You would first have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of the iberian peninsula. Hard to imagine.
Passing that hurdle, then you'd have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of western europe. Hard to imagine that.
Then of europe as a whole and so on. Almost a joke now.
Portuguese was never the major power of it's immediate vicinity, let alone the world. Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire. And portugual, like the netherlands, were minor powers within europe. Neither were major global powers as we understand the term and neither were powerful nor significant enough to produce a lingua franca of anything.
I think the comparison with the Netherlands is generally appropriate, but we must recognize that what they did in Brazil was exceptional (meaning not comparable to their former possessions in Asia and Africa, a difference from the mere trading nodes) and the NL never did achieve anything like it.
The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.
So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.
Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying that you rule over people that have literally never heard of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a bit :-)
Since when is taxing all subjects a necessity? Britain didn't tax people in the 13 colonies so could we conclude that before the American Revolution they were not part of the British Empire?
> The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K
Every time I meet a laid back, easy going and kind Portuguese person — which is most of them — I always think that explains their relatively unambitious world domination plans.
> The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans and had access to gunpowders, naval yards, literacy, and proto-industrialization - and unifying them into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.
You may want to look into the genetic composition of modern-day Brazilians to consider whether "Amerindians were exterminated" is a coherent way to represent it.
edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just talking about a different thing than I :)
edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory by other powers.
My point still stands. Their culture was completely decimated and they were largely replaced by European and African migrants, indentured servants, and slaves.
Subjugating a native people that lacked metalworking, gunpowder, and literacy is different from conquering multiple nations that had all of those and was backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans.
The Rajahdoms and Sultanates that became Indonesia and Malaysia did so via existing domestic capacity and intercultural exchange with the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, and other "Gunpowder" empires [0][1].
Heck, the only reason the Dutch couldn't completely invade Aceh was because the Ottomans and Mughals threatened to sanction the Dutch [2] in the 17th century for threatening a fellow Sunni state.
We are reverting to the historical norm where we don't need you Farangis anymore. O facto de o IDH da Malásia ter atingido o IDH de Portugal de há 7 anos mostra que vocês, portugueses, precisam de rever os vossos egos. Tendo passado anos em Boston, conheci muitas pessoas do seu tipo - Brasileiro e português.
This is one resentful individual. Likes to imply how this or that people is inferior to the other (I thought we were discussing differences in forms of settlement, colonization and maritime expansion) then pivots to modern day economic statistics to again imply that some people are superior to others then finally succumbs to racism but is careful enough to change the language!!
You are imprinting your worldview on someting that differs from historical facts, maybe influenced by anglophone chronicles of what the spanish did in the americas. Spanish were no angels, however, much of what is published tends to be biased and differ quite a bit from what happened on the ground.
Despite neighbour to Spain: Portugal built a different culture altogether since its inception as an iberian kingdom. For example, instead of wiping out the muslim populations, the first king established a policy nowadays known as "don't ask, don't tell" in regards to religion. Which clashed with the Spanish/Italian approaches but at the same time permitted rapid expansion of territory since the population was absorved rather than decimated.
The Brazilian land has dense vegetation and native populations that never generated large settlements nor advanced cultures as you'd see in other parts of America, existing in a continuous state of tribal warring against each other.
The crown/church forbid portuguese women from travelling overseas and the number of sailors travelling was low (the kingdom was small population-wise). Portuguese technology and culture were very, very, very attractive to the native populations who came in contact with these sailor crews. They quickly mixed with the locals to create blood-related families on those locations with local leaders (same as done in India). The portuguese doctrine remained the same as during foundation times of the kingdom, aimed to mix as much as possible with local populations to thrive. This resulted in centuries of family ties across the atlantic that still last until today. Looking on my own example, I keep family ties on three different continents that all speak the same language.
All of this to say that integration was very fast from the native population point of view to join the empire because of mutual benefits for either parties, to the point that the portuguese army in the Americas was composed and lead in majority by natives themselves which went to subjugate rival tribes with better equipment than the counterparts.
Yes! The losses were due to independence loss to Spain. In a sense the loss of sovereignty to Spain destroyed the Portuguese empire.
Spain joined the Portuguese and Spanish armada and went on to fight the English (and Dutch to some extent), with catastrophic results for both Spain and Portugal fleets. When Portugal regained independence 1640 it needed to get back sovereignty of overseas territories, including from the Dutch.
The Dutch controlled a big part of north Brazil when Portugal and Spain were the Iberian Union, but the Dutch and were driven back afterwards at great cost. The damage was done, and 1755 earthquake was the final nail.
There were also terrible mistake in terms of state management up to the XX century where the natives, were not seen as full citizens, and naturally rebelled.
As a post colonial portuguese citizen, it seems like an incredible fantasy that our society descends from such a grandiose history. Even in this thread i see the name Henry the Navigator and am incredulous people know who he was.
A less known both inside and outside Portugal bad ass dude was Afonso de Albuquerque. This is from his English wikipedia page about Hormuz in the middle east:
> At the same time, Albuquerque decided to conclude the effective conquest of Hormuz. He had learned that after the Portuguese retreat in 1507, a young king was reigning under the influence of a powerful Persian vizier, Reis Hamed, whom the king greatly feared. At Ormuz in March 1515, Afonso met the king and asked the vizier to be present. He then had him immediately stabbed and killed by his entourage, thus "freeing" the terrified king, so the island in the Persian Gulf yielded to him without resistance and remained a vassal state of the Portuguese Empire.
Here came a dude that does both diplomacy and war in person, and moved on. Vasco da Gama was a bit similar. Portuguese were quite out of their minds and for me shows shows the pedigree of bloodlust[1] that Europeans must have gained after endless continental strife. That is why I am really afraid of the rearming of Europe, I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.
The 1755 earthquake effectively nuked the capital and killed maybe a third of GDP.
Portugal was never interested in dominance of Europe - hard to project power to the centre when you're out on the far edge and have more of a navy than an army.
But the trade network was the first truly global network, and very much non-trivial.
World powers change and shift with changes of technology, climate and needs for resources. Countries rise to power because they are in the right place at the right time, even if monarchs and nationalists will always attribute it to God preference or other self-serving reason.
> The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world and the received wisdom of ancient authority – the tales of dog-headed men and birds that could swallow elephants – by the empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history and cultures that ushered in the early modern age.
Technology brings societal change. The world has been becoming smaller with help of each new technological step. Societies can fight it, but it is unavoidable. So, I hope that we focus more on building a good world for us all using technology to improve all our lives.
> Countries rise to power because they are in the right place at the right time, even if monarchs and nationalists will always attribute it to God preference
Isn’t it literally the God’s preference of a country for this place and time, from both secular and religious points of view?
>World powers change and shift with changes of technology, climate and needs for resources. Countries rise to power because they are in the right place at the right time,
I wonder when will China take the crown. Assuming US follows on their current trajectory.
As a Brazilian, the whole improbable (and beautiful) history of Portugal raised by the "Navegações" and how badly they bottled the whole imperium (especially after the Brazilian independence, but one can argue that João VI opened the ports) and the sheer amount of lack of vision in not investing in production is something that will always amaze me.
One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.
Poor corporate planning and execution is a long time Portuguese tradition. It seems our history is written by a few people that somehow emerge from that chaos and manage to put everyone else moving on some direction. Much of the lands overseas were left on their own, abandoned. There was an effort from their side to remain Portuguese because of family ties.
Brazil was different from the start. It was the chance to build a kingdom on a paradise without poverty and the problematic european neighbors. It shocks me to see the old brazilian cities with the same traditional architecture as seen on european portugal but placed in gorgeous locations. When I see those pictures, I understand why so many preferred to stay in Brazil.
Also, Brazil always had a strenght of its own that surpassed anything else seen before. Ships were larger and stronger when built there, population had a level of energy and optimism that surpassed the european counterparts. It was not a surprise when it became the heart and capital of the empire itself.
Just as curious note: Up to this day the spanish have much more respect for the portuguese than vice-versa. I was curious about why it happened that way, one day a old spanish told me something I didn't know: "it's because if we upset they portuguese they'll invade our land and burn Madrid again".
I never knew the portuguese had done such a thing, it isn't mentioned in school nor in popular culture but it did happened. Turns out this was during the wars against Spain, an army group from Brazil arrived to defend Portugal but more than just defending they went straight to the capital and subjugated it completely. This left such an impact on the self-esteem of the spanish that they haven't forgotten to this day. Brazil is indeed something else.
> Information was fed back into a central hub, the India House in Lisbon, where everything was stored under the crown's direct control to inform the next cycle of voyages. This system of feedback and adaptation was highly effective. It was accompanied by a rapid expansion in cartographic knowledge.
This almost feels like state-sponsored R&D, 500 years ago.
Historically, what R&D there was, was often done by the state; simply because of being the entity with the most spare capacity to do so. It goes a long way back, Egyptian pharoes and Chinese emperors had written in their histories about how they invented things or made economic improvements. These were most likely done by people under their sponsorship, but nevertheless they saw it as part of their role.
Spain was the first globalization, not Portugal. The article forgets to mention two key elements:
1) The Manila galeon[1], the first trading route connecting Europe, America and Asia. This was the first trully global trade route (Portugual never established a trans-Pacific route).
2) The Real de a Ocho[2], the first global currency, used virtually everywhere including the US until the modern dollar replaced it in 1857. It still lives through the $ symbol, representing the Pillars of Hercules and the "Plus Ultra" script [3].
It also downplays the role of Spain in the first circumnavigation. Sure, Magellan was born in Portugal, but he sailed for the Spanish Crown. The expedition was financed by Spain, sailed Spanish ships and finished its trip commanded by a Spanish sailor (Juan Sebastián Elcano).
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Spanish was not an empire of mere territorial possession, it was a civilization. Spain has currently 50 sites inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage [4], and from the ~150 sites in the Americas, ~50 were built by Spain. These includes entire cities, universities, hospitals, infrastructure, defenses and more [5].
No, I'm sayng that Portugal never closed the circuit that led to a global trade route. They built a line between Europe and Asia, but Asia and America remained economically disconnected. It was that loop that Spain closed that enabled a global economy.
There was nothing in the Americas as trade partners, in the meanwhile Portugal was trading with Africa, India and Asia (including Japan) in regular routes. Your point is moot.
...more than 160 years after the portuguese navy was founded, and 20 years after Henry the Navigator was dead. Still not as big of a gap as those 19th century references that you linked to reply to a post about 15th century events
I'm not sure what the organizative reform of Spain has to do with the founding date of Spain and Portugal's navies. In any case, the Spanish Armada is the result of joining the Castilian and Aragonese navies, both dating from the early XIII century: https://armada.defensa.gob.es/ArmadaPortal/page/Portal/Armad...
As a history enjoyer I have actually heard of this:
> The Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra) or the Spanish Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra española) is a purported historiographical tendency which consists of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda
Also unmentioned is the disastrous intervention in the Moroccan civil war of 1580, where the teen king and most of its nobles were killed, leading to 60 years of Spanish rule. This is not at the apex of the empire, but close.
Also, Henry the Navigator downright stole or cajoled most of the "inovations" from Italian city states. For example, the Madeira island was named so by Italians, settled by some of Henry's minions.
For anyone interested in this "They may have been the first to visit Australia.", the comment refers to a wreck supposedly found in 1836 by whalers near Warrnambool.
Fun fact: Macau was the oldest and longest lived European colony in Asia, 1557-1999. It’s still a fun place to visit and mostly off the radar for Western tourists.
Also Netherlands, also France, also Denmark, also Spain (melila and ceuta)... actually Portugal kinda is still the first global empire that managed to shift away from it
> They were most successful in Japan, creating about 300,000 converts until their activities induced a wave of xenophobia and they were either expelled or killed.
I am immensely glad that Japan was not colonised early on like the Philippines to their south unfortunately was.
I'm very aware, of course, of the horrific crimes that Japan carried out in China and other countries in the 1930s but that is not xenophobia. People going outside their country (to do whatever) are not affected by xenophobia. Xenophobia is a fear of people from outside the country, within that country.
Native cultures (however you want to define that) have always shown some curiousity and openness to visitors from outside the culture but that is balanced by some level of xenophobia too, that ramps up as people inside the culture feel that they are being overwhelmed. Both aspects of openness and shutting out are natural traits in any homogenous culture.
No xenophobia is “the fear or dislike of people who are perceived as being foreign or strange”. Thats just from the dictionary.
You could call the brutal repression of the Ainu and native Okinawans a kind of xenophobic/racist ultra nationalism. Also Japan’s crimes extend far beyond China, and were especially brutal in Korea were they practiced a horrific form of slavery.
The Japanese are so xenophobic they try to exclude the descendants of Korean slaves who have been living in Japan for a century, have Japanese names, and only speak Japanese. Their xenophobia is not laudable.
I am very aware of the history of the Japanese with the Ainu, the native Okinawans , and in Korea and Taiwan (and in other countries, as I have said).
The broader point that I am making, outside the specific instance of the Japanese which you seem to want to fixate on, is that xenophobia can be a useful social trait, to avoid a society being overwhelmed by a foreign ingress. This could work just as well for the Ainu, the Okinawans and the Koreans (and I'm sure they exhibited it too, but unfortunately weren't in a position to act on it strongly enough to defend against colonisation/vassalisation).
I'm clearly pointing out that you were wrong about the definition of xenophobia, and that the xenophobia of Japan was the seed for a fascist genocidal rampage. I would further argue that fearing people perceived as foreign which is what xenophobia is, is not necessary to establish and protect sovereignty or to hold close and nurture cherished cultural institutions.
I'm not fixated, I'm pointing out that xenophobia is actually bad and leads to bad things.
Every organism must have an immune system which is essential to (but does not guarantee) their survival. Just the same, a society has xenophonia as its immune system. That does not make it 'bad', even though it can produce very ugly effects.
I do not agree with your expansion of xenophobia to the behaviour of a people outside their own country. I do not agree that xenophobia is objectively bad. I also do not agree that "the xenophobia of Japan was the seed for a fascist genocidal rampage" and I doubt that many, if any, historians would agree with such a simplistic assertion either.
Since you seem to have a very closed mind on this subject (i.e. xenophobia == bad, bad, bad) and further discussion seems pointless I'll leave it here.
N19PEDL2 | a day ago
hearsathought | a day ago
Passing that hurdle, then you'd have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of western europe. Hard to imagine that.
Then of europe as a whole and so on. Almost a joke now.
Portuguese was never the major power of it's immediate vicinity, let alone the world. Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire. And portugual, like the netherlands, were minor powers within europe. Neither were major global powers as we understand the term and neither were powerful nor significant enough to produce a lingua franca of anything.
denismenace | a day ago
nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey
andrepd | a day ago
leflambeur | a day ago
The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.
So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.
rmah | a day ago
leflambeur | a day ago
gib444 | a day ago
Every time I meet a laid back, easy going and kind Portuguese person — which is most of them — I always think that explains their relatively unambitious world domination plans.
MITSardine | 15 hours ago
nunobrito | 13 hours ago
alephnerd | a day ago
> The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.
Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans and had access to gunpowders, naval yards, literacy, and proto-industrialization - and unifying them into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.
leflambeur | a day ago
I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.
alephnerd | a day ago
It was largely Amerindians who were exterminated and genocided with ease.
Conquering empires that were near-peers technologically is different from settling a continent which was at the losing end of the Colombian exchange.
leflambeur | a day ago
edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just talking about a different thing than I :)
edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory by other powers.
alephnerd | a day ago
Subjugating a native people that lacked metalworking, gunpowder, and literacy is different from conquering multiple nations that had all of those and was backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans.
leflambeur | 23 hours ago
hugodan | 22 hours ago
alephnerd | 21 hours ago
Heck, the only reason the Dutch couldn't completely invade Aceh was because the Ottomans and Mughals threatened to sanction the Dutch [2] in the 17th century for threatening a fellow Sunni state.
We are reverting to the historical norm where we don't need you Farangis anymore. O facto de o IDH da Malásia ter atingido o IDH de Portugal de há 7 anos mostra que vocês, portugueses, precisam de rever os vossos egos. Tendo passado anos em Boston, conheci muitas pessoas do seu tipo - Brasileiro e português.
[0] - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo595652...
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_expeditions_to_Aceh
[2] - https://brill.com/display/book/9789004454460/B9789004454460_...
leflambeur | 20 hours ago
hugodan | 13 hours ago
nunobrito | 13 hours ago
Despite neighbour to Spain: Portugal built a different culture altogether since its inception as an iberian kingdom. For example, instead of wiping out the muslim populations, the first king established a policy nowadays known as "don't ask, don't tell" in regards to religion. Which clashed with the Spanish/Italian approaches but at the same time permitted rapid expansion of territory since the population was absorved rather than decimated.
The Brazilian land has dense vegetation and native populations that never generated large settlements nor advanced cultures as you'd see in other parts of America, existing in a continuous state of tribal warring against each other.
The crown/church forbid portuguese women from travelling overseas and the number of sailors travelling was low (the kingdom was small population-wise). Portuguese technology and culture were very, very, very attractive to the native populations who came in contact with these sailor crews. They quickly mixed with the locals to create blood-related families on those locations with local leaders (same as done in India). The portuguese doctrine remained the same as during foundation times of the kingdom, aimed to mix as much as possible with local populations to thrive. This resulted in centuries of family ties across the atlantic that still last until today. Looking on my own example, I keep family ties on three different continents that all speak the same language.
All of this to say that integration was very fast from the native population point of view to join the empire because of mutual benefits for either parties, to the point that the portuguese army in the Americas was composed and lead in majority by natives themselves which went to subjugate rival tribes with better equipment than the counterparts.
christkv | 23 hours ago
vondur | 20 hours ago
leflambeur | 19 hours ago
I think that the losses in Asia were more lasting, or permanent.
ptsneves | 12 hours ago
Spain joined the Portuguese and Spanish armada and went on to fight the English (and Dutch to some extent), with catastrophic results for both Spain and Portugal fleets. When Portugal regained independence 1640 it needed to get back sovereignty of overseas territories, including from the Dutch.
The Dutch controlled a big part of north Brazil when Portugal and Spain were the Iberian Union, but the Dutch and were driven back afterwards at great cost. The damage was done, and 1755 earthquake was the final nail.
There were also terrible mistake in terms of state management up to the XX century where the natives, were not seen as full citizens, and naturally rebelled.
As a post colonial portuguese citizen, it seems like an incredible fantasy that our society descends from such a grandiose history. Even in this thread i see the name Henry the Navigator and am incredulous people know who he was.
A less known both inside and outside Portugal bad ass dude was Afonso de Albuquerque. This is from his English wikipedia page about Hormuz in the middle east:
> At the same time, Albuquerque decided to conclude the effective conquest of Hormuz. He had learned that after the Portuguese retreat in 1507, a young king was reigning under the influence of a powerful Persian vizier, Reis Hamed, whom the king greatly feared. At Ormuz in March 1515, Afonso met the king and asked the vizier to be present. He then had him immediately stabbed and killed by his entourage, thus "freeing" the terrified king, so the island in the Persian Gulf yielded to him without resistance and remained a vassal state of the Portuguese Empire.
Here came a dude that does both diplomacy and war in person, and moved on. Vasco da Gama was a bit similar. Portuguese were quite out of their minds and for me shows shows the pedigree of bloodlust[1] that Europeans must have gained after endless continental strife. That is why I am really afraid of the rearming of Europe, I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.
[1] https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-storia-do-mogor-by-nicco...
TheOtherHobbes | a day ago
Portugal was never interested in dominance of Europe - hard to project power to the centre when you're out on the far edge and have more of a navy than an army.
But the trade network was the first truly global network, and very much non-trivial.
antsou | a day ago
nunobrito | 14 hours ago
Interesting enough it has a wild variation of accents/slangs but the written form mostly stays the same regardless of the country.
Frieren | a day ago
> The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world and the received wisdom of ancient authority – the tales of dog-headed men and birds that could swallow elephants – by the empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history and cultures that ushered in the early modern age.
Technology brings societal change. The world has been becoming smaller with help of each new technological step. Societies can fight it, but it is unavoidable. So, I hope that we focus more on building a good world for us all using technology to improve all our lives.
nlitened | 11 hours ago
Isn’t it literally the God’s preference of a country for this place and time, from both secular and religious points of view?
Frieren | 8 hours ago
I agree that nowadays it is also used as just a substitute to "luck" or "random event" without the moral connotations.
ksec | 4 hours ago
I wonder when will China take the crown. Assuming US follows on their current trajectory.
braza | a day ago
One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.
pdpi | a day ago
What do you mean? (Asking this as a Portuguese guy who really doesn't feel at home back there any more)
Koshkin | 20 hours ago
Anon84 | 19 hours ago
pjmlp | 10 hours ago
The world complains about China, yet gladly pays for their stuff instead of local prices.
JetSpiegel | 22 hours ago
You mean "Descobrimentos", although that is kinda old fashioned.
They were "discovering" lands, the same way I discover Disneyland when I get there from the first time.
nunobrito | 13 hours ago
Poor corporate planning and execution is a long time Portuguese tradition. It seems our history is written by a few people that somehow emerge from that chaos and manage to put everyone else moving on some direction. Much of the lands overseas were left on their own, abandoned. There was an effort from their side to remain Portuguese because of family ties.
Brazil was different from the start. It was the chance to build a kingdom on a paradise without poverty and the problematic european neighbors. It shocks me to see the old brazilian cities with the same traditional architecture as seen on european portugal but placed in gorgeous locations. When I see those pictures, I understand why so many preferred to stay in Brazil.
Also, Brazil always had a strenght of its own that surpassed anything else seen before. Ships were larger and stronger when built there, population had a level of energy and optimism that surpassed the european counterparts. It was not a surprise when it became the heart and capital of the empire itself.
Just as curious note: Up to this day the spanish have much more respect for the portuguese than vice-versa. I was curious about why it happened that way, one day a old spanish told me something I didn't know: "it's because if we upset they portuguese they'll invade our land and burn Madrid again".
I never knew the portuguese had done such a thing, it isn't mentioned in school nor in popular culture but it did happened. Turns out this was during the wars against Spain, an army group from Brazil arrived to defend Portugal but more than just defending they went straight to the capital and subjugated it completely. This left such an impact on the self-esteem of the spanish that they haven't forgotten to this day. Brazil is indeed something else.
Um abraço deste lado do Atlântico.
AnimalMuppet | a day ago
This almost feels like state-sponsored R&D, 500 years ago.
ajb | a day ago
Buxato | a day ago
Buxato | a day ago
fauria | a day ago
1) The Manila galeon[1], the first trading route connecting Europe, America and Asia. This was the first trully global trade route (Portugual never established a trans-Pacific route).
2) The Real de a Ocho[2], the first global currency, used virtually everywhere including the US until the modern dollar replaced it in 1857. It still lives through the $ symbol, representing the Pillars of Hercules and the "Plus Ultra" script [3].
It also downplays the role of Spain in the first circumnavigation. Sure, Magellan was born in Portugal, but he sailed for the Spanish Crown. The expedition was financed by Spain, sailed Spanish ships and finished its trip commanded by a Spanish sailor (Juan Sebastián Elcano).
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Spanish was not an empire of mere territorial possession, it was a civilization. Spain has currently 50 sites inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage [4], and from the ~150 sites in the Americas, ~50 were built by Spain. These includes entire cities, universities, hospitals, infrastructure, defenses and more [5].
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRn5qCAXBI
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_ultra
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites_i...
[5] https://greatbritainandtheusatheirtruehistory.quora.com/33-c...
sigmar | 23 hours ago
You're saying because Portugal traded with Asia through the wrong ocean, it wasn't global? Seems like an odd metric.
fauria | 23 hours ago
leflambeur | 22 hours ago
nunobrito | 14 hours ago
hugodan | 23 hours ago
fauria | 22 hours ago
hugodan | 22 hours ago
fauria | 22 hours ago
someone7x | 21 hours ago
> The Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra) or the Spanish Black Legend (Spanish: leyenda negra española) is a purported historiographical tendency which consists of anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic propaganda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Legend
Pay08 | 14 hours ago
JackFr | 21 hours ago
JetSpiegel | 22 hours ago
Also, Henry the Navigator downright stole or cajoled most of the "inovations" from Italian city states. For example, the Madeira island was named so by Italians, settled by some of Henry's minions.
pjmlp | 10 hours ago
Fueled by the fact that his body was never found, so it might be that he survived and rather stay low than come back.
dwd | 22 hours ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahogany_Ship
seattle_spring | 22 hours ago
ricardorivaldo | 21 hours ago
United857 | 20 hours ago
araarabish | 20 hours ago
Anon84 | 19 hours ago
markdown | 19 hours ago
Anon84 | 19 hours ago
Pay08 | 14 hours ago
hugodan | 10 hours ago
oska | 19 hours ago
> They were most successful in Japan, creating about 300,000 converts until their activities induced a wave of xenophobia and they were either expelled or killed.
I am immensely glad that Japan was not colonised early on like the Philippines to their south unfortunately was.
ch4s3 | 18 hours ago
oska | 18 hours ago
Native cultures (however you want to define that) have always shown some curiousity and openness to visitors from outside the culture but that is balanced by some level of xenophobia too, that ramps up as people inside the culture feel that they are being overwhelmed. Both aspects of openness and shutting out are natural traits in any homogenous culture.
ch4s3 | 12 hours ago
You could call the brutal repression of the Ainu and native Okinawans a kind of xenophobic/racist ultra nationalism. Also Japan’s crimes extend far beyond China, and were especially brutal in Korea were they practiced a horrific form of slavery.
The Japanese are so xenophobic they try to exclude the descendants of Korean slaves who have been living in Japan for a century, have Japanese names, and only speak Japanese. Their xenophobia is not laudable.
oska | 11 hours ago
The broader point that I am making, outside the specific instance of the Japanese which you seem to want to fixate on, is that xenophobia can be a useful social trait, to avoid a society being overwhelmed by a foreign ingress. This could work just as well for the Ainu, the Okinawans and the Koreans (and I'm sure they exhibited it too, but unfortunately weren't in a position to act on it strongly enough to defend against colonisation/vassalisation).
ch4s3 | 6 hours ago
I'm not fixated, I'm pointing out that xenophobia is actually bad and leads to bad things.
oska | 38 minutes ago
I do not agree with your expansion of xenophobia to the behaviour of a people outside their own country. I do not agree that xenophobia is objectively bad. I also do not agree that "the xenophobia of Japan was the seed for a fascist genocidal rampage" and I doubt that many, if any, historians would agree with such a simplistic assertion either.
Since you seem to have a very closed mind on this subject (i.e. xenophobia == bad, bad, bad) and further discussion seems pointless I'll leave it here.
dzonga | 19 hours ago
Portuguese - wind
british - coal
america - oil
now we're witnessing Chinese master renewables (solar & wind)