Biography
Son of expert Portuguese cartographer Pedro Reinel, he went to Spain after a fight with a priest named Pero Anes. There he participated in the preparations for the trip of his countryman Ferdinand Magellan and for this reason he was in Seville in 1519. It was there that his father came seeking for him to return to Portugal, but Jorge could not return before finishing a map and a globe that he had undertaken to do, and so Pedro helped him.
The location of the Maluku Islands in these charts was the reason of the dispute between Portugal and Spain: Reinel maps were used to support the claims of the crown of Castile to the spice-producing Molucca Islands, claiming that the Islands were located in their domains by the Treaty of Tordesillas. He has also produced maps of the west coast of Africa, the North Atlantic, the South Atlantic. Scholars think that Reinel, after getting into trouble in Lisbon in the early 16th century and fleeing to Spain, made the first map of the world.
In Portugal, Jorge Reinel served king John III of Portugal as a master of charts and needles (compass), having been granted an annual pension of 10 reais starting in 1528.
Read more about this topic: Jorge Reinel
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