Portuguese Overseas Expansion Research Articles

Iconoclasm versus Apologetics. How the Salazar Regime Dealt with Portuguese Overseas Expansion

Historical interpretation of Portuguese Overseas Expansion has changed considerably from the late nineteenth century to the present. Ideological appropriations of historical events are commonplace. The propaganda of the regime of Portuguese dictator Antonio de Oliveira Salazar extensively used the topic of Portuguese Overseas Expansion as a founding myth for justifying its own colonialism, even in times when decolonization processes were the common trend. Damnatio memoriae, on the one hand, and apologetics, on the other, were strategies spread from primary school textbooks to university programmes. They were responsible for the exclusion and even persecution of many Portuguese scholars, who had to ask for refuge in other European Universities. It created myths, for example around Henry the Navigator or the Nautical School of Sagres. Key-personalities, such as Magellan, were long defamed as anti-heroes. This article will show how these myths and twisted interpretations are still commonplace today. Even now, many Portuguese feel that, in times of crises, these fictions are used to create a sense of national identity and self-confidence.

A anulação dos Africanos escravizados como sujeito histórico-identitário Brasileiro

O presente artigo tem por intento forjar uma elucidação teórica quanto à formação da identidade brasileira. Considerando a invisibilidade dos africanos trazidos como escravos, enquanto sujeito político e histórico ativos na formação da identidade nacional e coletiva brasileira. Sendo o Brasil um país mestiço, composto por indígenas, ibero-americanos e africanos, o desenvolvimento da identidade nacional significa a apreensão, principalmente pela intelectualidade dominante brasileira, de uma historiografia propriamente nacional. Deste modo, pensar nos brasileiros enquanto povo é pensar naqueles povos que os compuseram, visualizando tais componentes para além de uma abordagem geo-histórica, sob a noção de gênese formativa. Buscando superar os perfis formativos forjados pela historiografia tradicional quanto à "descoberta" (sic) do Novo Mundo pelos portugueses. Sendo assim, pode-se afirmar que na historiografia tradicional, a participação dos africanos trazidos como escravos não é elemento considerado como constitutivo importante para a formação nacional, visto que o aspecto dos portugueses enquanto fundante para desanuviar o Novo Mundo é priorizado na história do Brasil. A expansão marítima portuguesa passa pela África décadas antes da chegada à baía brasileira, a escravidão, portanto, já iniciara antes da América, sendo o processo colonizador, um elemento intensificador. Sendo importante, também, suscitar o aspecto ideológico da transposição da mão-de-obra indígena para a mão-de-obra africana para composição da identidade coletiva brasileira.

Shipping and empire building: crown versus individuals in Portuguese overseas expansion, c.1500-1700. A mixed model of seaport development

Crown policies and private enterprise combined to increase efficiency levels in Portuguese overseas expansion. Within this framework, this paper will emphasize three themes. Firstly, the dependence of the Portuguese empire on shipping efficiency; while the debate largely focuses on shipbuilding and seafarers, we show how crown policies and individual enterprises adapted to the evolving requirements of an empire based on sea power. Secondly, we demonstrate how informal and self-organized mechanisms at times contributed to, and sometimes blocked, state-oriented policies. Thirdly, we gauge the extent to which local inputs, such as raw materials, labour and techniques, contributed to efficiency levels within a universe that became multi-continental.

From local to global. Perceptions of environmental change in a 16th century Portuguese village. A micro approach to a macro-scenario

Historical perceptions, actions and reactions toward ecosystems are the central focus of this paper which aims also at a reflexion on how an early modern historian, facing evidence from a pre-statistical era, can debate environmental changes in coastal areas and the corresponding human response. The paper, focused on the case study of Vila do Conde (a Northern Portugal small coastal village highly involved in the Portuguese Overseas Expansion in the 16th century), will approach these questions by trying to discuss how micro-approaches can contribute to the understanding of the effects of global geo-climatic phenomena; how practical knowledge induced practical actions and how public perceptions were responsible for actions over ecosystems.

Introduction

Portuguese Studies vol. 28 no. 2 (2012), 123–25© Modern Humanities Research Association 2012 Introduction Toby Green and Malyn Newitt King’s College London The seven papers published in this number of Portuguese Studies were originally presented at a workshop we organized at King’s College London on 13 January 2012.1 The workshop, entitled Formal and Informal Empire: Portuguese Relations with the Non-European World brought together younger scholars working on the history of Portuguese overseas expansion. As the title indicates, Portuguese expansion has been both formal and informal — operating formally through established imperial structures, informally through the spread of the Portuguese language, the influence of the missions operating under the padroado real, the business networks of Sephardic Jews, the activities of Portuguese renegades, sertanejos and emigrants, and the emergence of fractions of local populations which assumed an explicit ‘Portuguese’ identity. The beginnings of Portuguese expansion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries created the first truly worldwide empire, and Portugal’s control of the re-export of American silver to India and China through the networks of the Estado da Índia provided ample opportunity for both formal and informal imperial structures to develop. The experience of this imperial rise and fall found echoes in more recent experiences of Portuguese imperialism in twentieth-century Africa, an experience which only finally came to an end with the fall of the Estado Novo in 1974. The Portuguese empire thus operated from the late fifteenth century to 1974, a span of almost 500 years that eclipsed the longevity of many other imperial projects. The articles collected here cover this whole period, and offer distinctive visions of different periods of the Portuguese imperial project, and of the similarities and differences that run between them; the comparative perspective which emerges will be useful to scholars seeking to understand the inner workings of processes of government that were so enduring and affected so many peoples around the world. Three of these articles revise in important ways our understanding of the formal empire in twentieth-century Africa. Too often the Estado Novo has been characterized as a rigid, ideologically driven, regime operating according to centrally directed policies developed with no consideration for local conditions. 1 The workshop was sponsored by Instituto Camões Centre for Studies in Portuguese Language & Culture, the Department of History, and the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies (SPLAS), at King’s College London. Eleven papers were presented. The four not submitted for publication were by Alan Strathern, Zoltan Bierdermann, Sao Neto and Pedro Ramos Pinto. Toby Green and Malyn Newitt 124 Recent research, however, has increasingly shown that there was active debate within the Portuguese colonial hierarchy and profound disagreements about the direction that policy should take, as well as great variations in the way that policies were locally applied. Alexander Keese shows the extent to which highranking Portuguese officials in Angola disagreed not only over the general direction of labour policy but over the way it should be implemented. He argues that the problem was not that the colonial officials all conformed to a rigid ideology (they clearly did not), but that there were no developed bureaucratic networks through which to influence policy. A surprising conclusion is that it was the military, which, in the wake of the 1961 uprisings, eventually managed to insist on serious reform. Corrado Tornimbeni also reflects on a colonial policy which was pragmatic rather than doctrinaire. Colonial officials in Mozambique had to find practical solutions to problems arising from the proximity of more economically advanced ‘British’ territories and from the administrative fragmentation that was the legacy of the 1890s. The practical solutions adopted, in particular the use of ‘traditional’ authorities to control population movement, were later to be adopted by the Frelimo government when faced with the urgent necessity to rebuild its relations with rural society. The formal and informal ways in which colonial authorities had addressed real day-to-day administrative problems provided a legacy to which eventually the government of independent Mozambique had to return. Filipe Ribeiro de Meneses and Robert McNamara’s article deals with Portugal’s relations with its neighbours during the war of independence. A recent biography of Sp...

Henry ‘the Navigator’

Infante Dom Henrique of Portugal, better known as Henry the Navigator, has enjoyed much attention from historians and public alike. Past writers have elevated him to an icon of chivalry and Portuguese national spirit, or, because of his impact on the early overseas expansion, ascribed to him a Promethean role in the rise of modernity. The works of Sir Peter E. Russell, including his new biography Henry ‘the Navigator’: a life (New Haven, 2000), have made a great contribution to separating the historical Dom Henrique from his ‘culture hero’ counterpart, Henry the Navigator. They represent a key point of departure for new research, which will need to focus on placing Dom Henrique in the context of his times and his contemporaries. Thanks to the dramatic advances that have taken place over the last twenty years in the historiography of late medieval Portugal and of the early European overseas expansion, as well as in the prosopography of the Iberian nobility, it is now possible to aspire to an in-depth contextualization of Dom Henrique's life and career. It is likewise possible to exploit much more fully the existing primary sources, both published and unpublished. The foundation now exists for an histoire totale approach to Dom Henrique, an undertaking called for by Vitorino Magalhães Godinho in his comprehensive 1990 program of research on the Portuguese overseas expansion.

Prestige, Ideology and Social Politics: The Place of the Portuguese Overseas Expansion in the Policies of Dom Manuel (1495–1521)

The search to understand the motives behind Portuguese overseas expansion has long preoccupied historians of the early modern period. Numerous articles, surveys and studies have addressed its economic incentives, achievements and legacies to the point where the historiography has obscured a holistic understanding of the forces at play in the early sixteenth century. Moreover, in this field of study overseas policy has been set apart from the domestic political and social climate, giving the impression that events taking place in Southeast Asia were foremost the concern of the policy makers in Lisbon. D. Manuel (1495–1521) who was king of Portugal and driving force behind the expansion during its arguably most crucial period, was neither warrior king nor astute entrepreneur, but rather the proponent of ambitious political reforms. The tenuous nature of his succession and his relationship with the highest stratum of nobility demands that scholarly attention focus on domestic politics during the so-called ‘Vasco da Gama era’. This paper contends that placation of the grandes (titled elites and their families) was D. Manuel's primary motivation behind continued expansion and conquest, superseding aspirations to economic and imperial power. It asserts that in an attempt to defuse his legacy of political instability left to him by his predecessor, D. Manuel manufactured a culture of chivalry that was linked to the overseas expansion and provided venues for noble combat away from the political centre.

A Geographia Universalis, de Sebastião Münster e Damião de Góis

THE SEBASTIAN MÜNSTER’S GEOGRAPHIA UNIVERSALIS AND DAMIÃO DE GÓIS The cultural relations between Portugal and Germany, although former, received remarkable increasing with the Portuguese overseas Expansion, as well as with our humanists. Among those Damião de Góis takes up the highest place. The controversy between him and Münster was due to a critic of the German Cosmographer to the state of things and to peninsular culture, that was inserted in his ≪Geographia Universalis ≫ (1540). The discussion however was kept up on a plan of moderation and dialogue. As a matter of fact this contributed to a wider knowledge and clear respect between the two European nations.

Machado-Joseph-Azorean Disease

In a ten-year study of Machado-Joseph-Azorean disease (MJAD), three distinct syndromes emerged: ataxia syndrome (11 patients), ataxia-motor neuron-extrapyramidal syndrome (four), and ataxia-motor neuron-extrapyramidal syndrome (two). Three patients had such advanced disease that classification was not possible. These syndromes more accurately describe functional deficits than did previous classifications. Spread of neuronal degeneration from the cerebellar system to the motor neurons of the spinal cord and brain stem was found for the first time, to my knowledge, in five patients and to the motor neurons and the extrapyramidal system in two of 14 patients followed up. There is no dementia, and peripheral neuropathy is a late complication common to all syndromes. World presence of MJAD could have begun with Portuguese overseas expansion in 1415. Alternatively, the possibility of multiple spontaneous mutations must be considered. Genetic sameness depends on a specific genetic marker, which is not yet available. For accurate genetic counseling, a nonspecific biologic marker for this disease is sought, and electronystagmography changes may prove helpful. This is particularly important as this illness, like Huntington's disease, is usually not manifest until the child-bearing years or after.