Gomes Eanes de Zurara (c. 1410–1474) was a Portuguese royal chronicler during the Age of Exploration. He is best known for writing the Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (completed around 1453), which praised Prince Henry the Navigator and described Portugal’s early voyages and slave-raiding expeditions along the West African coast.
In recent years, historians and authors such as Ibram X. Kendi have highlighted Zurara because his writings provided one of the earliest detailed European justifications for enslaving Africans, portraying slavery as beneficial or divinely sanctioned. Some popular sources refer to him as the “first racist” or “the inventor of racism,” but many historians consider that an oversimplification. They generally agree his work helped spread and legitimize racial ideas that contributed to the development of race-based slavery, while noting that racism developed through many people, institutions, and historical processes—not one individual alone.
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