c. 1360-c. 1422

French Explorer

Known as "the Conqueror of the Canaries," Jean de Béthencourt claimed the Canary Islands for Spain. His 1402 expedition, which he undertook with Gadifer de La Salle, was the opening chapter in a series of voyages southward and westward that would ultimately take the mariners of Spain and Portugal to sub-Saharan Africa, India, and the New World.

At that time people believed that the Canaries represented the edge of the known world—and indeed the islands, situated in the Atlantic Ocean off the northwestern coast of Africa some 823 miles (1,324 km) from the southwestern coast of Spain—were just that. The ancient Greeks and Romans had known them variously as the Garden of Hesperides, the Elysian Fields, and the Fortunate Isles, and during the Middle Ages sailors from the Arab world, as well as France and the...