Eustache de la Fosse
Flemish sailor and merchant
Tassin or Eustache de la Fosse (also spelled Delafosse) (ca. 1451 - 23 April 1523) was a Flemish sailor and merchant from Tournai. In 1479-80, he traveled with Castilian sailors from Palos to the Gold Coast in West Africa. However, near São Jorge da Mina, he was captured by Portuguese forces who claimed a Portuguese monopoly on trade in the region. De la Fosse was shipped to Portugal alongside the other merchants and was sentenced to death, but managed to escape.
After returning to Flanders, De la Fosse set down the story of his travels in a manuscript. A copy of this work, dated 1548, has survived at the Valenciennes Library. It is an important primary source for Africanists studying this era.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 27, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q10278339. VIAF identifies the subject as 34516525. The Library of Congress control number is n93038196. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1451, 1523, 1479 and 1548.
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This entry incorporates text from “Eustache de la Fosse” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.