AROUND THE WORLD
São Roque wishes to welcome you to TEFAF, and to this depository for Lisbon’s Rua Nova dos Mercadores (New Merchants Street), where you can admire the precious treasures that have arrived in Portuguese caravels and carracks, from India, Japan, and other exotic faraway lands.
On arriving in Africa and the Far East, the Portuguese, firmly determined and commercially minded, focused on developing a complex network of diplomatic and trading relations, as well as a system of commercial outposts, that would ensure global control over the African, Far Eastern and South Atlantic maritime trade. Concurrently they promoted the development of scientific, cultural, aesthetic, and artistic synergies, that remain highly relevant in our 21st century.
Europe was suddenly flooded, for the first time in History, by fascinating products, and by remote and mutually unknown peoples’ that could see, touch, and communicate directly
with each other. In its conviction, 16th century Portugal pioneered countless civilizational interactions of unimaginable magnitude, which would be felt for centuries afterwards; it introduced firearms to Japan and astrolabes and green beans to China, engaged in the abhorrent Atlantic slave trade, took tea to England and pepper to the New World, brought Chinese silks, spices and Indian medicines to Europe, and even an elephant and a rhinoceros to be gifted to the Pope. In this book, we look over its role in crossing worldwide plant species and in blending dietary practices, which would revolutionize flora, medicine, and global gastronomy. By linking the four continents, Portugal defined the characteristics of modern-day eating habits, altered global botanic and the planet’s landscapes, and contributed unequivocally for the evolution of modern medical science.
Welcome to this voyage through three hundred years
of Portuguese Art.
Lisbon, February 3rd 1523 + 500
Mário Roque & A. A. Lima