Jácome de Bruges

Who is Jácome de Bruges?

Jácome de Bruges was a servant of Prince Henry the Navigator of Portugal, who was the son of king John I. Henry, quite famously, initiated the so-called Age of Discovery in the fifteenth century.

Jácome de Bruges was the son of a wealthy merchant family of Bruges. On the recommendation of Joos van Moerkerke, a Flemish nobleman in the service of Isabella of Burgundy, who was the sister of Duarte I of Portugal, he was recommended to lead an effort to colonize the remote north-Atlantic islands of the Azores. This occurred at a time when Portugal was the dominant maritime power in Europe.

As a native of a city belonging to the Hanseatic league, Jácome de Bruges had been exposed to well-ordered mercantilism, and he understood the value of international trade as a driver of national prosperity. Consequently, he was a logical candidate to enter into the service of the like-minded Prince Henry.

On 2 March 1450, De Bruges received the first license from Prince Henry to lead a contingent of seventeen Flemish families to the island of Terceira, the 'third' island of the Azores archipelago. Ultimately more than two thousand Flemings settled in the Azores during the fifteenth century.