From your point of view, didn't the British take over the colonial power in India in the 17th century, leaving Portugal hardly any room in the region...?
RE: Escreva-se a história do homem comum na era dos Descobrimentos (PT)
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Escreva-se a história do homem comum na era dos Descobrimentos (PT)
It's Irrelevant. My point is about the Renaissance period. The british only ever got to India because we had a brief 70 year period under the Spanish Phillipine dinasty and those fuckers managed to get all the boats sunk. Portugal was the only power in the Indian Ocean for well over 100 years and even then, we left India later than the Brits and Macao later than they left Hong Kong. Also, we never cared for land domination. We only ever phocused on holding on to strategic ports, as our point was to dominate trade routes, not to invade the Indian sub-continent. The British East India adventure, also, enjoyed from great help from using our ports as way stations, because we were allies with the English and any military clashes we had with Englishmen were mostly around the Caribbean and the North of Brasil and they were Pirates and Privateer, not ships flying the English flag.
As I said. The story needs to be told. Also, there are lots of Hollywood lies and historical distortion in all that pertains to that era.
The Britisth didn't simply arrive in India. Portugal and England are Allies since the Magna Carta and Spain was threatening to take charge of our overseas prossessions.
You did not read what I wrote.
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Of course I read what you wrote; I think you know that too ;-)) I got a bit of hot patriotism from your text, which is understandable in view of the many inadequate representations and distortions that you rightly deplore. You make a conscious distinction between influence on land and in the area of the coasts and coastal seas. If you consider the former, England played the more formative role, and I say that as a non-friend of all colonisation. As far as harbours and sea routes are concerned, Portugal was probably the pioneer and placeholder - but not alone in the field. The English were there, the Italians (okay, historically correct probably the Venetians, but not the Genoese...) and the Chinese were an active seafaring nation in the Bay of Bengal... I'm not denying that your country had an outstanding presence there! I am relativising influencing factors...
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Obviously, all stories are relative, still, this is only one of them and, the undeniable fact is Portugal was the first global village. Allow me to publish a few more texts in this line and you will see that I don't deny the participation of others. History belongs to all of us.
Plus: I have no national fervor. I am European, in every sense. What I strive for is the presevation of our common culture, and the portuguese enterprise of exploration of the world is an important part of it, as were the histories of all european countries. Remember that Portugal was founded by a Borgougnoise and at some point, both The Netherlands, most of Germany, Sicily, Spain and Portugal were under the same King, and this wasn't the Roman Empire, it was in the same 17th Century that the English formed the East India Company. :)
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Highly welcome! ;-))
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From any point of view, the English (not the British,as Britain was yet to be consolidated as a nation), had absolutely nothing to do with the period I´m considering. From1450 to 1600. The British only started to sail the Oceans after the Great Armada Incident, when Phillp III, who was, at the time both King of Spain and European Portugal and about 70% of Europe, managed to sink most of our ships trying to invade England. During the Portuguese Expansion, the British Islands were the backwater of all backwaters and totally irrelevant in the discovery and mapping of the world untill James Cook went and found some Islands in the Pacific, which, by treaty and National design, were never in the Portuguese sphere of influence. Also, the English were our aliies and their eventual arrival in the Caribbean, Brazil, South Africa and India had much to do about it. Also, the British Empire never clashed with our posessions because we had very different approaches to colonization. Portugal was never a land power, and we are talking about two wholly different subjects.
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Sir John Hawkins (Westindia), Sir Francis Drake (around the world), Sir Walter Raleigh (North and South America), you name yourself: James Cook... They were a seafaring nation regardless of the sinking of the Armada...
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@weisser-rabe, you like books. Read this one:
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Or this one:
https://www.amazon.com/-/pt/dp/0812994000/ref=mes-dp?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_w=a3jPO&content-id=amzn1.sym.7d2923e8-7496-46a5-862d-8ef28e908025&pf_rd_p=7d2923e8-7496-46a5-862d-8ef28e908025&pf_rd_r=BD2STEAJM7W85XYF0TY8&pd_rd_wg=ok2DL&pd_rd_r=e733c8c2-19da-4d4c-a5de-0852284cb1f6
None written by Portuguese. There's absolutely no patriotism in this... it's just History.
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I will check both. Will be back with praise or critics... ;-))
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Yes they were. In a later period..around the world was Ferdinand Magellan. A portuguese Sod. Died in the Phillipines. The journey was finished by his pilot Elcano. :)
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Yes, I've read the Magellan biography by Stefan Zweig... Very exciting!
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Curiosly, German Scholars appear to be more interested in Portuguese History than our own... I have a friend, Rainer Daenhart, the most knowlegeable person about portuguese history orf armory... Guess what: German. I find that rather incredible.
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The English were a sefaring nation after the portuguese and building upon the scientific knowlegde and shipbuilding skills developed by them earlier. The Portuguese were already mapping the Atlantic and the route to India in the late 1300's, the English took 3 full centuries to catch up.
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It's a whole period in history that is not well publicised because it was a cultural flag of our previous nationalistic dictatorship and our Cultural Institutions, after the very left leaning revolution relegated that part of history to some dusty corner. Then, Hollywood is all about english language, history and promoting a North Amerocentric cultural paradigm. There is a lot more and more interesting story before the Pirates of the Caribbean. Have you ever hear of the pirates of the barbary coast? El cid? The portuguese ports of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombeb by the Americans... Did you know that those were the entry points of Europeans into Japan?
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About El Cid I've read, too... By the way: What will historians report about the present days? What truths will be popular, what information will be considered important...?
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As I said... You are a smart cookie.
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