Prelude to EmpirePrelude to Empire spotlights and brings into focus the events and developments in European history which prepared the way for Henry the Navigator and the age of the Great Discoveries. "Henry's just fame," writes Bailey W. Diffie, "has obscured an essential fact: in 1415 he was a man with a past as well as a future. Some forty years lay before some forty centuries lay behind. Just as the voyages of his captains would form the indispensable base for