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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].
lol, the trans-pacific route was pointless. Portugal monopolized the Indian ocean and spice trade for more than 100 years. It established the atlantic triangle trade of Africa (supplying slaves) to Brasil (supplying sugar) to Europe. All of them comercially viable for centuries. Meanwhile, Spain could barely cross the Pacific ocean and make it the viable trade route to the spice islands that it longed for to be.
Many forget that the circumnavigation of Magellan was both a mistake and a failure. The discovered pass to the Pacific, the southernmost point in the planet not counting Antarctica, was considered unnavigable most of the year (the magellan fleet had to wait 6 months at Puerto San Julian before daring to continue the search, surviving its first mutiny attempt), before treading the slow currents of the Pacific, which took down the majority of the fleet to scurvy (while most likely contributing to the madness of Magellan, which made him the delirious zealot which jumped foolishly to his death at the hands of Lapu Lapu). In fact, part of the fleet tried to make it back through the Pacific, only to give up again, come back to the spice islands and be captured by the portuguese, while the remainder barely made it back, commanded by Elcano, one of the mutineers of Puerto San Julian; a route that btw, they feared taking, as it was in direct violation of the Tordesillas treaty and would certainly condemn them to death would they be discovered. 1 ship out of 5 made it back. 18 out of 270 men. By the time they arrived, the new world colonization was still mostly considered a failure, Columbus still an outcast, not even worthy of naming the continent he discovered (this was roughly 18 years before the Aztecs, Incas, and all the gold and silver that got plundered).
Meanwhile, the portuguese routes remained largely uncontested, that is, until a certain young portuguese king died in a battle in the north of Africa leaving no children, thereby opening the door for the two crowns being ruled by the same king, and with it, making Portugal a target for the many enemies Spain had been collecting along the way. And that was the beginning of the end for the portuguese century.
The Manila galeon is certainly an historic milestone, but it connected America with Asia. Payload needed to be carried by land all the way to the Gulf of Mexico before departing to Europe. Barely global, if that's what's implied. It started quite late in the history of the spanish in Americas, some 100 years after the conquest of Mexico, because until then, extracting and transporting all the gold and silver to Europe was considered more profitable, until there was so much silver in circulation in Europe that it devalued it, thereby making Asia a more enticing market for its silver, as it was still considered valuable by then. The route also lasted a bit more than 50 years. Consider that the portuguese route to India was still being navigated way into the end of the 1800s, and only being truly disrupted by the opening of the Suez canal.
I'm not here to downplay the several achievements, or exacerbate the atrocities of the spanish empire. Every empire had them, no less the portuguese (while they did not come up with the idea of slavery, the atlantic triangle is responsible for the biggest intercontinental forced transfer of human beings in history, and the massive economic dependence it created in African kingdoms caused its brutal collapse after the abolition). But not calling it the first global empire of the discovery age, specially taking into consideration that they literally started a century before anyone else, is factually incorrect.
Portugal's supply chains only worked because they didn't cross the Pacific. Shorter routes, fewer points of failure, less time for everything to go sideways. Spain's route was impressive on paper but operationally a nightmare.
The Venetians did this in the 1400s. Same pattern: control the chokepoints, extract rent, call it an empire. The Dutch just scaled it with better ships and accounting.
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.
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.
> 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.
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 ran into something similar when researching colonial trade routes last year. Portugal actually controlled critical chokepoints—the Cape route, Malacca, Macau—which let them extract rents from Asian trade for decades. That's real power projection, even if they didn't occupy massive land territories like Spain or Britain did later.
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.
But what exactly would "investing in production" have looked like in 16th-17th century Portugal? The population was tiny compared to Spain or France. Even if they'd wanted domestic manufacturing at scale, did they have the labor pool or capital markets to pull it off?
> 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.
I spent a few months in Lisbon reading through maritime archives and what struck me was how much of Portugal's early advantage came down to shipbuilding innovations they kept secret. The caravel design let them sail closer to the wind than anyone else, which mattered enormously when you're the first trying to round African capes against prevailing winds.
> 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.