World powers change and shift with changes of technology, climate and needs for resources. Countries rise to power because they are in the right place at the right time, even if monarchs and nationalists will always attribute it to God preference or other self-serving reason.

> The first century of Portuguese discoveries saw a successive stripping away of layers of medieval mythology about the world and the received wisdom of ancient authority – the tales of dog-headed men and birds that could swallow elephants – by the empirical observation of geography, climate, natural history and cultures that ushered in the early modern age.

Technology brings societal change. The world has been becoming smaller with help of each new technological step. Societies can fight it, but it is unavoidable. So, I hope that we focus more on building a good world for us all using technology to improve all our lives.

Spain was the first globalization, not Portugal. The article forgets to mention two key elements:

1) The Manila galeon[1], the first trading route connecting Europe, America and Asia. This was the first trully global trade route (Portugual never established a trans-Pacific route).

2) The Real de a Ocho[2], the first global currency, used virtually everywhere including the US until the modern dollar replaced it in 1857. It still lives through the $ symbol, representing the Pillars of Hercules and the "Plus Ultra" script [3].

It also downplays the role of Spain in the first circumnavigation. Sure, Magellan was born in Portugal, but he sailed for the Spanish Crown. The expedition was financed by Spain, sailed Spanish ships and finished its trip commanded by a Spanish sailor (Juan Sebastián Elcano).

Finally, it is worth mentioning that the Spanish was not an empire of mere territorial possession, it was a civilization. Spain has currently 50 sites inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage [4], and from the ~150 sites in the Americas, ~50 were built by Spain. These includes entire cities, universities, hospitals, infrastructure, defenses and more [5].

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UGRn5qCAXBI

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_dollar

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plus_ultra

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_World_Heritage_Sites_i...

[5] https://greatbritainandtheusatheirtruehistory.quora.com/33-c...

• sigmar

  today at 10:28 PM

  >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

    today at 10:53 PM

    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

  today at 10:39 PM

  Spain didn't exist back then

  • fauria

    today at 10:57 PM

    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

    • hugodan

      today at 11:15 PM

      ...more than 160 years after the portuguese navy was founded, and 20 years after Henry the Navigator was dead. Still not as big of a gap as those 19th century references that you linked

It would be interesting to imagine a uchronic world where Portuguese has become the lingua franca of the world.

• hearsathought

  today at 5:32 PM

  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.

  • TheOtherHobbes

    today at 9:38 PM

    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.

  • leflambeur

    today at 8:47 PM

    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

      today at 9:31 PM

      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

        today at 9:38 PM

        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?

    • alephnerd

      today at 9:43 PM

      > 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

        today at 9:46 PM

        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

          today at 9:49 PM

          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

            today at 9:53 PM

            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

              today at 9:54 PM

              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

                today at 10:20 PM

                No, lol, that is not how that works. Your point is factually wrong, your point doesn't "stand".

      • christkv

        today at 10:49 PM

        The Dutch had more in common with British East India company phase of the British expansion.

    • gib444

      today at 9:41 PM

      > 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.

  • antsou

    today at 9:38 PM

    There is a very good reason why Portugal and the Netherlands were so similar, in this regard!

  • denismenace

    today at 7:31 PM

    > Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire.

    nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey

    • andrepd

      today at 8:41 PM

      In this house, Vasco da Gama is a hero, end of story!

  • GrowingSideways

    today at 8:45 PM

    [dead]

As a Brazilian, the whole improbable (and beautiful) history of Portugal raised by the "Navegações" and how badly they bottled the whole imperium (especially after the Brazilian independence, but one can argue that João VI opened the ports) and the sheer amount of lack of vision in not investing in production is something that will always amaze me.

One can say that it was one of the longest imperiums in history (ending in 1999 with Macau???), but every time that I spend some time in Portuguese cities, I feel just bad. The good thing is that Brazil will carry its tradition for posterity nevertheless.

• pdpi

  today at 9:22 PM

  > 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)

> 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

  today at 9:07 PM

  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.

Spain facepalm.

• Buxato

  today at 9:20 PM

  https://woelkeportfolio.weebly.com/uploads/8/9/5/8/8958405/1...