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.
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].
[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...
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
>This was the first trully global trade route (Portugual never established a trans-Pacific route).
You're saying because Portugal traded with Asia through the wrong ocean, it wasn't global? Seems like an odd metric.
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.
This is true. Tordesillas meant that trans-Pacific trade was not realistic for Portugal.
Don’t forget the Dutch who were the first to have colonies in North and South America, Africa and Asia.
Spain didn't exist back then
Establishing when did Spain become Spain is complicated, but a commonly agreed date is 1480, following the Cortes of Toledo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Castile
...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...
During the Napoleonic wars, the entire Portuguese court relocated to Rio de Janiro which became the new capital. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transfer_of_the_Portuguese_cou...
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.
Technically, also the last global empire. Macau wasn't returned to China until 1999. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Handover_of_Macau
France and USA still have colonies around the world. So no, not the last.
Are those considered colonies or territories?
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.
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.
each empire of built on mastering an energy source
Portuguese - wind
british - coal
america - oil
now we're witnessing Chinese master renewables (solar & wind)
It would be interesting to imagine a uchronic world where Portuguese has become the lingua franca of the world.
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?
Didn’t the Dutch basically take over the Portuguese trading empire from them?
Yes, to a significant but not total degree. Some of those losses were later recouped by Portugal (current Northeastern Brazil and Angola).
I think that the losses in Asia were more lasting, or permanent.
> 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.
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.
do 99.9% of the people born there speak Dutch? When they became independent, were they 80%+ Reformed Dutch protestants?
I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.
Was Brazil inhabited by countries with access to gunpowder, naval yards, proto-industrialization, and allies with transcontinental empires? No.
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.
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.
and just how did they got the gunpowder? ;)
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.
[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_...
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!!
No, lol, that is not how that works. Your point is factually wrong, your point doesn't "stand".
The Dutch had more in common with British East India company phase of the British expansion.
> 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 sometimes describe themselves as the "povo de brandos costumes" (people of mild customs).
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.
> Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire.
nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey
In this house, Vasco da Gama is a hero, end of story!
There is a very good reason why Portugal and the Netherlands were so similar, in this regard!
When xenophobia is a useful social defence :
> 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.
The peak of Japanese xenophobia in the 1930s however was conversely very unfortunate for everyone nearby.
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.
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.
> Navegações
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.
> but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad
What do you mean? (Asking this as a Portuguese guy who really doesn't feel at home back there any more)
The Chinese selling Portuguese souvenirs made in China?
A lot of which are Sino-Portuguese from Macau that moved (or their families moved) after Macau was returned to China...
go portugal !
> 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.
Portugal. The man. The empire.
Spain facepalm.
