Why was Portugal a powerful colonial power during the Age of Exploration, and such?
>>333981
They got ships senpai
>>333981
Had just finished a war with Castela so we set sail to discover various places.
First Ceuta
Then Madeira and Açores
And so on till we discover Nagasakiand Goa
>>334005
Kawaii
>>333981
location, location, location
plus an early long term strategy into developing sea navigation know-how
Up until the dutch in the 17th century, nobody knew as much about cartography, navigation and ship building as the Portuguese
How did Portugal end up turning into Poortugal from being such a powerful colonial power prior
>>334272
They got btfo out of the East Indies by the Dutch
>>333981
Portugal had the best ships of the time and didn't have any way of getting rich aside from going further with their ships. Lucky for them this was right as global sea trade became possible.
>>333981
The two iberian polities that ended their own "reconquistas" before the XV century used all this manpower in maritime expeditions. Aragon forged a Mediterranean Empire, that was later inherited and continuated by the Habsburgs. Portugal expanded in the other direction, as was natural, taking islands and ports in what is now Morocco. This, the need to find new routes to India and brilliant navigators allowed them to explore the seas. And the first to arrive is the first to choose seat, in theory.
Actually, Castille was also a powerful naval power even before finishing the Reconquista. Pretty much all the iberian kingdoms were very interested in fighting the moor pirates of north africa and, if possible, get some privileges or full control in some important ports. Spain still has two (one of portuguese origin).
>>334272
The king moved to the Americas when Napoleon invaded. Instead of returning he made a new Empire in Brazil (though he still ruled Portugal). In the end this meant Portugal lost Brazil. Then they lost the rest of the colonies because the world though it wasn't fashionable anymore.
>>334272
commies and republicans took over
I guess one factor is that they have the oldest alliance in the world with England, if Spain tried to attack them then the UK would have their excuse to kill some Catholic scum.
>>334272
Portugal was always poor.
Thats why they had to sail into what many thought was their complete demise to consider achieving some sort of wealth.
Might=Right
They had the seamen to traverse the world, and the military capacity to rule the seas. In the power vaccum of the indian, they ruled it and became rich off tax farming the shipping. They also discovered brazil, an incredibly efficient land mass for luxury goods. The carribean was relegated to mostly sugar production, which led to a stratified economy with very few mechanisms to deal with booms and busts. Brazil meanwhile had many exports that could be used to offset monoculture busting. Though admittedly, they weren't very efficient in building up infrastructure to run their colonies.
>>334423
>Lucky for them this was right as global sea trade became possible.
It became possible because they designed the type of ship that allowed global sea trade in the first place.
>>334627
Their ships weren't that good, the chinese junks were much more efficient cargo vessels. They could however, btfo anyone on the open sea though, and force coastal cities into submission.
>>334596
>pre 19th century
>anyone worried about england
>spain of all people
Top kek m8, the Brits and English were shit when it came to land battles and even then their navy was hardly strong. Considering the fact that Elizabeth had to commission pirates to raid the Spanish, I doubt anyone on mainland europe was worried. If you fuck with Spain you're fucking with France.
Oh and Blas de Lezo
>>334638
>the chinese junks were much more efficient cargo vessels
Then why didn't the Chinese have a global trading empire?
checkmate sinoboos
>>334659
Because the chinese were awful seamen. The arabs were much more efficient, and dominated the coastal trade. They would sail from Sindh, through the straits of Malacca, pick up malay seamen to replenish those that they lost, and then sailed into Canton. Also, asian pirates were fucking annoying as shit. They raided Canton, one of the biggest international ports in the world at the time, and burnt a significant portion of it.
The exploits of Zheng He (A muslim) attest to the capability of Chinese Junks as boats.
>>334638
the chinese junks were good in the Indian Ocean maybe.
But even then, like you said, the Portuguese carracks could fuck shit up regardless.
In the end, Portuguese carracks were more mobile, less cumbersome and had freaking cannons.
And global sea trade was possible just as much because the ships as it was because of other know-how involved: cartography, knowledge of the currents and the winds, gathering of knowledge about foreign places that you want to reach...
China never did this.
They reached the southern African Coast, and according to some texts even crossed the Cape of Good Hope, but they never had any sort of strategy or idea on where to go, or what were the consequences of this.
The bulk of the remaining Knights Templar went to Spain and Portugal.
>>334682
I think you would like to read Fernão Mendes Pinto.
I take it you're specially interested about the East Indies?
>>334711
Of course, I never said anything about Chinese, or even arab traders as being efficient explorers. The Portuguese were some of the best after the Vikings as history progressed. The Portuguese built military stations along the coast that they used to control trade, and got rid of any of their competition on the sea in their colonies. That was what they were best at. They did not have the population however to achieve sustained development of colonies, which is why they were outpaced by the Spanish (who were better at converting subject people into workers), as well as the rest of the european powers as colonization was invested in by all the coastal european powers.
>>334627
I'm just saying that plenty of peoples have been the best seaman in the world at the time. Portugal turned that honor into a global empire simply because they were the best at the right time.
I could give a detailed >tl;dr explanation in three posts if anybody wants.
>>334919
Please do
>>334638
So Chinese junks were weak and couldn't affect coastal cities in any way to be significant.
>>335130
>Why they did it
By 1400 the Iberian Peninsula was nearly reconquered from Muslims and the Portuguese continued the war against Islam by invading Northern Africa. They failed to conquer Morocco but capturing Cueta in 1415 piqued their interest in the West African gold trade. This was a flow of gold on caravans of camels that crossed the Sahara Desert to North Africa. Europe at the time was gold hungry because commerce was increasing but there was insufficient gold coinage in circulation. Portugal had stopped minting gold coins altogether by 1400.
The Portuguese already had a presence in the Atlantic because of a few archipelagos that were discovered. The clumsy square-rigged sails of the time were sufficient for sailors to stay near the African coast and follow the northeastern winds and discover the Canaries. Sailors who sailed north from the Canaries to find western winds to sail home with would have bumped into the Azores and Madeira. Portugal discovered these archipelagos in the 14th century but Spain took the Canaries before Portugal could colonize them.
Prince Henry the Navigator gathered a bunch of sailors and navigators into his court in the 1400s and sent out expeditions to colonize the Azores, Madeira, and the islands of the Gulf of Guinea. The end goal was to reach West Africa to trade for gold. Circumnavigating Africa to ally with the mythical Prester John in Ethiopia or India to attack Islam in a pincer movement might also have been a goal but that is kind of crazy. Another motivation was the Fall of Constantinople, which put an important European-Asian trade route under Muslim control. Circumnavigating Africa would give the Portuguese a back door into Asian trade that avoided trading through the Ottomans.
>pic related is Prince Henry the Navigator, a Portuguese prince who sent ships to colonize islands in the Atlantic and to trade with West Africans
>>335184
Reaching West Africa allowed the Portuguese to buy slaves cheaply as well as gold. This was desirable because the old Mediterranean/Black Sea trade was drying up as the Ottomans united the Balkans and Anatolia. Slaves were bought from West African kings and put to work on plantations in the Atlantic archipelagos. The model for plantation slavery that was adopted in America was first developed by the Portuguese in Sao Tome during the 15th century.
>How they did it
Expeditions to circumnavigate Africa were made possible with the development of the caravel. Ships until 1400 used square sails, which are only decent when sailing with the wind. The caravel used lateen sails, which are triangular and allow the ship to sail into the wind. Square sails are still better for sailing with the wind so the caravel was developed into the caravel redonda, which has square sails in the front and lateen sails in the back. Carracks and galleons are much larger ships that use this model. Carracks are cargo ships that could be ten times the size of the average caravel, while the galleon is a slightly smaller ship that can carry cargo and defend itself.
Improvements in shipbuilding were accompanied by advances in navigational technology. Sailors in the old days would keep their eyes on the coast and navigate with familiar landmarks. Sailors who could not see the coast got an idea of what shore they were near by taking depth soundings and collecting sediments from the bottom. If they knew which direction their location was, they could sail by dead-reckoning and keep track of their progress by combining speed (calculated by throwing a chip overboard and counting the seconds it took to pass the ship's hull) and direction (calculated by looking at where the sun or another celestial body is in relation to the ship's bow).
>pic related is a caravel redonda, squares in front and triangles in the back for maximum maneuverability
>>335205
With such shit navigation it is no wonder that sailors did not go exploring the oceans. Circumnavigating Africa was possible with coastal navigation but crossing oceans required something better. The big improvement came with the development of the mariner's quadrant (1460) and the astrolabe (1480). These measured the altitude of a celestial body such as the sun, moon, or north star over the horizon. This indicated latitude, so sailors could keep track of their North-South location and navigate by going up or down X amount of nautical miles until they reached whatever east-west wind would take them to their location.
>Consequences
After reaching the Gulf of Guinea and West Africa, the Portuguese took a few more decades to circumnavigate Africa. They were probably slowed done by the fact that the locals did not speak Arabic and did not have strong maritime traditions. Once they rounded the Cape of Good Hope they entered a zone that was active with Arabic speaking traders and sailors. The Indian Ocean was already bustling with maritime trade and the Portuguese only had to integrate themselves into the Asian trade networks.
The Portuguese were few in number but they took over the spice trade by bullying local rajas and emirs by firing on their cities with cannons. Gunboat artillery was a brand new invention and the very first European ship was pierced in the hull for cannons to fire out of in 1501. By 1510 the Portuguese had diverted the spice trade onto oceanic routes that bypassed the old Red Sea Venetian-Mamluk route. In 1508, the spice cargoes arriving in Alexandria were only a tenth of what they had been a decade before. Portugal's disruptions essentially bankrupt the Mamluk state and allowed the Ottoman Empire to annex it and double in size a few years later.
>pic related is Vasco De Gama's route, first person to reach India by circumnavigating Africa
>>335205
>and allow the ship to sail into the wind
I understand what you mean, but my autism is still going off.
>>335222
Portugal was given hegemony in the eastern Atlantic Ocean (and therefore the Indian Ocean) with the Treaty of Alcacovas in 1479. The Spanish had to reach Asia by sailing across the Atlantic, finding America, and sailing around it to reach the Philippines and China. The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Atlantic between Spain and Portugal in 1494 but the line was drawn in the wrong place and ended up giving Brazil to the Portuguese.
The Portuguese got to be a colonial power even though they were small because they were the first to go out and establish colonies. They got rich from trading for gold and slaves in West Africa, trading for spice in the East Indies, and growing sugar on plantations in Brazil. Their empire got fucked up when the Spanish annexed them and they were dragged into the Eighty Years War with the Dutch.
>pic related is Portuguese Empire. By the 1560s the Portuguse had trading posts as far as Macao in China and Nagasaki in Japan
tl;dr, smelly sailors went looking for gold, found it, kept going, and built better ships
>>335205
So you're telling me if I go back in time, all I need to do to dominate history is invent the boom?
Sweet.
>>335238
>all those islands in the Atlantic
Polynesians could have crossed it no problem with a lot less than it took Europeans.
>>335312
Yeah, but what could they have done once they got there?
>>335318
Obtain sweet potatoes of course. Polynesians could have brought all of the awesome domesticated crops of the Americas to Afro-Eurasia and changed the world forever without killing 90% of Amerindians. It would have been glorious!
>>335329
As a general rule, anyone who survived European contact would have wiped out the amerindians with germs
>>335329
If they went from Europe to the Americas, they'd almost certainly produce a pandemic with >90% fatality rates for the entire continent, and probably bring back Syphilis to Europe.
>>335339
>>335358
Europeans were particularly virulent because diseases persisted in dense European population centers.
Any pandemic that reaches a Polynesian island would run it's course and then disappear forever (either by running it's course or wiping out everyone on the island). Since polynesians wouldn't be making frequent or singular journeys across the entire Atlantic at once there would be relatively few exposed Amerindians. Those who are exposed wouldn't be exposed to multiple pandemic diseases at once because Polynesians wouldn't stop by as often or, you know, try to conquer Amerindians.
I'm telling you, it would have been perfect.
>>335411
Well, Polynesians probably did travel to the Americas.
You know that as well as I do, hence the sweet potato thing.
There's an irony here that the one human culture capable of trans-Oceanic travel was one with very limited agriculture, no writing, and utterly incapable of affecting anything when they got there.
>>335418
Polynesians would have gotten the sweet potato across the Pacific all the way to Asia had they been given a few more centuries. The Atlantic would have been a breeze to get potatoes across and they might have even brought other revolutionary crops like maize over such short distances.
Afro-Eurasian agriculture would have been revolutionized without sacrificing tens of millions of Amerindians.
>>335436
>without sacrificing tens of millions of Amerindians.
there would still be aztecs m80
>>335470
I don't follow you.
>>335476
>>without sacrificing tens of millions of Amerindians.
He's saying the Aztecs would do the sacrificing. Because they sacrificed people on their pyramids.
>>335525
Oh. I guess I took him too literally.
Where did Portuguese sailors actually sail to before making it around the coast of Africa? It's not like there was anything of value in West Africa to trade for.
>>334272
Portugal isn't poor. Maybe its not a leading European economic powerhouse but its a good place to live.
The main reason they had Empire was that they're on the Atlantic.
Ever notice how all the nations inhabiting the new world were along the Atlantic?
>>334651
>I'm just going to conveniently ignore all history and fact
Brits had the most powerful navy and a small but well trained army, and everybody made use of privateers because it was much easier.
>>337175
>I'm just going to conveniently ignore all history and fact
Exactly what you are doing
>>335329
>killing 90% of Amerindians
when will this meme end?
Have you seen Mexicans, Bolivians, Peruvians, Chileans?
>>337162
lol
Slaves and gold man, why do you think they called it the gold coast and the slave coast?
>>335222
So were the rajas and emirs like Native Americans, who were awed with the quote "boom boom sticks." I mean, the ship cannons couldn't have actually conquered these cities, but the rajas thought they could so they gave in? Wouldn't have Indians been exposed to gunpowder and bombards before, possibly by the Ottomans?
>>335222
>they entered a zone that was active with Arabic speaking traders and sailors
I happened to be reading the wiki on Portuguese exploration the other night, and it talked about how they set foot in Brazil on their way to India, naming it an island, etc. But when they got there, and everywhere else they went, they exchanged hostages with the natives before getting off the boat. Who would these hostages have been, Portuguese ship hands? How did they do this in the Americas if there was no lingua franca like Arabic?
>>337198
A 90% death rate would still leave millions of natives, especially in Central and South America where natives were very populous. South and Central America is as a whole ethnically like 30% Amerindian.
>>337246
>South and Central America is as a whole ethnically like 30% Amerindian.
That's not true at all.
>>337259
That's Argentina. I said overall. Other groups in South and Central America are ethnically less than 30% Amerindian.
>>337266
But Argentina is precisely the outlier, one of the South American countries with the least amount of Amerindians, and still roughly 56% of their people have amerindian ancestry.
>>337259
>56% have Indian ancestors
Most people in Latin America have native blood in them. That doesn't mean they are mostly native. There are exceptions, but the average person is mostly of European descent.
In the medieval era most shipping hugged the coast and so Portugal was the last significant naval power between the west African coast and routes to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.
Thus Portugal was the most motivated state to invest in long distance shipping. This investment turned out to be far more profitable than they had anticipated.
>>337273
Oh, I see the point of confusion. I didn't mean that only 30% of Latin Americans have a drop of native blood in them. I said on average 30% of everyone's ancestry is native.
So 30% of Pedro's family tree is native, 50% of Alvarez's family tree is native, and 10% of Carlos' family tree is native. That averages out to 30% native.
>>337278
What was so special about West African coasts? What did they have to trade?
>>337298
Gold and slaves m8. Africans had it and Europeans needed it.
>>334272
Because Portugal was really never powerful
They were an irrelevant country that owned some big chunk of empty land with niggers, and when they lost that empty lands, all that was left was their irrelevance
>>333981
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cochin_%281504%29
Because Portuguese were OP as fuck.
>>337572
>slaves
No, I meant pre-Columbus. Where were the Portuguese sailing to before sailing around Africa or sailing to the Americas?
>gold
Do you have any sources (wikipedia or otherwise) on Portuguese trading for gold before Vasco da Gama? Is African gold the reason the Portuguese became such eminent sailors?
>>337232
The various princes of the Indian Ocean were well aware of cannons, enough to know their own if hey had any were no match for the ones Portugal had. Indian princes were apparently well connected enough to bring in Ottoman and Venetian experts to make some cannon for them. The Ottomans themselves would eventually come to the Indian Ocean and give Portugal trouble.
This is why.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Cochin_(1504)
>>334272
Carnation Revolution
>>337724
The ultimate goal was always reaching India and the Spice islands and discovering the lost kingdom of Prester John.
>>337666
>>338263
Damn what severe rekage they dished out. Jesus.
Too bad they couldn't keep up because of their manpower.
Iberians sure are tough motherfuckers.
They still piss me off because they never turned Iberia into one country and kept their Empires together.
The first superpower literally thrown into the trash because of infighting. A shame really.
>>341101
It was thrown into the trash because they never managed to into private corporations and then the Dutch and British took over everything with their invisible hand capitalist shit.
Also, because the Spanish wasted all the money trying to fight the Reformation.
Inter-Iberian infighting was the least of the problems.
>>337162
>man who rules west africa is the richest man of all time because of his gold and slave empire
nah mang, fuck all here
>>333981
they had nothing better to do
>>334596
Castille and later Spain tried to occupy Portugal in numerous occasions even with the alliance with GB
They ended up succeeding through a personal union, although the Portuguese managed to liberate their country 60 years later after getting buttblasted that the Spanish were not defending the Portuguese colonies in favor of protecting the Spanish ones.
GB, in their usual perfidious fashion went something like "hey since you re in a personal union with Spain that means our alliance doesn t apply anymore so imma seize your colonies kkthnxbai" and the Durch also took the opportunity to take Portuguese land in Brazil. Amazingly enough after re gaining their independence the Portuguese managed to recover these territories with the exception of Malacca
>>341101
>infighting
Not really seeing as Portuguese and Spanish would only ever accept a union if their respective people were the dominant ones in the union.
For it to be infighting there has to be some sort of union between them
>>339627
But, I mean, there has got to be a middle ground. Why did the Portuguese have such nice ships BEFORE they set their mind to bypassing the Ottoman stranglehold on spice trade? Portugal seems like it was in the middle of nowhere at the time. Was there many ships sailing from northern Europe around the Iberian peninsula into the Mediterranean?
>>343233
Yes.
They had contacts with both the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds.
>>335238
>The Treaty of Tordesillas divided the Atlantic between Spain and Portugal in 1494 but the line was drawn in the wrong place and ended up giving Brazil to the Portuguese.
João II actually negotiated the longitudinal line in the treaty. It wasnt a mistake.
>>341101
>They still piss me off because they never turned Iberia into one country and kept their Empires together.
when the empires got together the Habsburgs proceeded to completely fuck it all up
Remember reading on Holy War by Nigel Cliff about how a captured portuguese ship transporting spices was worth the whole annual budget of England and the Dutch. And then the dutch proceeded to make up the "Free Sea" thing.
>>337863
Thanks for the answer
