Bartholomeu Dias

1450-1500

Place of Birth: Portugal

Biography: 

Bartolomeu Dias was married and had two children.Simão Dias de Novais, who died unmarried and without issue.António Dias de Novais, a Knight of the Order of Christ, married to (apparently his relative, since the surname Novais was transmitted through her brother's offspring) Joana Fernandes, daughter of Fernão Pires and wife Guiomar Montês (and sister of Brites Fernandes and Fernão Pires, married to Inês Nogueira, daughter of Jorge Nogueira and wife, and had issue). Dias' grandson Paulo Dias de Novais was a Portuguese colonizer of Africa in the 16th century. Dias' granddaughter, Guiomar de Novais married twice, as his second wife to Dom Rodrigo de Castro, son of Dom Nuno de Castro and wife Joana da Silveira, by whom she had Dona Paula de Novais and Dona Violante de Castro, both died unmarried and without issue, and to Pedro Correia da Silva, natural son of Cristóvão Correia da Silva, without issue (from the minds of  wikipedia.com)

Legacy:

Despite the gap between Dias's voyage and da Gama, there is little doubt that he played an important role in opening up navigation to the East. As a result of his voyages, the Cape would become an important staging-post on route to India, developing as a port and then as a European colony. Cape colony was founded by the Dutch East Indies Company in 1652. At this point in history, Europeans were full of curiosity about the world and intent on mapping it, exploring it and discovering what for them were new lands with opportunity to trade and perhaps establish colonial settlements. Since Christopher Columbus's 1492 voyage to the West had been sponsored by the Spanish, the Portuguese were anxious to open-up routes of their own. The 1500 voyage that "discovered" Brazil would give Portugal their biggest colonial possession.

On the one hand, the colonization process that resulted from these voyages of exploration ushered in an era of exploitation. Many indigenous people lost their land. Many cultures were damaged or destroyed. On the other hand, more people became aware that the world is the common home of the human race. The European exploration of Africa and of the Americas would also knit more and more people together, enabling cultural exchange and the creation of a world community of nations that increasingly realized that all share responsibility for the health and wholeness of the planet. The world as a global community, sharing belief in human rights, participating in the United Nations would not have developed if continents and islands had not first of all been incorporated into global systems, the first of which were the colonial empires that began from the fifteenth century onwards.