Originally Posted by
Ludicus
I will not talk about the game.
But, historically speaking, that question also deeply irritates the historians:
In the introduction of the the book "Portuguese Empire,1415-1808", A.J. Ruseel-Wood, Prof. of History at Johns Hokins University, says:
" Portugal is a province of Spain, isnīt it? " The capital of Brazil is Buenos Aires." " They speak Spanish in Brazil" "Very few people speak Portuguese:itīs a Spanish dialect". Such statements testify the ignorance concerning the Portuguese Empire and the Portuguese-speaking world.
Consultation of the index of a recently published compendious (1536 pages) volume modestly entitled A History of Word Societies (by John P. McKay, Bennet D.Hill, John Buckler,Boston:Houghton Mifflin,1984) reveals only ten references for the span 1415-1975 under "Portugal". The index to the Pelican History of the World (Revised Edition. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books,1983) by J.M. Roberts gives a better idea of the dynamic of the Portuguese seaborne Empire with references under "Portugal" to "trading ships", "interest in Persia","trade with India","in China", "in Japan", "maritime expeditions", and "commercial imperialism".
Labourers in the field of of Latin American History are resigned to textbooks purporting to be histories of Spain and Portugal in the New World, only to discover that the Portuguese part has about the same ratio to the Spanish as has the visible part of an iceberg to the bulk under water, namely one ninth. How many Portuguese have not been denied the credit due to them by casual erasure of distinctions between Diego and Diogo, Juan and João, Gonzalez and Gonįalves, and Castilianization of Portuguese names?..."
And he goes on for two more pages. In the end, he says: "The Lusitanian world in motion was to have an ineradicable impact on Europe, Asia, Africa, and America"