a policy of secrecy that was extremely effective. Of course, their opponents, particularly Samuel Eliot Morison, find such an argument both circular and ridiculous. Ultimately Morison feels that Cortesao's thesis requires the Portuguese to maintain their secrets apparently for the sake of secrecy alone and often against their own best interests. He rightly argues that the Portuguese government's pursuit of a policy of secrecy needs to make sense and be of benefit to the national interests. If Portugal already knew about the Americas before 1492, why did Joao II abdicate virtually all of that new land to Spain in the Treaty of Tordesillas?

Another argument repeatedly brought to bear against the existence of such a policy of secrecy is the well documented and sustained participation of a substantial number of foreigners in Portugal's overseas explorations. Martin Behaim of Germany and Christopher Columbus of Genoa are simply the best known of a host of foreigners who served in Portugal's overseas ventures. With so many foreigners involved in Portugal's overseas enterprises, it would have been impossible to keep important discoveries a secret. Details of Portugal's jealously guarded African trade leaked out with amazing rapidity. Furthermore, little attempt was made to keep secret Bartolomeu Dias's discovery of the Cape of Good Hope in 1487 or Vasco da Gama's voyage to India in 1497. Why did the Portuguese let these important discoveries become public knowledge if they had such an effective policy of secrecy? Not surprisingly, outside of Portugal, the thesis of the policy of secrecy and its accompanying suppression of information about various discoveries, most notably a pre-Columbian discovery of America, has found little support among historians.
 
According to Wikipedia:



What if this was real, and Danes and Portuguese discovered the New World?

Also on the pseudohistory front:

Jaime Cortesão was an otherwise brilliant historian that once even said that - unless proved otherwise - every land not yet explored in the 1400s should be assumed to have first been explored by the Portuguese and then kept as a state secret.
Of course that pattern of thought isn't seriously followed by Portuguese scholars.

BUT... what still makes a lot of historians frown (and perhaps is the origin of that secrecy policy myth) is all the circumstances in the 1490s that culminated in Cabral's discovery of Brazil.
1) The insistence of João II to push the Tordesillas line further west just enough to put Brazil in the Portuguese hemisphere.
2) The fact that when using the fast route to the Cape of Good Hope - already tested before Cabral - was really easy to end up in Brazil or at least notice it. A lot speculate that Cabral's accidental discovery of Brazil was no accident.

Anyway... all this is moot:
1. The expedition of Columbs made America known to Europe.
2. The Vikings were the first Europeans known to set foot in America.
3. And - as most Americans put it - the real discoverers of America were the Native Americans. :p
 
And to round it out, it seems to be increasingly taken as established fact, at least around here, that there were Basque fishermen who routinely fished the Grand Banks and dried their catches on the shores of Newfoundland, long before 1492. So not only was the presence of North America knowable to European scholars who happened to have access to accounts of Vinland, there was routine use of American land by Europeans long after the Greenland colony failed.

It wouldn't surprise me if some new evidence were uncovered that showed the Portuguese were indeed present in a number of places remarkably early, and that they kept these discoveries secret. They sailed far, and were part of a tightly organized enterprise. The case that they at least knew about the eastern tip of Brazil seems strong. As for knowing about North America--well, it seems those Basque fishermen rivaled agents of the Portuguese king for tight lips, and that the Portuguese interests took them south, not north; Brazil was along the way east around Africa, Newfoundland would not be anywhere along their routes of interest, not unless they took it into their heads to develop markets in Iceland or move in on the Basque fishing grounds! Or listen to Columbus about a westward route to the Indies--but they had actually a more accurate knowledge of the size of the Earth than Columbus claimed it was.

No doubt Columbus knew of the more careful calculations of the Earth's diameter and the arguments supporting them, and rejected them mainly because his investigations seemed to prove to him that land was reachable overseas to the west--though why he'd jump to the conclusion that these lands must indeed be the Indies themselves and not some large islands or new continent lying in what would otherwise be a truly vast Ocean Sea, I don't know. Nor for that matter why the Portuguese never considered that though they knew correctly where China and the Indies lay on the globe relative to themselves, the unknown hemisphere between them to the west might after all contain lands that could make the route sailable.

In each case I guess wishful thinking along the lines of their divergent interests had its way; the Portuguese already had a known route to the Indies, one they'd painfully and laboriously mapped out and secured stations along. Whereas Columbus and the Spanish he eventually interested in his scheme needed to find an alternate route because the Portuguese already had theirs locked up. The Portuguese bet that various hazards would amount to failure on Columbus's part (and indeed, trading with China and the East Indies via the Americas was always marginal at best, enabled as much as it was only by the additional colonization of the Philippines) and Columbus had to persuade someone that they had much to gain if the gamble paid off--also, in the event, true.

Then too, while the Portuguese had some marginal interest in preventing rivals from finding alternate routes, they didn't have the manpower to go in for extensive colonization and securing vast sweeping empires that the Spanish did; they concentrated on securing a few way stations and relied on diplomacy as much as overwhelming power. The Portuguese focus on the southeastern route was suited to their resources, as the Spanish one of massive conquest was more suited to theirs.

So that's why these Portuguese claims may have some truth behind them but are also moot.

As for the Luso-Danish expedition, not only is there little evidence for it in scholarship, again we have a possible contact with no visible consequences. How Denmark was supposed to maintain and develop a colonial empire without tipping off other sea powers like the Netherlands and England and France, I don't understand. The Danes I believe did control Iceland at the time and so perhaps they could manage some misdirection, sending resources to Iceland and from there reaching the western continent and funneling its products back through Iceland. I believe though that while it can make sense to get to America via Iceland (though the currents from there tend to take one north into the Arctic, to get to the warmer Atlantic seaboard one has to cut across the contrary Gulf Stream twice--first to cross it south into the west Atlantic within the gyre, then again across it westward to make landfall) but coming back, the Gulf Stream tends to take one well south of Iceland, right toward the British Isles and possibly the coast of France--which is I guess why Newfoundland worked for the Basque, their ride home being relatively easy to manage!

So for the Danes to make an early go of it, they'd have to rely either on massive investment or on the British, French and Dutch being more backward than OTL in navigation.

OTL of course the Spanish were situated to use the great North Atlantic gyre in all its quarters to get to the Caribbean and hence Mexico along a southerly route along the Azores, and then come home again to Spain.

Really then a Danish advantage would have most likely have built on continuing Icelandic contact with Vinland, or at least a continuity of knowledge of the western lands and how to reach them. So an older Danish venture would be much older, and probably not involve any Portuguese at all.
 

yourworstnightmare

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What if this was real, and Danes and Portuguese discovered the New World?
Not much would change. Denmark was not a good candidate for colonial expansion with a low population and vordenskap (serfdom). Perhaps some small fishing outposts on the Labrador coast for Danish and Norwegian fishermen.

Columbus would of course not be famous, but it would still be the Spanish and the Portuguese who are able to benefit from the exploration early on, and the focus for early exploration would still probably be the Caribbean and Latin America.
 
The case that they at least knew about the eastern tip of Brazil seems strong
I find it plausible too but it's all about circumstantial evidences.
I suppose it's also plausible that João II only insisted to push Tordesillas west simply in order to maximize the possibility of getting some Western land, calculating that the East Indies would also be on his hemisphere. He could have taken an educated guess.

Nice exposition, BTW.
 
to be honest, I thought the vikings were the first to set foot on the other side of the world (except for the Native Americans). Though Columbus is credited with discovering America, I still think that the first people that found it was the Vikings finding Greenland. Maybe Columbus found the mainland, but America is still America.

Also about the gaps in the history, if more voyages exists, the why havent they found the documentation if it exist? Was it burned or did it ever exist? Those Portuguese, hiding stuff from the world
 
to be honest, I thought the vikings were the first to set foot on the other side of the world (except for the Native Americans). Though Columbus is credited with discovering America, I still think that the first people that found it was the Vikings finding Greenland. Maybe Columbus found the mainland, but America is still America.
The Vikings didn't just stick with Greenland but they also reached Vinland (whatever "Vinland" means... it possibly encompasses the mainland proper).

Also about the gaps in the history, if more voyages exists, the why havent they found the documentation if it exist? Was it burned or did it ever exist? Those Portuguese, hiding stuff from the world
A great deal of Portuguese early documentation was lost in the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.
 
Anyway... all this is moot:
1. The expedition of Columbs made America known to Europe.
2. The Vikings were the first Europeans known to set foot in America.
3. And - as most Americans put it - the real discoverers of America were the Native Americans. :p

True. It's also likely that not only the Portuguese and possibly the Danish but also the Basques, english and probably the Irish were aware of the Americas before Columbus set sail. He was the last person to discover America, he just told everyone about it and claimed the credit.

and yes, it is interesting that merely living in an area for thousands of years doesn't seem to count as having discovered it

A related question. Who do you think most people would say discovered Australia? Many would say Captain Cook for Britain, others the Dutch or possibly the Portuguese, Spanish or even French. How many would say the Aborigines?
 
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