As Relações Luso-Marroquinas no Século XVI: Presença Portuguesa em Agadir e região de Sus (1505-1541)

Overview & Synopsis

Luso-Moroccan relations are undoubtedly the reflection of a secular relationship that has its roots in a Mediterranean heritage and a historical process that varies in its aspect of both confrontation and contact. And it is also a relationship with a strongly strategic component. Portugal and Morocco, two countries of the finis terrae, with a binational history, embody a beautiful and epic aspect of this contact between the North and the South of the Mediterranean. The presence of the Portuguese in Morocco from 1415 to 1541, -the year in which Portugal began to lose its fortresses in North Africa- arose to solve vital problems (economic and socio-political) resulting from the lengthy European depression as well as to escape and resist the threat of annexation by the kingdom of León-Castela, whose power was imposed throughout Spain. It is therefore to ensure its national survival that Portugal undertook its expansion, embarking on the conquest of North Africa. The conquest of Agadir in 1505 and the expansion in the southern region of Morocco obeyed contrary to the northern phase to other factors of strategic and economic nature that aimed to isolate the Maghreb country from its Afro-Sub-Saharan space and enjoy its riches. Such intention generated a local and later national reaction personified in the Saadid sheikhs who unleashed a multidimensional counter-offensive aimed at suffocating the Portuguese fortresses economically and militarily, fighting their allies the Moors of peace, re-establishing the trade with the Maghreb.