A Nation upon the Ocean Sea: Portugal’s Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492 – 1640

Abstract

If the importance of Portuguese merchants in the Spanish Empire is well known to scholars of early Spanish America, nonetheless their economic activities, complex and wide-ranging trade and kin networks, and family and household structure have not been examined systematically. Until the appearance of this relatively short but highly informative and suggestive volume by Daviken Studnicki-Gizbert, the Portuguese for the most part remained shadowy and marginal figures in the Spanish Empire. This book goes far toward filling the gaps in our understanding of the role and impact of the Portuguese. While the demise of the Portuguese merchants at the hands of the Inquisition that targeted them as Spanish-Portuguese relations began to fray in the 1630s has received attention from such scholars as Alfonso Quiroz, the larger presence and experience of the Portuguese “Nation” in the Spanish Empire has not. Although the traditional separation of the histories of Spain and Portugal probably accounts in large part for this neglect, this book reminds us that the two early modern empires and their peoples were closely intertwined for decades and demonstrates the usefulness of the broader approaches of Atlantic or transnational history for dealing with the development of the expanding early modern world.Studnicki-Gizbert introduces his study by bringing to the fore some of the ambiguities that seem inevitably to attach to the Portuguese Nation, which he defines as primarily a maritime and expatriate community of mixed Jewish and Christian origins and identity, whose members lived and advocated an ideology of “open international trade, religious toleration, and a naturalized vision of the economy” (p. 12) that could place them at odds with their sometimes reluctant hosts. The expulsion of Portuguese merchants from the Spanish Empire that resulted from Portugal’s secession in 1640 did not mean the demise of the Nation. On an individual basis many Portuguese who had settled in Spanish America (and Spain itself) had assimilated, while the mercantile/maritime community began to shift its focus of interest toward the developing British and Dutch empires. The latter group constitutes the main focus of this book. The Portuguese who worked as artisans, local traders, or became involved in agriculture or mining in the Spanish Empire remain largely in the background in this study.What we have is a full and detailed examination of the functioning and organization of the Portuguese mercantile and maritime community and of how that group came to play a prominent and crucial role in the economy of the Spanish Empire. The empire was far more international and varied in character than the Spanish Crown desired well before the kingdom of Portugal was brought under the Spanish monarchy in 1580 — indeed, from its inception. The Portuguese not only offered their maritime and commercial expertise and long experience in the African slave trade, they also maintained vital connections to other spheres of international trade in Europe and Asia. Despite complaints about contraband, for a long time the benefits of the Portuguese presence in the Spanish Empire were simply too valuable to be dismissed.Although perhaps the examination of the operation of the Atlantic trade networks and markets constitutes the core of the book, the author offers a fascinating and surprisingly full picture of the internal organization of the Nation in terms of the structure and functioning of mercantile houses and the business and kinship connections that individuals and families maintained, which allowed them to forge an international community that was both strong and elastic. Diverse in terms of regional origin in Portugal and religious background, the Nation’s economic interests, dependence on mutual trustworthiness, and practice of gift giving underwrote a community that above all was rooted in its collective identity rather than in any one place. Households themselves reflected the distinctive character of the Nation, encompassing not only the customary servants, slaves, and apprentices but sometimes more than one family unit.This beautifully written book, based on research in a range of sources and archives that have provided the author with an unusually intimate picture of many of the merchants he examines, is a welcome addition to the literature on the early modern Spanish Empire and its connections with the Portuguese world. It might have been useful to see some comparison of patterns of kinship, household composition, mobility, and collective behavior with those of other groups, which probably would show that some of those patterns were less distinctive than suggested. The early modern Spanish Empire, after all, was settled not by Spaniards but by Basques, Extremeños, Canary Islanders, Congolese, and the like who relocated and retained their distinctiveness by emphasizing ties of kinship, origin, and collective interest. Notwithstanding the absence of such comparisons, however, this is a balanced, multifaceted study of a group that maintained its communal identity and viability in face of shifting political trends and religious intolerance.