1. North Africa; 2. Exploring the coasts of Atlantic Africa; 3. Engaging with Atlantic Africa; 4. The Atlantic islands and fisheries; 5. Breakthrough to maritime Asia; 6. Empire in the East; 7. Informal presence in the East; 8. Brazil: seizing and keeping possession; 9. Formation of colonial Brazil; 10. Late colonial Brazil; 11. Holding on in India: the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; 12. Eastern empire in the late colonial era: peripheries.
A comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of Portugal's formation and history up to 1807 and of its acquisition of a wide-flung maritime empire from the early fifteenth century.
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.
'This trenchant second volume sets a new standard for reflecting on
the Portuguese world empire during the early modern period.
Covering the Lusitanian presence on five continents, it pays
attention simultaneously to political decisions of opposing court
factions in Portugal, to the leading role of noble captains and
agents working inside and outside formal colonial institutions, and
to their involvement in a variety of local cultures. As a result,
Anthony Disney is able to emphasize the centrality of Portuguese
colonial situations as cultural hybrids.' Diogo Ramada Curto,
European University Institute, Florence and Universidade Nova de
Lisboa
'Anthony Disney has provided in this impressive two-volume survey
of the history of Portugal and its overseas empire to the beginning
of the nineteenth century a work of synthesis that has long been
needed. Up-to-date in its scholarship, lucid and coherent in its
exposition, his account, skillfully blending narrative and
analysis, will immediately take its place as the essential
starting-point for all those interested in the origins and
character of the first truly global empire in world history.' Sir
John Elliott, Regius Professor Emeritus of Modern History,
University of Oxford
'The history of the Portuguese world is barnacled with accretions:
traditional errors, apparently ineradicable myths, partisan
controversies, irrational passions. Anthony Disney has scraped the
bottom and set the ship to rights. His book is sober but engaging,
meticulous but well paced, comprehensive but concise: a monument of
scholarship and discernment, which everyone interested in the
subject will want to hand.' Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Tufts
University
'This book provides a comprehensive and stimulating view of the
history of the early modern Portuguese Empire. Without losing sight
of chronology and geography, political projects and economic
trends, Disney skillfully elaborates on key issues of the social
history of Overseas Portugal, such as the nature of colonial
societies or the relevance of informal settlements. The author
masters an impressive range of primary sources and secondary
materials and builds on them to offer a refreshing global history
of the Portuguese Empire that will undoubtedly stand as reference
in the field for many years to come.' Jorge Flores, Brown
University
'Disney's volume provides a full economic and political outline of
a truly global maritime enterprise. It is the most accessible and
up to date history of the Portuguese Empire available in English.'
Stuart Schwartz, Yale University
'This long-awaited volume by Anthony Disney possesses all the
qualities we have come to expect of his scholarship. It is
balanced, sober and written with clarity of vision and purpose.
Four decades after Charles Boxer's classic work on the Portuguese
seaborne empire, we at last have another elegant synthesis that
takes on the whole of the Portuguese overseas enterprise from 1400
to 1800 armed with the fruits of the latest research. Imperial
historians of a comparative bent will be obliged to read this work,
and students of European expansion and the Iberian world will
certainly find it on their reading lists. It is unlikely to be
replaced for another generation.' Sanjay Subrahmanyam, Professor of
History, UCLA
'A remarkable achievement, combining rigour with lucidity and
offering expert guidance across a complex and varied historical
terrain.' The Times Literary Supplement
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