Pedro Álvares Cabral (c. 1467 or 1468 – c. 1520) is a Portuguese nobleman, military commander, navigator and explorer regarded as the discoverer of Brazil.

Cabral conducts the first substantial exploration of the northeast coast of South America and claims it for Portugal.

While details of Cabral's early life are unclear, it is known that he came from a minor noble family and received a good education.

He is appointed to head an expedition to India in 1500, following Vasco da Gama's newly opened route around Africa.

The object of the undertaking is to return with valuable spices and to establish trade relations in India—bypassing the monopoly on the spice trade then in the hands of Arab, Turkish and Italian merchants.

Although the previous expedition of Vasco da Gama to India, on its sea route, had recorded signs of land west of the southern Atlantic Ocean (in 1497), Cabral is regarded as the first captain who ever touched four continents, leading the first expedition that united Europe, Africa, America, and Asia.

His fleet of thirteen ships sails far into the western Atlantic Ocean, perhaps intentionally, where he makes landfall on what he initially assumes to be a large island.

As the new land i within the Portuguese sphere according to the Treaty of Tordesillas, Cabral claims it for the Portuguese Crown.

He explores the coast, realizing that the large land mass is probably a continent, and dispatches a ship to notify King Manuel I of the new territory.

The continent is South America, and the land he has claimed for Portugal will later come to be known as Brazil.

The fleet re-provisions, then turns eastward to resume the journey to India.

A storm in the southern Atlantic causes the loss of several ships, and the six remaining ships eventually rendezvous in the Mozambique Channel before proceeding to Calicut in India.

Cabral is initially successful in negotiating trading rights, but Arab merchants see Portugal's venture as a threat to their monopoly and stirred up an attack by both Muslims and Hindus on the Portuguese entrepôt.

The Portuguese sustain many casualties and their facilities are destroyed.

Cabral takes vengeance by looting and burning the Arab fleet, then bombards the city in retaliation for its ruler having failed to explain the unexpected attack.

From Calicut the expedition sails to the Kingdom of Cochin, another Indian city-state, where Cabral befriends its ruler and loads his ships with coveted spices before returning to Europe.

Despite the loss of human lives and ships, Cabral's voyage is deemed a success upon his return to Portugal.

The extraordinary profits resulting from the sale of the spices bolster the Portuguese Crown's finances and help lay the foundation of a Portuguese Empire that will stretch from the Americas to the Far East.

Cabral is later passed over, possibly as a result of a quarrel with Manuel I, when a new fleet is assembled to establish a more robust presence in India.

Having lost favor with the King, he retires to a private life of which few records survive.

His accomplishments slip mostly into obscurity for more than three hundred years.

Decades after Brazil's independence from Portugal in the nineteenth century, Cabral's reputation begins to be rehabilitated by Emperor Pedro II of Brazil.

Historians have long argued whether Cabral was Brazil's discoverer, and whether the discovery was accidental or intentional.

The first question has been settled by the observation that the few, cursory encounters by explorers before him were barely noticed at the time and contributed nothing to the future development and history of the land which would become Brazil, the sole Portuguese-speaking nation in the Americas.

On the second question, no definite consensus has been formed, and the intentional discovery hypothesis lacks solid proof.

Nevertheless, although he was overshadowed by contemporary explorers, Cabral today is regarded as a major figure of the Age of Discovery.