In the sixty years following the capture of Ceuta in 1415, the Portuguese established three more fortresses in Morocco and a fortified factory at Arguim on the coast of modern Mauretania. The fortified towns in Morocco were originally intended to be bases from which to undertake the conquest of Morocco. However, as a result of the war with Castile (1474–79), these plans were largely abandoned and the coastal forts became centres of commerce and cultural interaction with the local populations (see Doc. 3). The decision taken in 1481 to build a fortified trading factory at Elmina on the coast of modern Ghana was not, therefore, a radically new idea. It was the king's intention to make the gold trade an exclusive royal monopoly, which would be administered thousands of miles from Lisbon, that made this a major new departure in Portuguese policy and anticipated developments in the Indian Ocean in the sixteenth century.

Rui de Pina was appointed the official royal chronicler in 1490. His reputation has never stood high in comparison with his predecessors Fernão Lopes and Gomes Eanes de Zurara or with João de Barros, but he was as assiduous a recorder of Portuguese enterprise in Africa as Zurara had been. Like his predecessors, he wanted his narrative to bestow legitimacy on the actions of the king, and the narrative of the building of Elmina is a good example of his style. […]