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Thread: Portugal - Faction Thread.

  1. #41
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    Portuguese Language in the Empire

    As they moved along the West African coast, the Portuguese realized that Arabic was not understood by the peoples they came across and that other languages were spoken by the natives of the lands they discovered.
    One of the most important agents in spreading the knowledge of Portuguese in those distant countries was the church, whose missionary work of conversion requires the use of language not only for communication on ordinary affairs but also for the purpose of religious instruction.
    At the same time, many of the religious orders were committed to the study of native languages, and it was their work that produced the first grammar books of these languages.
    When Diogo Cão discovered the Kongo, the Portuguese captain decided to take some of the Africans back to Portugal with him. Since the Africans were noblemen in their own society, they were presented at the court and instructed in the Portuguese language and matters of faith. One year later, when the Kongolese were returned, the King of Kongo was delighted and asked for further help of Portugal.

    By training in the Portuguese language a few people from the communities they had encountered, the invaders established the necessary channels for communication.

    From the fifteenth century, in the wake of the navigations, the Portuguese language was spoken in wider and wider areas of the navigations, and was a means of communication with diverse peoples in Asia, Africa, and America.
    In India, Portugal promoted effectively a policy of mixed marriages, and those communities used the Portuguese language and favored its expansion.
    In Goa and other areas, the administration used the Portuguese language, which became obligatory for everyone. Schools where set up to teach the Portuguese.

    After the military intervention, the second factor explaining the expansion of the Portuguese language was trade
    When Afonso de Albuquerque captured Malacca, he opened up the doors to Portuguese merchants and encouraged the development of an extensive network that was supported by Portuguese–speaking peoples stationed on the Asian rim of the Pacific Ocean.

    For three hundred years, Portuguese was the vehicle of communication.

    It was usually a language grammatically simplified, or a creole, which would be the basis of all creoles still in existence or that have already disappeared in that part of the world.
    A third factor in the expansion of the Portuguese language was missionary work.
    In 1600, an English merchant, who met a Japonese Lord, , was able to make himself understood in Portuguese.
    Between 1602 and 1633, the Dutch took Portuguese interpreters aboard their ships.
    In 1646 and 1656, the Kings of Ceylon used the Portuguese language in their communication with the Dutch.
    The Indo-Portuguese creole languages in Asia were the creole of Malacca, spoken in western Malaysia.The creole of Macao, which was no longer spoken after 1800; and the creole of Sri Lanka (Ceylon)
    The creoles spoken in India ( Chaul, Cannanore, Tellicherry, Cochin) began to lose their importance only by the end of the nineteenth century.

    The Portuguese language was the first instrument of communication between the Japan and the West.
    Other foreigners were used obliged to use it in their relations with the Japanese.
    The Portuguese missionaries brought into Japan a press with movable metallic characters, which was used to spread knowledge of the Japanese language.
    Father João Rodrigues was the author of the first grammar of the Japanese language,“Arte da Ligoa de Iapan” which is consulted to this day by Japanese experts who want to know the history of their language.
    We owe to the Portuguese Jesuits the transcription of the Japanese into the Roman alphabet.
    There are many borrowings in Portuguese from other Oriental languages besides Japanese.In spite of the differences, the first contacts between the Christian Portuguese and Hinduism were favored by certain cultural ambiguities. Catholicism had a figurative art that could be made to correspond in the Indian imagination with representations of the Hindu religion. This gave the Portuguese an advantage over the Dutch, whose Calvinism was less congenial to the character of the Oriental faith.
    The resistence or persistence of the Portuguese language over 300 years owes much to such factors.

    That the Portuguese were the first in the region also gave their language an advantage.
    The economic supremacy of Great Britain supplanted its use in trade relations with the adoption of the English. By 1800, the Portuguese language was spoken only in the territories under Portuguese administration in India, China and Timor. The situation has changed, although there were pockets, where the Portuguese survived in reduced form.

    The Marquis de Pombal was not only a great reformer of education, but also a man of vision regarding the choice of a national language in Brazil.
    The complex linguistic mosaic of the country was made more difficult by the African languages spoken by the slaves.
    The Marquis de Pombal changed this situation radically.In a directive of 1757, he made Portuguese the official language in the Amerindian settlements of Pará and Maranhão.
    Boys and girls attending school, and natives capable of instruction, where not allowed to use the language of their nations.
    By a royal letter of January 15, 1754, the difference between the natives and whites had been abolished,, and a writ of April 4, 1755, had established that the Amerindians could marry whites.
    The writ of May 8, 1758, confirmed that the Amerindians were were the masters of their freedom and their property. Any natives who had a knowledge of the Portuguese language and the necessary qualifications could have access to a post in public administration.
    This was one of the most remarkable acts of Pombal administration.
    Gradually, the Portuguese language gained ground. The Portuguese spread widely with a rich variety of linguistic invention that revealed the strands of Brazilian society and the composition of its identity.

    Excerpts from:
    Source : "Linguage and literature in the Portuguese Empire"
    Luis de Sousa Rebelo,King´s College London
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 01, 2007 at 01:49 PM.

  2. #42
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    Expansion - First Encounters:

    From the portuguese point of view, first encounters were elements in a process of reconnaissance. As such, they served first and foremost as information-gathering execises. By making contact with unfamiliar peoples, the Portuguese could acquire new knowledge – and the thirst for such knowledge, so characteristic of the European Renaissance mentality, undoubtedly played a role in the Portuguese urge to voyage ever further into the unknown. But the Portuguese were also well aware that the new knowledge could be turned to material advantage.
    By about 1420, Henry´s ships had passed Cape Noun, 150 km beyhond Agadir, and so entered waters not previously frequented, even by Muslim shipping.
    As they sailed progressively further into the unknown, Portuguese experienced an extraordinary series of first encounters with peoples previously unfamiliar to Europeans – first along the coasts of Atlantic Africa and later in East Africa, Moonsoon Asia, and the Americas.
    The encounters were creative moments in history, initiating entirely new relationships between peoples.
    On a voyage in 1433, on the African coast, footprints of men and camels were seen, and the following year an actual first ter took place. Two young Portuguese had been sent island on horseback from a point where their captain, Afonso Lopes Baldaia, had anchored his ship. Their instructions were to search for inhabitants. After rinding some distance along a river, they came across a band of men, probably Sahaja (Berber origin).
    Almost a decade later, in 1444, Dinis Dias, sailing in the vicinity of Cape Vert, made the first recorded European sighting of black Africans in their own country. The people concerned were Jolofs, whom Azurara (15 Century chronicler) affirms had never before been seen a sailing ship. He claims they were unable to make up their mind whether Dias´s caravel was a kind of fish, an enormous bird, or even an apparition. Eventually, a curious group approached in a dugout canoe- but quickly fled on discovering that the mysterious object contained men.This accident must have constituted one of the earliest “ethnographic moments” in the history of European expansion- a landmark first encounter between indigenous people and a shipload of white intruders.
    In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, repeated contacts of this kind occurred between the Portuguese and non-Europeans in many disparate parts of the globe. Consequently, it was often Portuguese who undertook the first European observations of other peoples and places, and it was through Portuguese eyes that many images of others were first convoyed to Europe. Conversely, the images of Europe and Europeans first formed by other peoples in the early centuries of expansion were frequently based primarily on observations of the Portuguese.
    When in 1498 Vasco da Gama finally reached Asia by sea, his first encounter with Indians in India took place at Calicut, in present –day Kerala.
    The circumstances of this first encounter differed from those with coastal west Africans, for India had been known in Europe, albeit somewhat vaguely, since classic times, and a trickle of Europeans travellers had continued to visit the subcontinent using the overland routes ever since.
    On arrival in Calicut, da Gama was able to observe quite accurately the physical environment and also the appearance and some of the manifest costumes of the people encountered. He also came to appreciate, in a general sense, that Indian culture and society were rich and complex, but he acquired little understanding even of the essentials, let alone the subtleties.Vasco da Gama had apparently left Portugal assuming that the India was inhabited mainly by Christians, with a Muslim minority.
    Conversely, at the first encounter of the Indians and seaborne Portuguese in 1499, the Indians tried to locate the newcomers within the range of their own previous experience. The Portuguese were therefore identified as just another group of Near Eastern Muslims – a type of “Western” foreigner that was already known in the Kerala ports. Local people flocked to see the visitors but were puzzled by their unusual dress and their inability to speak or understand Arabic. Each side was therefore highly inquisitive about eachother, but each was inclined to interpret that other within a frame of reference that was comfortably familiar.

    Two years later, Pedro Alvares Cabral chanced on the coast of Brasil, and another first encounter occurred. No direct communication occurred, but presents of hats were offered by the Portuguese and accepted by the Tupiniquins, who gave in exchange a feathered headdress .In the following day, two Amerindian men were brought aboard the flagship.They showed little fear , and in an astonishing display of casualness, promptly lay down on the deck and went to sleep.In the following days, the Portuguese found themselves fascinated by these Indians´unself-counsciousness, charmed by their physical beauty, and touched by their seeming naivete. They also convinced themselves that such people would both readily accept Chistianity and make excellent laborers.
    In the early West African stages of expansion, profit was specially sought through the traditional pursuits of plundering and slave raiding. Later the emphasis almost invariably switched to trading, as early as 1448 Prince Henry forbade slave raiding by anyone voyaging to West Africa south of Cape Bojador.

    After the Portuguese had made the great breakthrough to India, they spread extremely rapidly throughout most of maritime Asia by taking advantage of the established trading routes of the Indian Ocean and the China Seas.
    The Portuguese had heard about China in India, and in 1509. Diogo Lopes Sequeira was instructed to seek information about the Chinese, including their military capacity, their religion, their trade, and their attitude toward Islam. The Portuguese encountered expatriate Chinese at Malacca and learned much about them. Another people of whom the Portuguese initially became aware through indirect reports where the Sinhalese of Ceylon.
    From the beginning, the Portuguese were aware of the urgent need to communicate more effectively with natives and developed procedures for this purpose. As early as the 1440´s it was a standard practice to try to seize individuals and take them back to Portugal so they could learn Portuguese and also reveal something of their own ways. Later, they could serve as interpreters. Another common practice was to leave behind a young Portuguese or two at the conclusion of the first encounter. Their brief was to establish working relations with the natives, win their trust, and learn their language.

    Violence was never far below the surface at the initial encounters, although its use as first resort by the Portuguese was unusual.
    For instance:it was on the basis of first pre-contact information that the king of Portugal first decided to build a fortress on Ceylon. When D. Lourenço de Almeida finally reached the island in 1506, the king of Kotte offered friendship and vassalage to the king of Portugal.
    As their voyaging extended, the Portuguese developed less confrontational approaches, preferring persuasion to force, where possible. First encounters, however they were managed, gave rise to images of others that were often lasting – both in Portuguese minds and in the minds of those they encountered. Such images could play a crucial role in the development of future relationships.

    By the middle of the sixteenth century, the Portuguese were well entrenched in maritime Asia and at various points on the fringes of West and East Africa. They had also begun their occupation of coastal Brazil, and for them, the making of first contacts with unfamiliar peoples by sea was virtually over.
    Portugal had acquires an almost global network of settlements, and trading posts, scattered among three continents and numerous islands. With the framework of its maritime empire in place, Portugal was moving forward from an era of first encounters to one of frontier encounters- that is, encounters along the borders of what was by then Portuguese-controlled territory and increasingly also into interiors well beyhond that territory.

    Excerpts from:
    “Portuguese expansion, 1400-1800: encounters, negotiations, and interactions”.
    Anthony Disney,Australia, La Trobe University,Melbourne.
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 02, 2007 at 03:16 PM.

  3. #43

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    The importance of portuguese as an international language and "lingua franca" language in Africa, Asia and Indonesia remained until the end 17th century. Dutch seamen were forced to use portuguese when in comunication with the local peoples in several locations and even ironically used portuguese navigators in several of their trade routessince there were times when they were dependent on their knowledge concerning safe trade routes and overhaul knowledge of the seas in those regions.

    The importance of portguese as the most used international language remained until the 17th century although in the atlantic region during the 18th century it was among the most used "lingua franca" for comerce and comunication between colonial empires.

    The impact of portuguese in Japan is also reflected by the creation of several ethnical doctrines which attracted great interest in Japan. these doctrines came from a mix unfluence of Japanese and Portuguese cultural/religious ethnical codes.
    Last edited by numerosdecimus; November 02, 2007 at 07:14 PM.

  4. #44
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    Expansion,frontier encounters and negotiations.

    The Portuguese possessions in Asia adjoined an immense diversity of nation, kingdoms, and cities, many of them wealthy and highly sophisticated by contemporary European standards.
    Frontiers seemed at first and foremost lines of defense in zones of confrontation. It is therefore hardly surprising that fortresses were among the most visible manifestations of the Portuguese presence overseas.
    The Portuguese intrusion into Morocco had been sustained by maintaining a defensive ring of fortresses.
    In Asia and tropical Africa, and to a lesser extend even in Brazil, virtually every Portuguese settlement or possession came to include one or more fortresses.
    Many of them still exist today and impress the visitor with their awesome appearance and often massive dimensions. They include Fort Aguada in Goa, Fort Jesus in Mombasa, and the fortresses of São Jerónimo in Damão, São Miguel in Luanda, and the vast complex of fortifications that defended Diu.
    As these buildings suggest, in the 16th and 17th centuries a high proportion of the white population in Portugal’s scattered overseas possessions were either soldiers or former soldiers.
    The violence that actually took place over time varied much over time.
    Early on it was often predatory, poor controlled. Later it was better controlled, more institutionalized and more defensive in nature, manning the fortresses, maintaining fleets, and occasionally confronting major crisis, such as the two celebrated sieges of Diu by Gujarati and Ottoman forces.
    It was in response to the sieges that the architect Francisco Pires designed the massive defenses of Diu (portuguese until 1961), thereby introducing into the Portuguese system defense overseas, for the first time, military fortifications typical of the European Renaissance.







    While one form of military presence on the frontier was the sedentary fortress garrison, another was highly mobile expeditionary columns that penetrated the interior.

    In Brazil, bands of colonists known as “Bandeirantes” raided the vast area south and southwest of São Paulo region, and later, by 1650-1670´s the northeastern backlands.
    In West Africa, Paulo de Novais founded the city of Luanda.
    From Luanda the Portuguese gradually forced their way to interior. It was a bloody and prolonged struggle against fierce Mbundu resistence. Gradually, however, the Portuguese succeeded in establishing a serie of fortified posts in the interior that formed the nucleus of what became Portuguese Angola.
    Comparable situations developed in some other parts of the Portuguese world, particularly in Mozambique and, for a while, in Ceylon.
    In Asia, short term incursions-raids- were generally a more common feature of the military frontier. Albuquerque´s famous capture of Malacca, was in part a great “razzia”.

    Of course, not all Portuguese frontier encounters were military.
    At frontier, culture meet, learn from each other peoples, traditions and ways of life. Peaceful frontier encounters were often by-products of either trade or religious proselytizing.
    One of the most important and famous of the former occurred between the Portuguese and the Chinese in South China. In about 1557, Portuguese traders had been permitted to settle at Macao. The Macao Portuguese for three –quarters of a century drove an extraordinary profitable trade with China.
    The Chinese demand for silver was insatiable. Thus, the Portuguese could trade spices for Chinese silks and porcelains, sell these to the Japanese, who prized them above their own products, together with some European goods such as firearms, in exchange for silver and, finally, exchange the silver in China for gold at a very favourable rate.
    The commercial losses suffered by the Chinese as a result of their isolationism and the prohibition of their own navigation were gains for the Portuguese.
    As the American scholar George D.Winius has aptly put it, "in the Atlantic the Portuguese were explorers; in the Indian Ocean they were conquerors and in the Far East they were businessmen".

    In Ceylon, Portugal sought to reduce Kotte to client status. The principal prizes was control of cinnamon, but accessing the gem and elephant trades, while ousting the Malabar the Malabar Muslims from the area, were also an important objectives.
    Mainly through diplomatic pressure backed, where necessary by force, gradually the Portuguese got the upper hand in Kiotto. They built a fortress in Colombo and secured an alliance with the King. In the end, the Portuguese were forced out of Ceylon, although this might not have happened had the Dutch not intervened against them.

    Most formal Portuguese negotiations with Asian courts were conducted less aggressively than those against Kotto.
    Over time, they constructed a remarkably wide and complex network of overseas diplomatic relationships.
    These relationships were managed, in practice, by the viceroy at Goa. He occupied the center of a diplomatic web so extensive that it equalled or surpassed those maintained by many contemporary European monarchs.

    The formation of Portugal’s diplomatic network in the Indian Ocean received it first great impetus from the conquests of Afonso de Albuquerque.
    After his seizure of Goa, Albuquerque received delegations from some of the most powerful rulers of India, including the Hindu emperor Krishna Deva Raya of Vijaynagara and the Muslim raja Mahmud Bergarha of Gujarat. He also received an ambassador from Shah Ismael of Persia, and in response proposed to Ismael a Persian-Portuguese alliance against the Ottomans Turks.
    Viceroys at Goa, after Albuquerque, came to maintain diplomatic contacts with numerous states and provincial administration in India. Spies and informers supplemented the network and a viceroy could write to the king “I have spies in all the courts of the kings of India”.

    As the Portuguese established their presence throughout the ports of Asia and Africa, Portuguese itself was increasingly adopted as an international medium of communication, albeit in a simplified form.

    The only surviving Indian creoles are: Diu Indo-Portuguese (almost extinct): in Diu.
    Daman Indo-Portuguese (Língua da Casa) : in Daman.
    Kristi: in Korlai, Maharashtra.
    Christians, even in Calcutta, used Portuguese until 1811. A Portuguese Creole was still spoken in the early 20th century.

    Portuguese remained an international language of diplomacy in much of the maritime Asia well into the eighteenth century, when it was gradually displaced by English.

    Portuguese found themselves transplanted into host societies from which they drew their women, increasingly their domestic culture, and ultimately many of their values.
    These processes involved great progress in communicating cross-culturally, especially through the mastering of mutually comprehensible languages.
    The contrasting and in some respects conflicting trends pursued more strongly by the Portuguese than by other European people, except perhaps the French – led to the blooming of a series of hybrid cultures, from Cap Verde to the Zambezi and from São Paulo to Macao, that were among the most striking by-products of Portugal’s overseas expansion.

    Portuguese expansion, 1400-1800: encounters, negotiations, and interactions.
    Anthony Disney,Australia, La Trobe University,Melbourne.

    Silk and silver: Macau, Manila and trade in the China Seas
    John Villiers, lecture.
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 04, 2007 at 01:35 PM.

  5. #45
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    The Economy of the Portuguese Empire,1680 -1800.

    By the end of the 17th, it was clear that Brazil had become the keystone of Portugal’s imperial activity.

    In India, there had been some recovery of the Estado da India by the 1680´s, and when well administered and when costly wars could be avoided, the Estado da India could still be a profitable enterprise.

    At the beginning of the 18th, Frei António do Rosário, noting the wealth of the Brazilian colony, had written that Brazil was now the “true India and Mina of Portugal”.
    The discovery of gold in Brazil around 1695 and the revelation of large deposits of gold in Minas Gerais , Mato Grosso and Goiás transformed the nature of the Portuguese Empire.
    Based only on official figures, Minas Gerais alone produced 8.2 tons between 1730 and 1740.(2.7 from 1700-1710; 5.9 from 1711-1720; 6.6 from 1721-1729)
    These were figures that in a single decade, far exceeded all the gold production of Spanish America up to that time.

    At his height between 1750 and 1754, Brazilian gold-production levels reached an average of over 3 metric tons per year. Here was that the long-waited “El Dorado” that the Portuguese crown has dreamed of and hoped for in the overseas empire.
    In Brazilian, gold stimulated a tremendous shift of the population towards the interior, and a new flood of immigration from Portugal.
    Rough mining camps grew into towns, routes of supply and commerce developed.
    In the Serra do Frio area, where diamonds where discovered in the 1720´s, patrols from companies of dragoons, (strict governmental control) and a royal monopoly contract were imposed on the mine of the precious stones.

    Contraband was a constant problem. British ships often called at Lisbon when the Brazilian fleets arrived in order to pick up gold illegally.
    The gold was used to pay for the Portugal’s balance-of-trade deficit, which was growing because of new demands for luxury items that the acess to gold made possible.
    London alone minted over 8,000,000 of gold coins in the decade from 1713 to 1724.
    As Adam Smith recognized, Brazilian gold was an essential element in the growth of British economy. It helped to lay the basis for the Industrial Revolution.
    It did not have similar effects in Portugal, where it provided the Portuguese crown with the resources for pharaonic building projects, and for absolutist ambitions.
    In truth, the gold produced a tremendous amount of revenue for the crown through various taxes and imposts.

    It is important to note that at no time did the value of gold outweigh that of agricultural production in the colony.
    In 1760, when the Brazilian exports were valued at 4,800,000 milréis, sugar accounted for half of that figure and gold for 46%.
    During all this period, the traditional agricultural exports of the colony (sugar, tobacco, and leather, hides, dried meat) continued to be the basis of the colony wealth.

    The mid-century period, roughly coinciding with the rule of Marquis de Pombal, marked an important turning point.
    Marquis de Pombal realized that Brazil had become the cornerstone of the imperial economy and the key to Portugal’s regeneration was the application of mercantilist measures to the Portuguese economy.


    Along with political, administrative, military, and social reforms, Pombal initiated a series of economical and fiscal measures that altered the nature and functioning of the Brazilian economy.
    The creation of large monopoly trading companies such as the Companhia Geral do Comercio do Grão Pará e Maranhão ( export of colonial products, monopoly of supply of African slaves, control of trade from Europe) and the Companhia Geral do Comercio de Pernambuco e Paraíba (similar goals for the north eastern captaincies) were the cornerstones of the Pombaline policy.
    For sugar’s recovery, it was important the outbreak of war between England and France, which once again opened new opportunities for Brazilian sugar;some was consumed in Portugal, most of it was re-exported to other European countries.
    By 1770, Maranhão was exporting large quantities of rice, and cotton. ( Portugal no longer needed to import foreign rice)
    The culture of wheat and coffee was expanded.
    A royal order from 1766 noted that “agriculture and commerce are the two wellsprings of a people’s wealth and finding the later free and open, there only remains to stimulate the former”
    War with Spain beginning at 1762 involved Brazil in a long struggle over its southern frontier, which lasted until 1777.

    From the metropolitan point of view, Pombal´s economic policies, including his promotion of Portuguese manufactures, produced benefit.
    Portugal’s exports to England were 34% higher and imports were 44% lower in the period between 1771 and 1775 than they had been between 1751 and 1755.
    Cotton shipments from Portugal to England doubled between the 1780´s and 1790´s , and by the decade of the 1790´s, perhaps a quarter of Manchester cotton were made with Brazilian cotton.
    By the first half of the decade of the 1790´s Portugal was exporting to England goods valued over a million pounds sterling more than what England was returning.
    During the period from 1796 to 1806, Portugal’s exports had a spectacular annual growth of 4%.

    Clearly, Portugal’s economic relationship with England was being altered in this period, a fact of some concern to England itself.
    Now was England rather than Portugal that had to send gold to make up the deficit in its balance trade.

    Portugal was also engaged in commerce with US, Italy, France, and the Baltic States.
    Its ability to re-export the products of its colonies gave Portugal a decided edge in its commerce.
    Moreover, the great colonial companies had become vehicles for the import of Portuguese manufactures into the growing Brazilian market.
    In Brazil,Pombal´s policies “planted the seeds” for the tremendous growth of the Brazilian economy after 1780.
    That change was also caused by the international situation. The French Revolution and the Haitian revolt of 1792 disrupted the commerce of the major powers. Portugal was able to fill the gap. Brazilian sugar now supplied about 15% of the Atlantic market.

    By the late 18th, Brazil had created a “country trade” similar to that which had existed in the Estado da India in the 16th.

    Excerpts from :
    Schwartz, S.B., (Yale University) The Economy of the Portuguese Empire,pages 19-48.
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 08, 2007 at 04:26 AM.

  6. #46

    Default Re: Portugal - Faction Thread.

    Curiously in this thread we didn't talk much about the Portuguese
    participation in the "Seven Years War" (the uniforms that Boicote posted are
    wonderful)… it was not brilliant… but here it goes…

    In 1762 Portugal had a neutrality policy and lived an half a century
    period of relative peace. Has it was already told here, the kingdom
    had participated vigorously in the Spanish Succession War and against
    the Turks in the cape of Mattapan naval battle, but after that, in
    Europe, just had some border skirmishes.

    So, by that time, the country was not ready to war, when some Spanish
    forces (allied of the French) crossed the border, and asked for help
    to the Great-Britain government. It was asked for a military
    commander, an expeditionary corps, and some military equipment. The
    British agreed with both requests and promised 6000 infantrymen and
    one cavalry regiment.

    In theory, since the reorganization of 1735, the Portuguese army (in
    Europe) had 22 infantry regiments (with 26400 men), 6 light cavalry
    regiments e 4 of dragoons (with 3400 to 7000 men); but with the
    Financial restrictions and the Lisbon Earthquake the numbers where
    below that figures. Probably some 13800 (infantry) and 2800 (cavalry);
    in the at year of 1762 was made an effort to raise up the army but
    that was not fully achieved;

    The commander that was sent by the British was a German, Count Lippe,
    ruling count of Schaumbrg-Lippe, influenced by both in British and
    Prussian military tradition.

    When he arrived at Portugal, a handful of forts had fall to the
    Spanish and some without firing a shot.

    But for the Spanish the campaign was not untroubled. A document of
    1767 states that they had more than 20000 casualties especially with
    lack of food. That made them retreat from Cidade Rodrigo.

    Like in the later Peninsular War the Portuguese irregular forces also
    made the life difficult to the enemy (the Spanish "guerilleros" aren't
    a invention of the Peninsular war, and existed
    "guerrilheiros"/partisans of both sides o the border). And Lippe soon
    discovered their value.

    In the campaign Lippe was in a bad position (Henry Lloyd memories are
    a good source about the campaign). The count had some 14000/15000
    available men and the Spanish some 42000.

    (continues...)

    Sources:
    Portugal Militar, Carlos Selvagem;
    e
    Nova História Militar de Protugal, vol 2, varios.
    Last edited by Tulius Hostilius; November 12, 2007 at 10:39 AM.
    Um dia destes vou mudar a minha assinatura.

  7. #47

    Default Re: Portugal - Faction Thread.



    (About Count of Lippe: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm...haumburg-Lippe)


    Count of Schaumburg-Lippe

    So, the count tried to maintain most of is army intact, as a manoeuvrable force, and to maintain his heavy fortified positions. He was helped by the inconsequent Spanish offensive that in six months changed four times of objective. The first Spanish objective was to penetrate in the northeast to reach Porto/Oporto. But around Foz Côa some irregular forces achieved to stop them.

    The second Spanish effort was made against the fort of Almeida. Against this Spanish effort, Lippe, avoiding a frontal confront that could be fatal, made an attempt to disrupt enemy communications in Badajoz, Mérida and Cáceres, in Spanish territory. Not all the operations are successful. There where also small detachments that patrolled the Spanish always avoiding contact, general Townshend had the mission to stop the Spanish advance against Oporto or Coimbra; The action against Valença de Alcântara commanded by Bourgoyne (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Burgoyne), with 17 infantry battalions, and 4 regiments of cavalry dwith lack of supplies din’t achieve the objective of destruction of the enemy supply deposits, that could avoid future attacks against the Portuguese territory in Alentejo;

    The relations between Lippe and some Portuguese military staff responsible by the supplies (Count of Oeiras) went bad, with Lippe requesting the substitution of the Count of Oeiras; After that, at 26 of August, of that year of 1762, the fort of Almeida falls prematurely in Spanish hands. In the fort there where 3000 men with the governador Palhares and the British officer Mclean; but the desertion quickly weakened the garrison. The Count, with 4 English regiments quickly reinforced the Townshend detachemente to avoid Spanish progression.

    Curiously the Spanish changed again, and this time went a bit more to the south, from Alcantara, they inflicted to Penamacor with the objective to reach Abrantes, where were the major Portuguese military base. But, again, at 11 of September, the Spanish changed offensive and made an effort even more to the south, in Alentejo.

    ...

    Edit:
    The sources are the same of the previous post. The links to wiki are only to give different perspectives of the personalities;
    Last edited by Tulius Hostilius; November 12, 2007 at 11:27 AM.
    Um dia destes vou mudar a minha assinatura.

  8. #48
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    Portugal Expansion in Global context

    The emphasis historians usually place on European maritime imperialism is justified.
    Long-range maritime imperialism was genuinely one of the original features of the early modern period in world history.
    Seaborne empires, forged around seas, adhering to their rims and dependent on maritime communications, had been known in antiquity and the Middle Ages in the Mediterranean. The Knytlinga empire around the North Sea in the eleventh century has been put in this category, as has the trans-Channel “Norman Empire” that succeeded to it. The Chola empire of the same period, although evidence about it is elusive, probably qualifies for admission in the same category. Networks of commercial communities or colonies and, to some extent, of political allegiance, were spread around monsoonal seas in what we think of as the Middle Ages from centers in southern Arabia, the Persian Gulf, India, and China.
    For a moment in the 15th, Chinese flag-waving along commercial routes in monsoonal seas seemed about to acquire an imperial character, with large-scale naval expeditions, which reached Arabia and East Africa, and spasmodic political interventions as far afield as Java, Ceylon, and Malacca. For adventurers from Western Europe, in the same period, the African Atlantic, encompassing the Canary Islands, the Azores, and some stations on the African coast, became an arena of conquest and colonization.
    Never before, however, as far as we know, had maritime imperialism on the scale of the early modern period been attempted, let alone achieved.
    Moreover, while European impact varied considerably and was almost negligible in some areas, there were two contexts in which its effects were tremendous.
    Contact, conflict, and contagion overhauled parts of the New World where white colonization penetrated: New diseases killed millions and recarved the demographic profile, while new biota stripped and reclothed vast environments.
    Meanwhile, with increasing intensity in the 17th and 18th, parts of Africa experienced challenges arising from the slave trade.
    Warfare was encouraged, raptor-states emerged, and in some places the depredations of slavers had distorting demographic effects.
    The extent of these changes, in both Africa and Americas, is much disputed and cannot be quantified with anything like exactitude. But in the American case, even the modest estimates are formidable.
    Portuguese imperialism played a role of unquestionable significance in effecting these transformations.
    The transportation of sugar to America, for which the Portuguese colonists were largely responsible in Brazil, was the most thoroughgoing new influence on the ecology of the region between the ranchlands of northern New Spain and the Brazilian sertão in the 16th.
    Portuguese agents moreover, played a major role in the slave trade. They controlled key emporia, supplied more shipping than competitors of any other nation, and dominated contacts with some of the indigenous states that were the most prolific suppliers of slaves in Africa.
    Furthermore, the facts remain that modern world history has been dominated by initiatives from Western Europe and Portugal was in the vanguard of them, especially in long-range navigation, commerce, and colonization; maritime exploration and the science associated with it; the transplantation of culture over vast distances; and the worldwide exchange of biota, which wrought changes in the environments touched by the unprecedentedly far –reaching communications of the period.
    The best course through the world context of Portugal’s imperial history is outward, following that of the Portuguese empire-builders: beginning in Portugal itself with the “the problem of Portugal”- how such a small home country mothered such a big empire; than broadening to maritime Western Europe; next, heading out in the trade-wind environment of the Atlantic; crossing to the monsoon system of maritime Asia; and ending with the great land empires of the period, which Portugal’s increasingly resembled. To some extent this pathway through the material also traces a route through time from the local and regional phases, to its landward culmination in the phase dominated by Brazil.

    (continues)
    Source:
    Felipe Fernández- Armesto,Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University, "Portugal Expansion in Global Context".
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 18, 2007 at 03:34 PM.

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    Portugal Expansion in Global Contex ( Part II )

    The contrast between the breadth of Portuguese imperialism and the modest dimensions of the home country is the most conspicuous mystery of Portuguese history and one of the most puzzling contrasts in the history of the world.
    As a place from which to found a great empire, Portugal therefore invites the response of the yokel who, when asked to direct a passing motorist, replied,” If I was you, I wouldn’t start from here”.
    Imperialism is sometimes the result of overflowing resources, superabundance of power, or spillage of surplus population. Portugal’s belongs in a less privileged category. Portugal’s sustained quest for empire was a response to insecurity: the need to grow by conquest.
    These circumstances suggest an approach to understanding the next-strangest feature of the story: the tenacity that made the earliest European seaborne empire one of the longest-enduring.
    Marginal peoples, on or beyond the edges of great civilizations, are often tempted into colonial or commercial adventures.
    The locus classicus, in every sense of the term, is that of ancient Greece- “ the sister of poverty”, according to Hesiod, a skeleton-land, in Plato’s perceptions, where the rock poked through the thin flesh of soil. The Greek’s great rivals in long-range colonization, the Phoenicians, started from a narrow coast.
    Southern Arabia, Gujerat, and Fukien have housed great ocean-going civilizations in similarly situated home bases.
    In Western Europe too, until the late Middle Ages, the only long-distance ocean-going initiatives we know began in relatively poor and peripheral places: the seaborne pilgrimages of hermits from Ireland and the ventures of raiders, pirates, and colonists from Scandinavia. The seaborne empires of the medieval Mediterranean were founded from narrow rivieras, in the Genoese and Catalan cases, or from unpromisingly salty, marshy islands of the Venetian lagoon.
    The empire that in its day successfully imitated, challenged and outplayed Portugal’s was the most similarly situated - that of Netherlands, also a marginal and naturally ill-favored place.
    Castilian imperialism despite its many distinctive features also belongs, broadly speaking, in this category. France and England – places better equipped or more lavished resourced, and apparently well positioned – were long dogged by ill success.
    In the “space race” for early modern seaborne empires, it helped to come from behind.
    The sea has given Europe’s Atlantic-side peoples a singular and terrible role in world history. Virtually all the large- scale maritime world empires of modern history were founded from this fringe.
    Once nautical technology permitted, the ocean offered highways of seaborne migration and empire building. Yet the unexplained paradox of Western European history is that the call of the sea was long unheard. When reached the sea, most of this peoples were stuck there, as of pinioned by the prevailing westerlies that blow onto all their shores.
    Except in Scandinavia, the achievements of civilization in Western Europe owed little or nothing to the maritime horizon until what we think of as the late Middle Ages.

    The Atlantic is dominated by a trade-wind system; that is, by a regular pattern of prevailing winds that blow in the same direction regardless of the season.
    The wind system resembles a code of interlocking ciphers.
    Once part of it was cracked, by a concentrated spell of tenacious exploration, the solution of the rest followed rapidly.
    The preliminary effort was long and laborious, because early explorers with their vision limited to small patches of the ocean dominated by apparently unremitting winds,, where like codebreakers denied a sufficient sample with which to work. Only the long accumulation of information and experience could make a breakthrough possible.
    This risky enterprise was rewarded with the discovery of Azores – a middle –ocean archipelago more than 700 miles from any other land.
    Open - sea voyages of a length unprecedented in European experience were now being undertaken.
    The great Atlantic breakthrough provided ways to South America and Asia; they squeezed and shaped some of the world’s most lucrative trade routes for the rest of the age of sail. The Atlantic, which had been a barrier for the whole of recorded history, now become a link.
    The Portuguese empire, at height linked the West to the East, the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, and a trade-wind system to the seas of the monsoon. This dual character – part monsoon, partly reliant on fixed winds- remained characteristic of the Portuguese system. The Spanish empire relied on fixed winds; it grew up around the wind system of the Atlantic and Pacific, joined by an overland link across Central America.
    Spanish shipping hardly had to venture into monsoonal seas.
    The main axes of the Dutch empire similarly were fixed wind systems. From the second decade of the 17th century, the favored Dutch route across the Indian ocean was with the “roaring forties” and the southeast trades, although they used monsoons for return journeys and intra-Asian shuttles.
    Its often not appreciated that, overwhelmingly, the history of maritime expansion has been made by voyagers who headed into the wind, presumably because it was at least as important to get home as to get to anywhere new.
    Conditions in the Indian Ocean liberated navigators from any such constraints. The predictability of a homeward wind made the Indian Ocean environment the most benign in the world for long-range voyaging.
    There was poetic truth in the old maps that showed the Indian Ocean as landlocked, for it was a hard sea to get out of. The lost but much-cited sailing directions known as Rahnama, which goes back at least to the 12th century, warned of the “circumambient sea, whence all return was impossible”. Hard to get out of, the ocean was correspondingly hard to get in. Until the 16th century, the vast neighbouring Pacific preserved the ocean against approaches from beyond the China seas. Shipping from the west could enter only byway of an arduous detour through the South Atlantic and around Africa. The ocean therefore remained chiefly to preserve of peoples whose homes bordered it or who travelled overland-such as some European and Armenian traders-to become part of its world.
    The breakthrough that brought Atlantic navigators directly in this zone was genuinely one of the great moments of the world history, for although the impact on indigenous trade and states in Asia was small, the effect on the Atlantic world was immeasurably enriching. An arena of commerce that in the early 16th century was only just beginning to experience the effects of transoceanic trade was brought into contact with the world’s richest, oldest, and most extensive zone of long-range commerce.
    For a hundred years this role of link between the oceans was discharged almost exclusively by Portuguese.

    Although Portugal’s empire began as a seabord affair of forts, trading ports, coastal settlements, merchant diaspora, and “shadow imperialism,” and although it remained throughout its history a maritime structure of long-range communications maintained by sea, it also became a land empire. In the 18th century, landward expansion attained vast proportions in Brazil and was undertaken, on a less ambitious scale, in the hinterland of Goa.
    ( same source, continues: “ The Landward turn in the 18th century, Portugal and the Early Modern Land Empires)
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 21, 2007 at 05:00 PM.

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    Portugal and the Early Modern Empires

    Landward imperialism in the early modern period was rife with problems and opportunities recognizable to the student of seaborne empires: the cant of Holy war, the reliance on the technology of victory, and the puzzles of incommensurable cultures and alien environments.
    The two greatest examples of the period- those of Russian and Chinese imperialism- can stand for the rest.
    The conquest of Kazan gave the tsars command of the entire length of the Volga river – the corridor of commerce at the western edge of Asia – and eliminated Russia’s great rival for control of Siberia’s fur trade. Furs summoned Russians to conquest and colonization as gold lured Spaniards and spices captivated the Portuguese.
    The Tsar’s next task was to conquer Siberia itself and control the production as well as the trade.
    By the late 17th century, Russian expansion in eastern Siberia met China’s, where the Manchus were pre-empting or pursuing Russian rivals in a war zone along the Amur river. The treaty of Nerchinsk of 1686 formalized Ch’ing claims to vast unexplored lands in the northeast of Asia. Ch’ing imperialism was of an intensive kind compared with Russia’s. It was dedicated not merely to economic exploitation and trade but also to colonization and the acculturation and assimilation of indigenous peoples.
    Before the century, outer Mongolia had been crudely incorporated into the empire.

    Similarly, European maritime empires were bound, soon or later, to lumber onto land, where traditional imperialism led for the difference between a sea empire and a land empire is more than a mere matter of location or a geographical characterization or classification.
    Sea empires are empires of trade, which they seek always to channel or control.
    Land empires attempt additionally or instead to control production.

    In the course of their efforts in Asia, the Portuguese did not attempt to add direct control of production to their interests in trade.
    The only significant exceptions to this rule were the “ Northern Province” of Portuguese India, between Chaul and Damian, where palms and rice where grown under Portuguese supervision to provide provisions for garrisons, crews, and workers, and Ceylon, where Portuguese garrisons where able to enforce, for a awhile, a monopoly of the cinnamon trade so thorough as to give them effective control of production..
    In the early 17th century, the total number of indigenous people living under Portuguese rule in India was under a half of million.
    The leap into what might called production imperialism was made by the Dutch in the 1660s.
    Even then, the European-controlled territory in Asia was modest, and it was only in the 18th century that a Dutch land empire of substantial proportions gradually took shape in Java.
    This was the only European land empire in the East until the British East India Company acquired direct rule over Bengal by an adventure in opportunism in the late 1750s.
    By then, the landward temptation had seduced Britain and France into attempts to imitate Spain’s New World mainland empire.
    Britain´ s American land empire wore a substantial look because of its large immigrant population and the enthusiasm with which, from the 1760s, settlers moved to open up the interior. France’s empire in the Louisiana was little more than an outline on the map.
    Frenchmen, despite the density of their home population, were reluctant emigrants in the 18th century.
    Still, both states claimed, if they did not effectively exercise, control of great swaths of the North American hinterland prior to French withdrawal in 1763.
    In part, these were preemptive and speculative ventures, designed to exclude Spain from areas of as yet largely unknown potential.
    Portugal´ s early interest in the interior of Brazil was of a similar character, provoked by Spanish interest in the navigation of the Amazon in the early 17th century.
    Portuguese attention, however, became increasingly focused on Brazil as the century whore on the empire was restructured.
    Strained by long wars with the Netherlands and Spain, and- more significantly- pressured and overawed by the rise of such dauntingly powerful indigenous Asian states as those of Moghuls, the Tokugawa shoguns, and the Safavids in the time of Shah Abbas, Portugal withdrew from most of its sovereign outposts in the East.
    Brazil became the jewel of in the crown of now a compact empire. Most of the Brazilian coast less than 2 month´ s sail from Lisbon or the African slave ports.
    The hinterland empire remained largely an affair of private slavers and ranchers until the 1680s, when reports of gold and diamonds find deep in the interior began to accumulate.
    By the early in the second half of the century, aggressive activity had pushed Spanish outposts back roughly to the line of the present linguistic boundary.

    (same source)

    Next.” What difference did it make?”

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    What difference did it make?

    Transmissions of culture usually happen under the skin of empire and do not have to be politically inoculated. Junior partners in economic relationships can be sources of innovation. Travellers from afar are often tenacious custodians of their own cultural baggage. In culture, the sorcerer’s apprentice can work alchemical transmutations.
    Like so many barbarian interlopers in advanced civilizations, the Portuguese had daunting strengths and transforming powers.

    Now, romantic nostalgia tempts the beholder of the ruins of the Portuguese East: the smooth-faced redoubts in Mombasa; the crumbling fortifications in Laristan, where caravan routes reached the coast; the scutcheons carved in red stone over the doors of merchant palaces in Cambay; the ruined gate of the fort of A Famosa in Malaca; the backless façade of São Paulo in Macao, where the Catholic, Lusophone community has not yet been swamped; the lavish churches, Portuguese sign boards, and architectural echoes in Goa; a few words of Portuguese origin in modern Japanese; and a few Japanese valleys where Christianity survived in secret for two-and-a-quarter centuries.
    But these are shoals of an eroded past.
    Except as a forerunner of later, larger –scale imperialisms, it is not around the Indian Ocean that the Portuguese imperialism achieved its greatest impact.

    First, it influenced rimland by way of example.

    It is doubtful whether Castilian expansion would have gotten under way in Atlantic without the stimulus of Portuguese competition.
    Castilian commitment to the conquest of the Canary Islands was feeble until the opportunity emerged to forestall the Infante Dom Henrique. Castilian trading licences to Guinea in the 1470s were issued in the course of war with Portugal, and it was here that Andalusian navigators acquired much of their mastery of the Atlantic. The Castilian royal commission to Columbus was in part the result of envy at the profitability of Portugal’s African trade; Magellan’s was a response to Portuguese prominence in the trade of the Spice Islands. The Dutch were drawn to the Indian Ocean in emulation of the Portuguese example. The methods and nature of the Atlantic trades in sugar and slaves in the 17th century were borrowed, by almost all the European states and businesses that took part in it, from the Portuguese and Spanish models in Brazil and Caribbean.

    Secondly, Portugal played a vital role – or, for its black and native Brazilian victims a lethal one – in creating the Atlantic networks around which modern Western civilization took shape: revealing the South Atlantic wind system and linking it with the Indian Ocean; and pioneering transfusions of blood and culture across the ocean. The Portuguese example taught the potential of the transatlantic slave trade to other Europeans who engaged in it.
    The Atlantic is, in a sense, a Portuguese sea, with Portuguese-speaking communities dotted around its shores.
    But the African tints and flavors in much New World Atlantic-side culture, especially in Brazil, were transmitted in the early modern period in Portuguese slave ships.

    Portuguese imperialism probably played a role in one of the great themes of the economic history of the early modern world: the altered balance of trade and wealth between “East” and “West”; that is, between the hitherto rich and industrially advanced economies of South and East Asia and the previously impoverished economies of Europe, which had long labored under the burden of an adverse trading account with partners at the other end of Eurasia.
    This adverse balance did not swing decisively in Europe’s favour until the early 19th century for India and not until well into the second half of the same century for China.
    The relationship in the interim between European imperialism and Western economic growth is obscure, problematic, and fiercely debated.
    Nevertheless, the great extension of European economic activity into new markets and zones of production in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries evidently enriched some parts of Europe, and it is generally presumed to have contributed toward the rapid growth that began in some Western economies in the late 18th century and led to industrialization in the 19th.

    At intervals during the history of Portuguese expansion, the Portuguese economy enjoyed privileged access to new sources of liquidity, especially gold and cowrie shells (which were highly prized by some of the slave-supplying societies of West Africa).

    The story began with Portugal marginal participation in the Saharan gold trade, especially from the factory of Arguim, from the 1440s. It continued at an accelerated rate with the establishment of the factory of São Jorge da Mina in 1482 and with the establishment of trading slaving relations with the gold–rich empire of Mwene Mutapa in East Africa. These were opened, indirectly, in 1501 and yelded significant amounts of the precious metal at intervals until late in 17th century.

    The gold and diamonds of late 17th - and 18th - century Brazil were a significant element in this increasing liquidity in the hundred years or so up to 1780, and especially in the period of high gold production in Brazil in the first half of the 18th century.
    Meanwhile, Portuguese trade in the Atlantic grew relatively cash-rich, thanks to the premium yielded by the slave trade and the leeching of precious metals from the Spanish empire.

    Where - apart from the lavish gilding that makes some 18th century Portuguese churches seem like temples of mammon, and the “braids, ornaments, and other fripperies” denounced by the moralists – did the gold go? And the silver, which the Portuguese slave merchants acquired from their customers – especially those in the silver-rich economy of the Spanish empire?

    The only prudent answer, given the present state of knowledge, is that although much of it was diffused through Portuguese trade with Northern Europe and especially with England, we do not know its final destination.
    It should not be assumed that the silver “flocked” to China and gold to India to pay for Europe’s abiding trade deficit. The Dutch experience in the 17th century suggests that increased trade with China and India could be financed from profits, which the Portuguese also made in abundance as carriers of intra-Asian trade.
    After the redistribution in Europe, the total amount of increase in liquidity in Europe and America seems to have exceeded the increase in the value of trade in Asia.
    In any case, historian´ s obsessions with commercial and monetary matters should be probably be reined in: They are a mal de siècle of the modern, capitalist, industrialized economic era, with its huge volumes of trade and its preoccupation with cash computations of value.

    The stuff of world history is not primarily economic but cultural.
    In exchanges of culture, trade played only a small part in the early modern period, when volumes of trade were still relatively small and when other vectors of culture – such as migration, war, pilgrimage, exploration, and religious, scientific and diplomatic missions – were still of relatively great importance.

    Finally, in the most global context, Portuguese expansion helped to carry the “seeds of change” that transformed so many environments and reversed the age-old pattern of evolution.
    Until the 16th century, evolution was on a divergent course, as the biota of mutually isolated or barely accessible continents grew increasingly distinct.
    Since then as the result of the long-range shipping that spanned oceans and linked continents, evolution has been in convergent phase where the same crops and livestock – and even the same diseases and human types – tend to recur all over the world.
    The state of the sources does not make the apportionment of responsibility easy: In most cases, the evidence about the chronology of the transmission of particular life forms cannot be matched with particular voyages or documented experiments in acclimatization.
    Its certain, however, that the Portuguese experiments introduced the pepper and spices of India and the Moluccas into the soil of the New World and took chilies and Brazilian nuts and pulses, such as cashews and peanuts, to new homes in the cuisines of parts of East, South, and Southeast Asia.

    Broadly speaking, there were three types of long-range outreach available to imperial societies in the early modern period. They could follow trade winds (or all –year prevailing systems) like the Spanish and the Dutch; monsoonal systems, like those that inflated far-reaching ambitions in maritime Asia; or they could expand landward, like Russia in Siberia and China in Central Asia. The Portuguese did all three.
    Considered as an empire in the strict sense – a power structure that spreads political allegiance by conquest- the result was tentative and unsystematic.
    Yet, the Portuguese early modern outreach looks most impressive, paradoxically, in the broadest possible context.

    If we ask what difference it made to this place or that, the answer will, in most cases outside Portugal and Brazil, be modest.
    If we ask how big was its effect on the world, the answer is: huge. Today’s world would be unrecognizable without it.

    Felipe Fernández-Arnesto,Professor of Global Environmental History at Queen Mary, University of London, and a member of the Faculty of Modern History at Oxford University,Portuguese Expansion in Global Context
    Last edited by Ludicus; November 28, 2007 at 04:19 PM.

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    Chronology of Goa Wars (1700-1800) and the New Conquests.

    In 1702, the Marathas attacked Ponda. The Portuguese sent the Bhonsle of Kudal to assist the Mughals. Bhonsle even occupied Ponda for himself but the Mughals recovered it in 1705. Thus, the Marathas were once again kept at bay. The Mughal Maratha war ended with the death of Aurangzeb in 1707.
    For the next 30 years, Goa was left in peace by the Marathas who concentrated on their internal quarrels and expansion towards the North.
    In 1737, the Portuguese Governor of Bassein helped a rebel Maratha Commander against the Peshwa. This provoked the Marathas to attack Bassein, and take the areas around it. The siege took 3 years. To prevent the Portuguese from helping, the Marathas also attacked Goa.
    In 1739, Salcete, Margoa, Sanguem, Ponda and Quepem were occupied by the Marathas. Only the Forts of Margoa and Rachol remained with the Portuguese. Simultaneously the Raja of Sawantwadi who had joined hands with the Marathas occupied the whole of Bardez except the Forts of Aguada and Reis Magos. Thus, having lost more than two thirds of Goa, the Portuguese sued for peace.
    Bassein and the area around were handed over but the Marathas in turn withdrew from Goa. The Raja of Sawantwadi only withdrew after being gifted the villages of Pirna and Corjuem.
    This peace only lasted for one year. Bhonsle attacked Aguada Fort in February 1741. The Portuguese retained Aguada as well as Reis Magos but lost the rest of Bardez. Bhonsle however, could not enter Goa as an English Fleet chance to come to Aguada. The English helped the Portuguese to defend themselves. However in May 1741, the new Viceroy Marques de Lourical arrived at Goa with six warships and fresh troops. He attacked Bhonsle and retook Bardez. Bhonsle sought peace and had to return Corjuem, Panelim and Pirna.

    In 1742, the Chhatrapati of Kolhapur decided to attack the King of Sonda. The Maratha General Govindaparita Thakur attacked and occupied Sanguem and Ponda. He even asked the Portuguese to pay the outstanding tribute. The Portuguese in turn attacked and tookover the Fort of Sanguem. The Sonda General also attacked Ponda. Later, the Portuguese themselves attacked and took over Ponda and returned these territories to the Raja of Sonda. In April 1746, the Portuguese attacked Bhonsle. They were assisted by the Raja of Sonda. The Fort of Alorna was captured by the Portuguese and then Bicholim was occupied. The Ranes of Sanquelim and other feudatories of Bhonsle namely Gaur of Manerim, Raghunath Prabhu of Bicholim and Kushtube Dessai of Advoi, all joined the Portuguese. Bhonsle sought peace but the Portuguese passed on and took Tracol and Reddi. Even the Peshwa Balaji Bajirao could not help Bhonsle much except to mediate.
    During the period 1754-56, the Portuguese returned Reddi and Neutim to Bhonsle. However, Bhonsle attacked the Portuguese at Pernem, Sanquelim and Maneri in 1756. and beseiged Bicolim and Tiraco. The warfare continued till a Treaty was concluded under the mediation of the Peshwa Balaji Bajirao in 1759.
    Pernem, Bicholim and Sanquelim were returned to Bhonsle. He, however, was still not satisfied and appealed to the King of Portugal in 1760, who accepted the appeal and ordered the Viceroy to return the rest of Bhonsle territories. Accordingly, a fresh Treaty was signed and Bhonsle got back his territory.

    War broke out in the meanwhile between the Portuguese and the Raja of Sonda. The Raja of Sonda had helped the English establish a factory in Karwar. This was not liked by the Portuguese. They attacked the Raja in May 1752. The Portuguese entered Ponda and Zambaulim. Later Sadashivgad and Kurmagad were attacked. The Raja's attack on Salcete and Anjediva was defeated. A treaty was concluded only in 1755. The territory of Sonda was returned but he agreed to pay for the cost of the war and transfer three villages. The villages were not transferred. In April 1756, the Peshwa sent an army against the Raja of Sonda. The Raja could only pay a part of the tribute and agreed to hand over Ponda as security for die rest of the amount. The Portuguese did not relish the idea and sought takeover Ponda themselves. However, the Marathas occupied the Fort first. The Portuguese attacked but were badly mauled by the Marathas and the Viceroy himself was killed.

    In 1761, in the North the Maratha army was defeated and destroyed in the Battle of Panipat. The Portuguese taking advantage of the weakness of the Marathas entered into an agreement with Bhonsle and the Raja of Sonda to retake Ponda.
    In May 1763 the combined forces of the Portuguese and Bhonsle retook Ponda. The Raje of Sonda did not give any help, as such the Portuguese garrisoned Ponda but allowed the Raja to retain nominal sovereignty.
    One day, however in January 1764 the Portuguese Viceroy found the Raja of Sonda sitting as a refugee in Goa. Hyder Ali had trained his eyes on the territories of Sonda and his General attacked the Raja, who fled and sought the Portuguese help.
    In return he offered to place the districts of Ponda, Zambaulim and Canacona for safe custody with the Portuguese. Nothing could suit them better.
    The Portuguese Viceroy took a bold decision and sent troops to the Districts.
    Hyder Ali Mysore responded with his cutomary zeal and captured the Fort of Sadashivgad. He also attacked the Portuguese by sea, but this attack failed. The war would have gone on but once again events favoured the Portuguese. Hyder Ali had to withdraw the end of 1765 to fight the combined army of the English and the Marathas.
    Thus, in 1764, Ponda, Sanguem, Quepem and Canacona became Portuguese territories.
    The King of Sonda did try to recover his territory with the help of the Peshwa. However, the Portuguese did not exactly appreciate this and forced him in January 17 1771 to cede Ponda on permanent basis to them.
    In June 1781, the Chhatrapati of Kolhapur invaded Sawantwadi. The Peshwa was in no position to help Bhonsle. He turned towards the Portuguese for help-instead of doing that, the Portuguese sent troops who occupied Sanquelim and Bicholim.
    The Bhonsle regrouped and attacked and captured Gululem, Maneri, Mencurem, Sal and Dumacem
    However, the Portuguese reinforcements arrived and forced Bhonsle to retreat. Pernem was invaded in March 1783 and the Fort of Alorna was captured by the Portuguese.
    At this stage, Bhonsle sought peace, to which the Portuguese readily agreed but without return of the conquered territories.
    In 1785 the Kolhapur troops again attacked Bhonsle. He sought the Portuguese help and in return agreed to cede the rest of Pernam.
    Thus, by 1788, the New Conquest was completed and the Portuguese consolidated their hold and lands in Goa.

    From "History of Goa"
    Last edited by Ludicus; December 05, 2007 at 02:31 PM.

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    Social and Cultural context of colonial societies

    The best comparison regarding the social and cultural context of colonial societies is between the Portuguese Empire and the British Empire in North America, although there was a higher population density of indigenous peoples in the latter, despite the impact of epidemics caused by the Europeans.
    In British America, there were political forms of native confederation for defensive purposes that did not exist in Brazil, at least not of the same dimension. The British empire had also been built up through the transfer of institutions from the metropole, but the presence of the crown had been distant and indirect for most of the seventeenth century. The licence given to mercantile companies, aristocrats, or emigrant groups made it possible for them to maintain loose ties with the legitimate claims of the British monarchy, but at the same time allowed the colonists to create autonomous political structures. These included the local and provincial assemblies of landowners, who distributed land and organized tribunals in both Chesapeake and New England. In some cases the colonists elected their governors, with the choice later being ratified by the crown.
    Whereas colonization in the South was based on tobacco plantations that required servants and slaves, colonization in the North was based on agriculture, cattle breeding, fishing, fur trading, lumber, and naval supplies. New England established important trade links with England and other British colonies in America because it supplied food and the ships needed for transport.
    New England also had types of autonomous political representation that avoided the empire’s control for years, for example in Rhode Island, because of the religious convictions of the colonists. In Massachusetts, there was a movement to set up villages for converted indigenous people in the mid-seventeenth century, by means of administrative reorganization and the direct appointment of governors. In this first phase, the British possessions in the Caribbean were the most profitable because of tobacco and sugar production.
    The important slave labor, mainly from Ireland, followed by the massive importation of slaves, justified the rise in the legislative power of each regional colonial assembly.
    Crown intervention was indirectly established through the introduction of the Navigation Acts of 1651 and 1660, which required that all exports from the colonies be sent to England and excluded transport by other countries.
    Although the slave trade was opened up to international commerce in 1698, the monopoly of the commerce with the metropole was maintained, which in fact was the same policy as in Portuguese empire.
    During the eighteenth century, the British crown made an effort to tax the colonists for the cost of protecting the transport of goods, for the development of naval power, and for other defense expenses. It also reinforced councils that were invested with the competence to ratify colonial legislation.
    Apart from this political and military intervention, which accounted for the successive victories against the Dutch and the French, a superiority consolidated during the Seven Years War (1756-1763), the power of the colonial assemblies and the elected governors was greater than that of the administration, which was dependent on the King. In addiction, contrary to the captaincies in Brazil, the political status of each colony varied.
    The British colonies in America had a precocious sense of individual identity that developed among colonists because of the easy political relations with London and among the strong business ties between the different colonies. This had no parallel in the captaincies of Brazil.
    This sense of common interests was decisive in the growing political consciousness that was so well expressed in the American War of Independence. (1776-1783).

    The American Revolution was imbued with a radicalism that had no counterpart in the Brazilian declaration of Independence fifty years later.
    The locally promulgated declaration by the prince regent of the Portuguese crown led to the creation of an empire in Brazil that lasted until 1889. Although this was responsible for the emergence of a new bureaucratic elite and political governance, there was a certain continuity in the power structure set up by the Brazilian colonial elite, even if the country followed a completely independent path after its liberation from the old European grip.

    Yet the Portuguese legacy was surprisingly strong in one significant domain: respect for the frontiers established throughout the eighteenth century.
    Despite its enormous territory and the traditional autonomy of its different regions, namely the captaincies of the North, Brazil did not fragment after independence, in contrast to Spanish America.
    In Brazil, the less centralized state and the weakness of the regional elites, too widely dispersed across large territories, helped to create a sense of common interest and cultural identity in face of the neighboring countries. This pattern is not alien to a previous feature found in the Portuguese empire: a permanent tension between the central agencies of the crown and the regional and local colonial powers, whose divergent interests were never sufficiently strong for them to break away from the mother country and follow their own autonomous purposes.
    The Independence of Brazil reveals the change of scale in the colony, where the social density and complexity of the elites allowed the pursuit of their own interests, in turn implying the creation of a new state.

    Excerpts from: “Political Configurations and Local Powers”, Francisco Bethencourt, Charles Boxer Professor, King’s College London.Director of the National Library of Portugal and of the Gulbenkian Foundation Cultural Center in Paris. He has been visiting Professor at the Universidade de São Paulo and at the Brown Univerrsity.

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    Portuguese Colonial Arms, Uniforms, Brazil, XVIII century

































    Look at the slave....

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    I know what the slave is thinking - give him a chop from behind with that halberd

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    The Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe-1500-1800

    Europe controlled about 35% of the world’s land surface by 1800, a share which increased to 84% by 1914. However important post 1800 imperial expansion was, it was not the crux of the matter. What really counted was the way in which the first 35% was acquired, for it was there that Western Europe established its superiority.

    As the fifteenth century gave way to the sixteenth, the Western European superiority at war was not yet apparent. This was in part because that superiority was just emerging; in part because it had not yet been tested beyond its point of origin; and in part because Western Europe’s neighbor to the east, the Ottoman Empire, had itself undergone a military transformation in the preceding half century, acquiring heavy siege guns, disciplined gunpowder armed infantry and a powerful fleet.
    With the exception of the Persian War, intended only to hold the Safavids at bay, the Ottoman wars of expansion were decisive, short and, insofar as we can judge, cheap. They were the last of their kind.
    The Ottomans posed a continuing threat to the West, but their failure to take Vienna in 1529 proved to be their high water mark.

    Western expansion commenced with explosive suddenness at about the same time.
    Despite their lack of demographic and economic resources, the Portuguese quickly established a rich maritime empire stretching from the Malabar Coast to Ormuz, the Straits of Malacca and the Spice Islands. After repelling local, Mamluk and Ottoman efforts to dislodge them, the Portuguese enjoyed a century of exclusionary dominance, yielding regional primacy to the Dutch and English only after another century of struggle.
    During the same period Spanish conquistadors, carved out an empire of immense size and wealth in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and Peru.
    As with the Portuguese in the east, the main threat to Spanish power in the New World came not from indigenous arms but European interlopers.
    In short, the turn of the sixteenth century can be viewed as the beginning of an extended era in which the dominant polities of Western Europe, after checking the expansion of Islam in Europe, determined by trial of arms how much of the rest of the world each would control.
    The Andean armies which Francisco Pizarro and his men faced were armed almost entirely with wood and stone and lacked even an effective slashing weapon while contemporary Ottoman forces fought at no great technological disadvantage, if any.
    Portuguese military culture, institutions and methods and those of their Spanish neighbors were formed in the same crucible: the 700 year Reconquista in which militant Christendom drove Islam from the Iberian peninsula.
    Nor was the influence of the Reconquista confined to Iberia. After the election of Charles I of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1529, the same Habsburg monarch controlled both Spain and Austria, causing exchanges of personnel and cross fertilization of ideas. When Charles was elected, German Landsknechts and gunners, the mainstay of Austrian Habsburg armies, had already been exposed to Spanish methods in the Wars of Italy for two decades. Spanish soldiers fought the Ottomans in the Balkans as well as the Mediterranean and were prominent in the defense of Vienna in 1529. At Lepanto Spanish infantes fought side by side with Landsknechts, Italian mercenaries in Spanish and papal service, and Venetian scapoli, and Lepanto was unusual only in scale.

    Nor were exchanges of personnel and ideas within this community of arms confined to the land or to Europe. Among the men who sailed with Da Gama, Cabral and Albuquerque were men who had fought Moors and Turks in North Africa.
    The Portuguese Magellan fought under Alfonso de Albuquerque in the capture of Malacca and circumnavigated the globe for the King of Spain; among the survivors of his expedition was the gunner Hans of Lübeck.
    It is worth noting that the increased communication among the various Western military communities noted above was a new phenomenon.

    The Military Revolution is generally understood as the product of a Europe to which the Ottomans were external, yet by the time they established their capital at Edirne, early in the fifteenth century the Ottoman Turks were arguably more a European power which happened to be Muslim than an “Eastern” (whatever that means) power which had gained a lodgment in Europe.
    In fact, the Ottomans paralleled and at times anticipated the Military Revolution, notably in the early adoption of individual gunpowder weapons and in the creation of an elaborate, efficient and well articulated bureaucracy dedicated to the prosecution of war.
    Moreover, there was a Muslim counterpart to the Christian community of arms outlined above: Ottoman soldiers and technicians seconded to the Mamluks were sent to the Red Sea to fight the Portuguese under an Ottoman commander, Salman Re’is, even before the Mamluks were overthrown; the famed North African corsair, Hayreddin Barbarossa, became Kapudan Pasha, Head Admiral of the Ottoman fleet; in the course of the sixteenth century, Janissaries were dispatched as far afield as Afghanistan and Algiers.
    But the Turks ultimately fell behind. Their failure to match the innovations which emerged from the Wars of Italy was pivotal, but that is apparent only with the wisdom of hindsight. It was not at all clear until late in the seventeenth century – if even then – that the Ottomans were following an unsuccessful trajectory.
    That the Ottomans would fail to anticipate the military challenges of the seventeenth century was by no means evident until well after the fact.
    On learning of the Ottoman victory at Mohács, perceptive and well informed observers might well have been inclined to dismiss Spanish victories in the New World and Italy and Portuguese successes in the Far East as peripheral and put their money on the Turk.
    The Infantry Revolution with developments in the technology and tactics of field warfare which began in certain regions of Western Europe around the turn of the fourteenth century, reached maturity in its last quarter. The pivotal actors were the English longbowman and Swiss halberdier and pikeman.
    Before this revolution held armies were dominated, in tactical importance if not in numbers, by chivalric elites, specialists in mounted shock action who supported themselves on the proceeds of feudal land holdings and fought primarily to capture for ransom rather than kill. In consequence, battles tended to be relatively bloodless. Although missile troops were important in sieges, their role in battle was peripheral. After the revolution had run its course, the reverse was true on all points: field warfare was dominated by foot soldiers, commoners who served for pay and fought to kill; battles were bloody; missile weapons played an important role in battle and were at times decisive.
    Perhaps the most important element of the infantry Revolution was the development by the Swiss of a combination of weapons and tactics which enabled infantry to deliver shock action with devastating impact and to maneuver in the field in the face of first class cavalry.
    Though shock action was the essence of Swiss tactics, the pike squares were screened by crossbowmen, and later handgunners, to drive off enemy skirmishers and hold missile armed enemies at bay.
    Swiss methods, imitated by the German Landsknechts and refined by the Spanish, laid the foundations of the modern army.
    Interestingly, the Ottoman Janissary Corps, the only Islamic infantry elite of consequence from Muhammad’s day until modern times, paralleled the infantry Revolution.
    Unlike Western infantry, however, the Janissaries never developed the ability to maneuver independently in the face of cavalry. Perhaps their system worked too well for too long and they became set in their ways.
    The next precursor to European expansion was the development, between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the last quarter of the fifteenth, of sailing vessels, navigational methods and systems of armament which made transoceanic navigation technically feasible and economically remunerative.
    This revolution in seafaring emerged from the fusion of Atlantic and Mediterranean technologies to produce the ancestors of the early modern full rigged sailing ship.
    These developments extended to all the maritime nations of Europe, though the pace varied from region to region.
    The Iberians led the way and Portuguese and Spanish mariners reached Madeira and the Canaries early in the fourteenth century, but as a general proposition routine long range deep sea navigation was beyond the reach of Europeans prior to this revolution. After it had run its course the Iberians still led the way, but European mariners across the hoard possessed the wherewithal to traverse the oceans of the globe.
    The caravels of the European voyages of Exploration, with hulls of Atlantic design and Mediterranean construction driven by a mix of Mediterranean lateen sails and Atlantic square sails, were an early product of that revolution.
    The Portuguese three masted naus were another. From the nau came the carrack, lineal ancestor of the galleons of the mid sixteenth century and the ships of the line of the seventeenth and eighteenth which played so large a role in European expansion abroad.
    Developments in ship design and construction were backed by advances in navigational theory and practice in which Portugal led the way.
    At the turn of the fifteenth century, the best nautical charts were sufficiently accurate only for use in the relatively benign conditions of the Mediterranean.
    By the last decade of the century, the Portuguese possessed charts sufficiently accurate to support navigation between known points on the Atlantic coasts when used by a skilled navigator in combination with dead reckoning and daily latitude determinations by cross staff.
    Of equal importance was the adoption and progressive development of gunpowder ordnance for use afloat: from this point on Chinese and Arab ships and mariners might rival their European counterparts in long range navigation, but they could not in fighting potential.
    Guns were used on ships almost as soon as they appeared in Europe, but they were at first light pieces with little more power than bows.
    The first guns which had sufficient power to do serious structural damage to ships or seaside fortifications to be routinely mounted on ships were the main centerline bow guns of Mediterranean war galleys around the middle of the fifteenth century.
    The weight and recoil of heavy ordnance taxed the structures of ships and forced innovation, first evident in the appearance of sliding carriages for main centerline bow guns about 1500 and in the appearance of the lidded, watertight gunport on sailing vessels shortly thereafter. The latter development was of crucial importance in making it possible to permanently mount heavy guns low in the hulls of seagoing vessels where their weight would trot compromise stability.
    The first ships built with a main battery of heavy guns mounted low in the hull behind lidded, watertight gunports were laid down no earlier than the first decade of the sixteenth century.
    Next came a revolution in heavy gunpowder ordnance on land which began in the 1420s, apparently in France, England and Flanders, spread from there, and was largely complete by mid century. The “Artillery Revolution” was the product of connected developments in the techniques of positional warfare, gunfounding and powder manufacture, to name but a few ( eg. improved methods of cannon construction, the introduction of corned powder, ordnance of cast bronze)
    The next major transformation in European warfare was a revolution in siegecraft and fortification sparked by the power and mobility of the siege train which Charles VIII brought to Italy in 1494.
    Shot for shot, the huge bombards of the mid fifteenth century were more powerful than the largest of Charles’ guns. What was new was the mobility of the French cannon, their numbers, the speed with which they fired and the skill of their gunners.
    In the event, the advantage which the French derived from the excellence of their artillery was short lived; its main historical importance stems from the revolution in fortification design it unleashed.
    The hallmark of this revolution was the trace italienne fortress with its sunken profile.
    The key events were the siege of Pisa and Padua and the unsuccessful Ottoman attempt at Corfu in 1537 which showed that a fortress built according to the lessons of Pisa and Padua and competently defended by a small garrison could not be quickly reduced even by the most powerful of foes.
    This revolution in positional warfare ended the expansion of gunpowder empires which the Artillery Revolution had sparked. It also provided an economical means of defense for European ports and factories overseas.
    The revolution in positional warfare was paralleled by a revolution in tactics.
    The Spanish transformed themselves from a predominately light cavalry force adapted to the arid, rolling terrain of southern Spain into a balanced force of pikemen, arquebusiers and cavalry which could take on any army in the world. Infantry was the key element.
    Tactical and administrative innovation went hand in hand in the emergence of the columna and the tercio, the first modern permanent fighting organizations of mixed arms.
    Ironically, the larger implications of the Combined Arms Revolution can be seen most clearly in a battle which never occurred. After the Ottoman failure to take Vienna in 1529, Sultan Suleiman led his army west again in 1532. Suleiman’s refusal to engage the Habsburg army in 1532 marked the maturation of European methods of land warfare.
    It was the developments which culminated in the indecisive 1532 campaign which Sir Charles Oman, writing over a century ago, termed the military revolution of the sixteenth century.
    Many years would pass before Ottoman imperial armies returned to the borders of Austria, and when they did it was in much less threatening fashion than in 1529.

    Excerpts from:
    Guilmartin,J.F “The Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe-1500 1800”
    Last edited by Ludicus; December 26, 2007 at 02:04 PM.

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    The Portuguese Trade with Asia 1600-1800

    The decade of the 1630s witnessed catastrophic losses for the Portuguese country traders at the hands of the VOC. One Portuguese source estimated their losses between 1629 and 1636 at some 155 ships destroyed or captured, besides goods worth 7.5 million xerafins (=5.62 million cruzados) lost.

    This, however, does not imply, as is sometimes assumed in the literature, that the private Portuguese trade from India practically came to an end around this time.

    The 1640s were a peaceful decade for Dutch- Portuguese relations which was a positive factor in the Portuguese merchants’ trade from Nagapattinam. However, the Dutch pass policy forced a movement away from the Malay peninsular ports. But this turned out to be only temporary and, following a relaxation in the Dutch policy, trade with these ports was resumed in the 1670s. The loss of Nagapattinam to the Dutch in 1658 indeed constituted a setback to the Portuguese trade from Coromandel.

    But their response was to relocate themselves in large numbers at the port of Porto Novo to the north, which over the last quarter of the seventeenth century emerged as a major country trading port.

    As opposed to the dismal period from 1640-1663, when the Carreira da India was virtually moribund and contact between Lisbon and Goa was interrupted for years at a time, a regular seaborne trade between the metropolis and India was definitively re-established’ from 1668 onward when Prince Regent Pedro assumed power in a palace coup.

    An analysis on the basis of information available in the Dutch shipping lists of the ownership pattern of the ships, excluding Company ships and small coastal craft, that left this port between 1681-2 and 1685-6 for various Asian destinations shows that the Portuguese were a major group of merchants owning ships and operating from this port.

    The number of ships departing and owned by this group was seven out of a total of nineteen in 1681-2, six out of fourteen in 1682-3, six out of ten in 1683-4 and 1684-5, and seven out of fourteen in 1685-6. The single most important ship-owner amongst the Portuguese was one Manuel Teixeira Pinto.

    By far the most important port of destination for the Portuguese shipping from Porto Novo was Acheh, followed by Pegu, Malacca, Goa and Manila.
    The Portuguese merchants’ trade from Bengal too survived their expulsion from the port of Hugli in 1632.

    Francois Bernier noted the existence of a prosperous Portuguese mercantile community in Hugli in 1666. It included substantial traders and shippers such as Joao Gomes de Soto, who had the Bandel church at Hugli rebuilt, and who traded not merely on his own account, but also had close relations with the English Company.

    The Dutch shipping lists for the ports of Hugli and Balasore, pertaining to the last quarter of the seventeenth and the early years of the eighteenth century, do contain the names of several Portuguese merchants, ships on whose account arrived at and departed from the two ports over this period. The scale of this shipping would, however,seem to be somewhat smaller than that from southern Coromandel.
    The Portuguese merchants based at partner ports also carried on a certain amount of trade with ports on both the east and the west coasts of India.

    During the eighteenth century, by far the most important group of these merchants was the one based at Macao.
    The growing problems faced by this group in the early years of the century in the neighbouring markets of the South China Sea forced it to turn increasingly to markets in the Indian Ocean. An analysis of the Dutch shipping lists, as well as the information available in the English Company records for the period 1719 to 1754, shows that Portuguese ships called with varying frequency at the ports of Bengal, at Madras and Nagapattinam on the Coromandel coast, at Cochin, Tellicherry and Anjengo on the Malabar coast, and at Surat.

    Some of these ships, particularly those calling at Surat, are known to have in fact been owned by Asian merchants flying the Portuguese flag for convenience.
    By far the most important ports of call for the genuine Portuguese shipping were Cochin, Tellicherry and Madras.
    Over the period 1719 to 1754, Portuguese shipping called at Cochin regularly between 1723 and 1742 except in 1733, with the number of ships each year varying between two and six. Between one and four of these ships were Macao based.
    From the early 1740s onward, the main Malabar port of call was Tellicherry, with the number of ships in a year often being as many as six and reaching the top figure of eight in 1749. This shipping was also dominated by that from Macao.
    The principal commodity carried to Malabar was Chinese sugar which was exchanged there mainly against pepper and sandalwood. In the case of Madras, the only years between 1719 and 1754 when Portuguese shipping did not call at the port were 1734, 1741, 1747 to 1749, and 1754. The numbers each year, however, were generally more modest than those at Cochin and later Tellicherry, varying between one and five.
    Most of these ships were also Macao based.

    The emergence in the second half of the eighteenth century of English private traders as major competitors in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea undoubtedly affected the trade of the Macao merchants adversely. But this did not prevent them from continuing to be an important segment of the trading community in the region.

    By virtue of being the discoverers of the Cape route to the East Indies, its sole users during the sixteenth century and continuing their presence in the Indian Ocean until the end of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese played the role of the pioneer in facilitating the emergence and the growth of the early modern world economy. They were able to play this role with the active assistance and cooperation of various international consortiums and syndicates as well as merchant networks both in Europe and in Asia.

    It was one of the most notable Dutch rulers in the Indies who wrote of the Portuguese that “the greater number regard India as their fatherland, thinking no longer of Portugal…as though they were natives and knew no other fatherland.”

    Hence the stubborn and prolonged Portuguese resistance to the assaults of the better-found and better-organized naval power of the Dutch; hence too, together with Albuquerque's conscious policy of integration by miscegenation, the much more marked cultural impression left by the 150 years of Portuguese rule in littoral Ceylon compared with that of the succeeding 150 years of Dutch rule.

    Excerpts:
    1-“International Consortiums, Merchant Networks and Portuguese Trade with Asia in the Early Modern Period” Om Prakash, Delhi School of Economics University of Delhi.-XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 21-25 August 2006.


    2- "The Pacific since Magellan", Volume I O. H. K. Spate

    3 - The “Carreira da India”,1668-1682: maritime enterprise and the quest for stability in Portugal’s Asian empire’, The Journal of European Economic History, vol. 20(1), 1991, pp.7-27).
    Last edited by Ludicus; December 27, 2007 at 09:01 PM.

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    Eighteenth-Century, national and international merchant networks

    In 1737, the receiver-general of Cornwall stated that “now and for many years past the importation of Portugal gold coin hath been so great in Cornwall that very little specie of any other kind is to be with there”.

    In the 18th century, Lisbon and Cadiz re-established their position as the main trading centres for products originating from South America.
    If, during the last quarter of the 17th century, sugar from Brazil had ceased to dominate international trading circuits, thereby plunging the Portuguese Atlantic empire into an economic crisis, the outbreak of mining activity aroused the colony from this lethargy and relaunched the economy on an entirely new basis.

    At the same time, the diplomatic negotiations imposed by the circumstances of the war of the Spanish Succession reinforced Lisbon’s position in international trade circuits by forcing Portugal to align with England and Holland.

    Thus, both the colonial economy, reinvigorated by the new “cycle of gold”, and these diplomatic negotiations succeeded in once again placing Lisbon firmly on the list of capitals that were highly attractive for the setting up of trading houses.

    Lisbon and Porto were Portuguese cities that recorded a high rate of growth in the 18th century - Porto because of the special concessions afforded to Portuguese wine under the terms of those treaties signed in 1703.
    For this reason, the convoy system that governed the sailing to Brazil not only reinforced the centrality of Lisbon as the port from which the escorted fleets set sail and arrived, but it also justified the fact that many of the large trading houses, both foreign and Portuguese, integrated the two cities in the foreign trade circuits.

    The ambassador Lord Tyrawly guaranteed Newcastle in a letter written in 1752 that “a great body of his Majesty’s subjects reside at Lisbon, rich, opulent and every day increasing their fortunes and enlarging their dealings”

    However, the logic of the colonial monopoly rent presupposed difficulties for the infiltration of these merchants into Brazil.

    Illicit flows, taking place in the fringes of what was legally permitted, had their own informal institutions, where decorum and discretion were meant to be the order of the day. The ambassador Lord Tyrawly was surprised by the behaviour of certain merchants who spoke publicly of the cash that they had embarked on ships setting sail for England, “as little secrecy send it on board as they do a chest of oranges”.

    These improper displays of ostentatious behaviour gave rise to imprecise information that began to circulate in the press, and, for this reason, there may have been a surprise when, in 1769, the minister Lyttleton and the Board of Trade undertook a detailed review of the balance of Anglo-Portuguese trade for previous years and discovered that both the volume and the surplus of the English balance of trade had been regularly exaggerated in the popular mind.

    The discovery of the gold mines and the intensification of trade caused the Portuguese crown to take successive steps towards limiting the access of foreigners to the colonial market.Included under this objective was the ban on English ships from joining the Portuguese fleets, a measure that, despite the protests, was nonetheless carried through.
    In keeping with the same aim, the crown ordered the expulsion of the English citizens that were resident in the colony, bringing an end to the concessions that had been awarded under the treaty of 1654.

    The action of the Portuguese crown, which was marked during the first half of the 18th century by the systematic imposition of restrictions (without, however, calling into question the principles and privileges that had been established in the treaties), ended up achieving positive results.

    Foreign merchants were obliged to negotiate with Brazil by using Portuguese merchants as their intermediaries: Boxer wrote:” by about 1730 at any rate, the British merchants at Lisbon and Oporto were trading to Brazil mainly if not entirely through Portuguese merchants resident there”.

    The vast majority of transactions with Brazil were in the hands of the Portuguese merchants, just as the control of the trade with Europe largely belonged to foreign merchants. The social segmentation of these global flows suggests that cultural differences contributed to reinforce the political aim of keeping the foreigners out of the colonial monopoly.

    In 1751, the foreign merchants who participated in the fleets resorted predominantly to agents who returned to the metropolis bringing gold with them.
    In the view of the Marquis of Pombal these travelling agents were seen as cover-men, hence a definite target. They were banned from taking part in the fleets by letter patent of 6 December 1755.
    The law decreed a ban on the export of precious metals, but at the same time their flow out of the country was seen as inevitable.

    For this reason, whenever there was any seizure of gold, which was the most abundant of the two precious metals in Lisbon, the English complained that such action was totally unjust, arguing that they were merely exporting money that naturally resulted from the “balance” of their trade. The Portuguese, however, evoked the law, claiming that these were cases of smuggling.

    But it was not only gold that circulated in the fleets between Brazil and Portugal. Silver arrived in Portugal as a result of the illegal trade carried out through the Colony of Sacramento.
    Such silver was the fruit of smuggling, but on this occasion a form of smuggling to which the crown lent its support.

    In fact, while the establishment of the Portuguese in areas close to the River Plate, achieved in 1680 with the foundation of the Colony of Sacramento, was intended to give greater dynamism to trade with Brazil, it was also a move that sought, above all, to provide access to the silver that was of such great importance to the Portuguese realm.
    The trade that was carried out from there was far too important for the merchants of Brazil and the metropolis to even think about losing the colony of Sacramento.

    The interest that Portugal placed in this space was shared by other European powers, especially those that found in the colony an outlet for their manufactures and a gateway to the vast regions of the Bourbon Empire, receiving, most importantly, silver in return.
    The local population, in its turn, found in these dealings that provided an alternative to the official Spanish trade an advantageous way of supplying themselves with products at lower prices.
    These were therefore sufficient reasons for engaging in an intense smuggling activity that transformed the southern region of Brazil into an economic complex that was integrated into international trade circuits through the port of Rio de Janeiro.
    This was a business in which the Portuguese trading houses largely participated.

    The goods that were being sent to the colony were, above all, textiles, thus fulfilling the predictions of a Portuguese sergeant-major at the beginning of the 18th century: “The people of these Indies, being rich in silver, are extremely poor in clothes; having the road open, the remedy at their doors and the naturally urgent need, and seeing themselves without hindrance and free of fear, they will send us silver to cover themselves with our clothes”.

    In this trading circuit, Rio de Janeiro served as the gateway for the arrival of merchandise originating from Lisbon, thereafter acting as the distribution centre for these same goods southwards, depending on the conditions of the market.
    It is not surprising that, between 1748 and 1754, one of the largest importers registered at the Lisbon customs, invested 400 thousand réis in cargoes that were not destined for Rio de Janeiro, but for Buenos Aires instead. This case highlights the importance of colonial Spanish market as an outlet for the products imported into Lisbon.

    The l780s and l790s were a time of greatly increased commercial prosperity.
    Cotton had become a major new export from Brazil. In England, at the end of the eighteenth century there was an increasing demand for Brazilian products, chiefly sugar and cotton (during the Independence War) and the balance of exchange was reversed in favor of Lisbon. For a few years all the increased supply came from Brazill, while wine exports to Britain almost doubled. For the first time since 1740, the balance of trade with Britain began to run in Portugal’s favor, with credits in 1790-1792 and 1794-1795. The trading stations and fortresses on the Angolan coast of West Africa became increasingly valuable, as the volume of the slave trade to Brazil mounted.


    Excerpts from:
    “Merchant networks and the Brazilian gold: reappraising national abilities”.
    Costa,L.F.; Rocha, M.M. Lisbon – Technical University Social Sciences Department – History.
    Pereira , A. The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake
    Page , M. The first global village
    “The Cotton Plant” ,1922
    Last edited by Ludicus; December 29, 2007 at 05:53 PM.

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    As important as it was,gold....

    As important as it was, gold was certainly not the only colonial resource that generated substantial revenues to the state.
    The duties on the fleets and the monopoly of Brazil wood, for instance, amounted to 200 millions reis in 1716, which was almost 60% of the proceeds of the one-fifth tax on gold.

    Then, in 1730s, the gold was joined by the precious stones.
    Long established Brazilian exports, such as hides and sugar, also contributed substantially to the government revenues.
    The Brazilian exports benefited from the disruption of caused by the War of Spanish Succession.
    Although sugar continued to play a prominent part as a source of public income it was surpassed by tobacco, one of the most important resources for the Portuguese crown during. The financial role of tobacco was further enhanced in the last third of the century; after 1763, the monopoly of tobacco trade produced around 17% of the total receipts of the royal treasure with customs tariffs raising the percentage by 3%. (one - fifth of the Portuguese revenue)
    Altogether, this meant that Brazil alone generated 40% of the royal income.
    Colonial territories on other continents made additional contributions.

    The eastern trade still produced valuable receipts (even though its golden age was long gone), some 150 millions reis each year.

    As for the African dominions, the contract for the collection of duties on the export of slaves and ivory from Angola, grew during the 18th century exceeding 90 million reis in1760s.

    After the American War of Independence, and most of all after the European wars that arose from the French Revolution, Portugal benefited from the problems that befell other colonial powers and its overseas possessions.
    In addition to direct trade, which formed 40% of total trade, it supplied half of the exports to foreign nations and was responsible for one-fourth of the imports from aboard, which were re-exported to the dominions.
    Its ability to re-export the products of his colonies gave Portugal a decisive edge in its commerce.

    Despite the fact that Portugal continued to hold colonies in Africa and Asia after the Independence of Brazil in 1822, the economic heart of the empire had been lost.
    Portugal was forced to confront his future without the vast resources of empire, or at least with far more modest ones.
    What remains impressive about the colonial enterprise is not that it was virtually lost but that Portugal held it for so long.
    Whatever its economics effects, the empire imbued Portugal with a sense of greatness and throughout its history enabled its rulers to elicit consideration from its friends and rivals that helped to determine the nations course.
    “The economy of the Portuguese Empire”, S. B. Schwartz
    “Costs and Financial trends in the Portuguese empire 1415,-1822”
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 05, 2008 at 03:49 PM.

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    Portugal and the end of bimetallism in Europe in the 18th century

    The monetary and financial history of Europe, especially England’s, was substantially affected by the Portugal’s crucial role in importing and distributing massive amounts of Brazilian gold, which forever altered the bimetallic ratio throughout Europe and played a crucial role for the de facto end of bimetallism in 18th century England .A significant feature the period from 1688 until the end of the 18th century is the dominating presence of gold in both absolute and relative terms.The percentage of gold in the total money supply was larger in the 18th century than at any time during Portugal’s participation in the gold standard between 1854 and 1891. Monetary stability is also a central feature of the long period from 1688 until 1822, during which the price of gold was kept at 487 reis per gram, whereas the price of silver increased from 310 reis to 360 reis, the value that remained until 1834.
    When we look at the legal gold-silver ratio, we can conclude that the period between 1688 and 1797 exhibits remarkable monetary stability by historical standards, even compared with the early 1500s.
    This period is exceptional, since both in the preceding centuries and in the first half of the 19th century (i.e. until the early adherence to the gold standard in 1854) Portuguese monetary history is characterized by multiple depreciations and debasements, as well as substantial financial difficulties.
    Although the 1688 monetary reform seems to mark the inflexion point in the depreciation trend, stability could only be truly achieved after the discovery of the huge gold reserves in 1693 in Brazil. Between 1699 and 1788, the arrivals of gold in Lisbon totaled an incredible 366,797 contos or almost £102,000,000 sterling.
    Between 1688 and 1797, the percentage of gold in the total money supply increased from around 15 percent of the total money supply to a staggering more than 90 percent from the 1770s onwards. Similarly, during this period, more than 93 percent of the value of total monetary emissions was in gold, whereas the minting of copper represented a meager 0.5 percent of the total emissions. In fact, the dominance of gold started to be felt even earlier in the century, when Portugal was inundated with unprecedented riches, even greater than those in the early days of the spice trade.

    By the middle of the 18 th century, Portuguese coins circulated widely in Cornwall as well as in many other regions of Europe (Fisher 1970), since they were regarded these as high-quality coins, with 22 carats of gold per marc, being widely accepted in international transactions

    To put into perspective the impact that gold had in the Portuguese economy let us look at some comparative figures between Portugal and some of its major European counterparts.The total amount of gold minted in Portugal was larger in absolute terms than in England and about 80 percent of the metal minted in France. More significantly, in per capita terms, the amount minted in Portugal was almost 2.5 times larger than in England and five times larger than in France.

    Minting in the 18 Century: England, France, and Portugal (million £s)
    1-Total
    2-Per capita
    3-% Gold
    4-% Silver

    England
    1-80,436
    2-0.146
    3-98.9
    4-1.1

    France
    1-103,590
    2-0.067
    3-35.4
    4-64.6

    Portugal
    1-80,645
    2-0.358
    3-97.9
    4-2.1

    In short, fueled by the huge inflows of specie from Brazil, by the end of the 18th century, gold dominated both in terms of circulation and of emissions. The emissions of silver and copper were of reduced importance.

    Before the discovery of Brazilian gold, the recurring depreciations of the real were associated with the insufficiency of fiscal revenues, in the context of high military expenditures, and a low degree of fiscal coverage at a regional level (Macedo, Silva and Sousa 2001). In contrast, from the 18th century and until 1822, monetary stability, namely gold price stability, was the dominant feature. This stability was made possible by the coincidental interests of the State (which had the coinage monopoly) and the most important business groups.
    Still, we should emphasize that, in many ways, this monetary stability was not unique to Portugal. Gold became a nominal anchor throughout the 18thcentury, not only in Portugal but also in many European countries such as Britain, France and Holland.
    Portugal might have played an important role for this stabilization, mostly through its role in the importation and distribution of the huge inflows of Brazilian gold into the European economy.

    Excerpts:
    "The Fall,the Rise and the Persistence of bimetallism in Portugal 1435-1854"
    A.S. Pereira Department of Economics University of York
    Last edited by Ludicus; January 18, 2008 at 12:46 PM.

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