Portugal’s African expansion inaugurated the Age of Discovery and produced the Negro

Evidence

The Portuguese state’s expansion into Africa marks, of course, the beginnings of the modern era in European development: the “Age of Discovery.” It also marks the beginnings of those encounters between the peoples of the European peninsula and the African continent that would produce the Negro. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 473

Categorization

• DEFINE: Robinson locates the historical production of ‘the Negro’ as a racial category in the specific encounter between Portuguese expansion and Africa.