_ 187 _ on the ideals and the interests that inspired them. It is in trying to answer these questions that the social milieu of the captains, businessmen and crews, the hierarchy of responsibilities, the system for sharing the profits, the behaviour and usages of everyday life can be discovered. Until the middle of the 19th Century, memories of these voyages were mainly handed down through the accounts of Portuguese chroniclers, and through some short accounts, the most well-known of which have been put together in a collection by Gianbattista Ramusio. The concern to research and publish manuscripts and archive material, has only emerged during the course of the last one hundred and fifty years. In this way the sources of the expeditions of 1498, 1500 and 1502(A), commanded by Vasco da Gama and Pedro Alvares Cabral were edited. Such witness statements allow us to roughly sketch a critical study of the chronicles. It is true to say that it is a fragmentary study, which cannot re-establish the continuity of the history of the discovery of India, for there is nothing still in existence about the undertaking of João da Nova (1501), and only (A) The inventory of printed sources has been made by M.A.A. Banha de Andrade in Mundos novos do mundo, panorama da difusão, pela Europe, de notícias dos Descobrimentos geográficos portugueses, Lisbon, 1972, 2 vol.
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