A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire: From Beginnings to 1807

by A. R. Disney

• ISBN13: 9780521603973
• ISBN10: 0521603978
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2009-04-13
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

The Kingdom of Portugal was created as a by-product of the Christian Reconquest of Hispania. With no geographical raison d'être and no obvious political roots in its Roman, Germanic, or Islamic pasts, it for long remained a small, struggling realm on Europe's outer fringe. Then, in the early fifteenth century, this unlikely springboard for Western expansion suddenly began to accumulate an empire of its own, eventually extending more than halfway around the globe. The History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, drawing particularly on historical scholarship postdating the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, offers readers a comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of how all this happened - the first such account to appear in English for more than a generation. Volume I concerns the history of Portugal itself from pre-Roman times to the climactic French invasion of 1807, and Volume II traces the history of the Portuguese overseas empire.

Author Biography

A. R. Disney was educated at Oxford and Harvard universities and has taught history at Melbourne and La Trobe universities. His publications include Twilight of the Pepper Empire (1978) and numerous articles, papers, and essays, published variously in the Economic History Review, Studia, Indica, Mare Liberum, Anais de Historia de Alem-mar, and other journals and proceedings.

Table of Contents

Contents for Volume 2	p. ix
Abbreviations	p. xiii
List of maps	p. xv
Preface	p. xvii
Maps	p. xxiii
Introduction: The Geographical Setting	p. 1
Hunter-Gatherers to Iron Age Farmers	p. 5
The early hunter-gatherers	p. 5
The Neolithic revolution	p. 7
The metallurgical cultures	p. 8
The coming of the Celts	p. 13
Orientalisation	p. 16
The Roman Experience	p. 20
The Roman conquest	p. 20
Towns and roads	p. 23
Villas and mines	p. 26
Free and slave	p. 28
Roman administration and the idea of Portugal	p. 30
The gods	p. 32
The Germanic Kingdoms	p. 34
The barbarian invasions	p. 34
The Suevic kingdom	p. 37
The Visigoths	p. 40
Society and economy	p. 42
Church, faith and phobias	p. 46
Gharb al-Andalus	p. 51
The Muslim conquest	p. 51
Islamic rule	p. 53
Social and economic fabric	p. 57
Muslim faith and culture	p. 61
Christians and Jews under Islam	p. 62
The Christian Reconquest of the North	p. 65
The Medieval Kingdom	p. 70
The condado Portucalense	p. 70
Afonso Henriques and the founding of the kingdom	p. 74
Expanding south	p. 77
The fates of the conquered	p. 82
Settling and developing	p. 83
Castles, churches and religious institutions	p. 86
Crown, seigneurs and ecclesiastical rights	p. 90
Afonso III and King Dinis	p. 93
The Fourteenth Century	p. 95
Becoming a nation	p. 95
The economic base	p. 97
Towns and the beginnings of commercial capitalism	p. 100
The ordering of society: theory and practice	p. 102
The Black Death and its aftermath	p. 107
Afonso IV and Pedro I	p. 111
Fernando and the Castilian wars	p. 113
Dynastic crisis: a Castilian usurper or a Portuguese bastard?	p. 117
Aljubarrota	p. 120
The Making of Avis Portugal	p. 122
The coming of Joao I: a bourgeois revolution?	p. 122
Settling the dynasty: war, peace and royal marriages	p. 124
Change and continuity in the noble estate	p. 126
King Duarte and the regency of Prince Pedro	p. 128
Regression under Afonso V	p. 131
Joao II, noble conspiracies and royal power	p. 133
Joao II: the later years	p. 136
Law and taxes	p. 137
The changing art of war	p. 140
The Golden Age	p. 143
The character and contradictions of the Golden Age	p. 143
The Golden Age economy	p. 145
The court and the king's majesty	p. 149
The Castilian connection and the Jews	p. 151
Elite society, government and bureaucracy	p. 154
Church reform without a Reformation	p. 159
Social welfare and the Misericordia	p. 162
The Portuguese literary Renaissance	p. 163
The Arts	p. 166
The Tarnished Age	p. 172
Joao III and his fated family	p. 172
Sebastiao and Henrique	p. 173
A faltering economy?	p. 176
The coming of the Inquisition	p. 180
The Inquisition in action	p. 182
Portugal, the Council of Trent and the Jesuits	p. 186
The fate of Letters and the Arts	p. 189
The crisis of 1580 and the succession of Filipe I	p. 192
Habsburg Portugal	p. 198
Filipe I in Lisbon	p. 198
Institutional change, marginalisation and ambiguous autonomy	p. 200
The Habsburg economy	p. 204
The union of crowns and foreign relations	p. 209
The reform program of Olivares	p. 212
The defection of the Portuguese nobility	p. 215
The revolt of 1640	p. 218
Restoration and Reconstruction	p. 221
The Restoration	p. 221
Joao IV, war and diplomacy	p. 225
Afonso VI and national survival	p. 228
Pedro II and the stabilising of the Braganca monarchy	p. 232
The internal balance of power	p. 235
The seventeenth-century cortes	p. 240
Restoration Portugal in the international economy	p. 243
The Age of Gold and Baroque Splendour	p. 249
Setting the scene	p. 249
Gold, diamonds and Joao V	p. 252
Population and agriculture	p. 256
The wine industry and the patterns of overseas trade	p. 259
Eighteenth-century Joanine absolutism	p. 264
Baroque culture and the royal court	p. 268
The Enlightenment and the Portuguese public	p. 274
The Age of Pombal	p. 280
Pombal and Pombalism	p. 280
The 1755 earthquake	p. 283
Pombal and Portuguese trade	p. 286
Pombaline industrial and agrarian reform	p. 289
The cowing of the higher nobility	p. 292
Pombaline regalism and the expulsion of the Jesuits	p. 298
Defence and education	p. 305
The Late Eighteenth Century: Finale of the Old Regime	p. 311
Maria I and the viradeira	p. 311
The Marian economy and the Marian Enlightenment	p. 314
Subversion, police and internal security	p. 319
Prince Joao and a world in turmoil	p. 322
1807: the ano tormentoso	p. 328
Glossary	p. 334
Bibliography	p. 341
Index	p. 356
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