Pedro Alvares Cabral: The Lucky Lost Navigator Who Made Brazil Portuguese

Pedro Alvares Cabral was a Portuguese explorer and navigator who lived between the 15th and 16th centuries. He is generally given credit for being the first person from Europe to have ‘discovered’ the area which is today the country of Brazil. Cabral’s discovery of this new land had a huge impact on the colonial history of Portugal, as the coffers of the empire were filled with its resources. But the amateur navigator had no intention of reaching this particular far off land.

His Family Roots

Pedro Alvares Cabral was born in 1467/1468 in Belmonte, Portugal, and was the second son of Fernao Cabral and Isabel de Gouveia. The Cabrals were a noble family whose members had been in the service of the Portuguese throne for many generations. Thanks to his family’s status, Cabral was educated at the royal court, and in 1497, was appointed as a member of King Manuel I’s council.

Pedro Álvares Cabral. (Public Domain)

In July of the same year, another famous explorer, Vasco da Gama, left Lisbon with a small exploratory force of four ships and about 170 men. His mission was to verify if there was an ocean route that connected Europe to Asia, which he succeeded in doing, having rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and arriving in Calicut, India, in 1498.