[HN Gopher] Portugal: The First Global Empire (2015)
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Portugal: The First Global Empire (2015)
Author : Thevet
Score : 40 points
Date : 2026-02-18 07:45 UTC (15 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.historytoday.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.historytoday.com)
| N19PEDL2 wrote:
| It would be interesting to imagine a uchronic world where
| Portuguese has become the lingua franca of the world.
| hearsathought wrote:
| You would first have to imagine portuguese being the lingua
| franca of the iberian peninsula. Hard to imagine.
|
| Passing that hurdle, then you'd have to imagine portuguese
| being the lingua franca of western europe. Hard to imagine
| that.
|
| Then of europe as a whole and so on. Almost a joke now.
|
| Portuguese was never the major power of it's immediate
| vicinity, let alone the world. Portugual, like the netherlands,
| was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate
| empire. And portugual, like the netherlands, were minor powers
| within europe. Neither were major global powers as we
| understand the term and neither were powerful nor significant
| enough to produce a lingua franca of anything.
| denismenace wrote:
| > Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading
| network rather than a legitimate empire.
|
| nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey
| andrepd wrote:
| In this house, Vasco da Gama is a hero, end of story!
| leflambeur wrote:
| I think the comparison with the Netherlands is generally
| appropriate, but we must recognize that what they did in
| Brazil was exceptional (meaning not comparable to their
| former possessions in Asia and Africa, a difference from the
| mere trading nodes) and the NL never did achieve anything
| like it.
|
| The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and
| make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in
| what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also
| had to defend the longest coastline.
|
| The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to
| world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best
| represented by something they briefly had which was the
| combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in
| 1815.
|
| So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an
| empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve
| some version of it, however short lived that was.
| rmah wrote:
| Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from
| most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying
| that you rule over people that have literally never heard
| of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a
| bit :-)
| leflambeur wrote:
| Since when is taxing all subjects a necessity? Britain
| didn't tax people in the 13 colonies so could we conclude
| that before the American Revolution they were not part of
| the British Empire?
| gib444 wrote:
| > The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did
| aspire to world hegemony like the U.K
|
| Every time I meet a laid back, easy going and kind
| Portuguese person -- which is most of them -- I always
| think that explains their relatively unambitious world
| domination plans.
| alephnerd wrote:
| > the NL never did achieve anything like it.
|
| > The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity
| and make their religion and language dominate it entirely,
| in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They
| also had to defend the longest coastline.
|
| Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of
| whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and
| Americans and had access to gunpowders, naval yards,
| literacy, and proto-industrialization - and unifying them
| into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much
| more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.
| leflambeur wrote:
| do 99.9% of the people born there speak Dutch? When they
| became independent, were they 80%+ Reformed Dutch
| protestants?
|
| I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced
| Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to
| PT and Brazil.
| alephnerd wrote:
| Was Brazil inhabited by countries with access to
| gunpowder, naval yards, proto-industrialization, and
| allies with transcontinental empires? No.
|
| It was largely Amerindians who were exterminated and
| genocided with ease.
|
| Conquering empires that were near-peers technologically
| is different from settling a continent which was at the
| losing end of the Colombian exchange.
| leflambeur wrote:
| You may want to look into the genetic composition of
| modern-day Brazilians to consider whether "Amerindians
| were exterminated" is a coherent way to represent it.
|
| edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models
| here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just
| talking about a different thing than I :)
|
| edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that
| Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European
| powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against
| the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think
| that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory
| by other powers.
| alephnerd wrote:
| My point still stands. Their culture was completely
| decimated and they were largely replaced by European and
| African migrants, indentured servants, and slaves.
|
| Subjugating a native people that lacked metalworking,
| gunpowder, and literacy is different from conquering
| multiple nations that had all of those and was backed by
| the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans.
| leflambeur wrote:
| No, lol, that is not how that works. Your point is
| factually wrong, your point doesn't "stand".
| christkv wrote:
| The Dutch had more in common with British East India
| company phase of the British expansion.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| The 1755 earthquake effectively nuked the capital and killed
| maybe a third of GDP.
|
| Portugal was never interested in dominance of Europe - hard
| to project power to the centre when you're out on the far
| edge and have more of a navy than an army.
|
| But the trade network was the first truly global network, and
| very much non-trivial.
| antsou wrote:
| There is a very good reason why Portugal and the Netherlands
| were so similar, in this regard!
| Frieren wrote:
| World powers change and shift with changes of technology, climate
| and needs for resources. Countries rise to power because they are
| in the right place at the right time, even if monarchs and
| nationalists will always attribute it to God preference or other
| self-serving reason.
|
| > The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive
| stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world
| and the received wisdom of ancient authority - the tales of dog-
| headed men and birds that could swallow elephants - by the
| empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history and
| cultures that ushered in the early modern age.
|
| Technology brings societal change. The world has been becoming
| smaller with help of each new technological step. Societies can
| fight it, but it is unavoidable. So, I hope that we focus more on
| building a good world for us all using technology to improve all
| our lives.
| braza wrote:
| As a Brazilian, the whole improbable (and beautiful) history of
| Portugal raised by the "Navegacoes" and how badly they bottled
| the whole imperium (especially after the Brazilian independence,
| but one can argue that Joao VI opened the ports) and the sheer
| amount of lack of vision in not investing in production is
| something that will always amaze me.
|
| One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history
| (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some
| time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is
| that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.
| pdpi wrote:
| > but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I
| feel just bad
|
| What do you mean? (Asking this as a Portuguese guy who really
| doesn't feel at home back there any more)
| AnimalMuppet wrote:
| > Information was fed back into a central hub, the India House in
| Lisbon, where everything was stored under the crown's direct
| control to inform the next cycle of voyages. This system of
| feedback and adaptation was highly effective. It was accompanied
| by a rapid expansion in cartographic knowledge.
|
| This almost feels like state-sponsored R&D, 500 years ago.
| ajb wrote:
| Historically, what R&D there was, was often done by the state;
| simply because of being the entity with the most spare capacity
| to do so. It goes a long way back, Egyptian pharoes and Chinese
| emperors had written in their histories about how they invented
| things or made economic improvements. These were most likely
| done by people under their sponsorship, but nevertheless they
| saw it as part of their role.
| Buxato wrote:
| Spain facepalm.
| Buxato wrote:
| https://woelkeportfolio.weebly.com/uploads/8/9/5/8/8958405/1...
| fauria wrote:
| Spain was the first globalization, not Portugal. The article
| forgets to mention two key elements:
|
| 1) The Manila galeon[1], the first trading route connecting
| Europe, America and Asia. This was the first trully global trade
| route (Portugual never established a trans-Pacific route).
|
| 2) The Real de a Ocho[2], the first global currency, used
| virtually everywhere including the US until the modern dollar
| replaced it in 1857. It still lives through the $ symbol,
| representing the Pillars of Hercules and the " _Plus Ultra_ "
| script [3].
|
| It also downplays the role of Spain in the first
| circumnavigation. Sure, Magellan was born in Portugal, but he
| sailed for the Spanish Crown. The expedition was financed by
| Spain, sailed Spanish ships and finished its trip commanded by a
| Spanish sailor (Juan Sebastian Elcano).
|
| Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Spanish was not an
| empire of mere territorial possession, it was a civilization.
| Spain has currently 50 sites inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage
| [4], and from the ~150 sites in the Americas, ~50 were built by
| Spain. These includes entire cities, universities, hospitals,
| infrastructure, defenses and more [5].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRn5qCAXBI
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_ultra
|
| [4]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites_i...
|
| [5]
| https://greatbritainandtheusatheirtruehistory.quora.com/33-c...
| sigmar wrote:
| >This was the first trully global trade route (Portugual never
| established a trans-Pacific route).
|
| You're saying because Portugal traded with Asia through the
| wrong ocean, it wasn't global? Seems like an odd metric.
| fauria wrote:
| No, I'm sayng that Portugal never closed the circuit that led
| to a global trade route. They built a line between Europe and
| Asia, but Asia and America remained economically
| disconnected. It was that loop that Spain closed that enabled
| a global economy.
| hugodan wrote:
| Spain didn't exist back then
| fauria wrote:
| Establishing when did Spain become Spain is complicated, but
| a commonly agreed date is 1480, following the Cortes of
| Toledo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Castile
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