While the Europeans planted their flag and established their power in the New World, and in the remotest countries of the East, they made comparatively little progress nearer home, where, nevertheless, they did not neglect to make pretensions of dominion. African discoveries were not prosecuted with zeal until their difficulty was fully known, and until curiosity was excited by an appearance of inscrutable mystery. The Portuguese, having first discovered the coasts of Africa, asserted, by virtue of the pope's grant, an exclusive right to the trade or dominion of that extensive region. The English, at an early period, attempted to share in this trade. In 1481, two Englishmen were reported to be engaged in equipping a squadron, under the patronage of the duke de Medina Sidonia, to sail to the coast of Guinea. Ambassadors were immediately despatched from the court of Portugal to remonstrate with Edward IV. respecting the invasion of a right sanctioned by the pope, whose authority to dispose of kingdoms was not yet called in question, and to prevail on him to prohibit his subjects from interfering with the Portuguese possessions in Africa. This request was granted; and the English traders were for many years compelled to confine themselves within the narrow limits drawn by bigotry and political usurpation.

The chief African possessions of the Portuguese were in the Senegambia, or the country between the rivers Senegal and Gambia, on the Gold Coast, and in Congo.