Disruption

The Portuguese Empire changed in configuration over time. The axis of the empire shifted from the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic by the turn of the sixteenth to the seventeenth century.

By the end of the seventeenth century, after the discovery of gold, it became virtually monopolized by Brazil. In Asia, scattered Portuguese enclaves managed to survive in the long run due to a shared religious identity among mixed- race local elites, which developed a certain autonomy within narrow ties to native societies. In Africa, Portuguese enclaves depended on the slave trade until the mid-nineteenth century. The novelty was the extension of the infamous trade to Mozambique in the last decades of the eighteenth century, which established a new connection between Southeast Africa and the Atlantic world. Ethnic revolts in Africa, generalized local conflicts, and slave revolts in Brazil, with the creation of Quilombos (villages of runaway slaves), shook but did not disrupt the system.^[2087] Arguably, the major internal threat of disruption came from the increasingly autonomous sentiment of local elites in Portuguese India and Brazil, expressed in the Pintos Conspiracy (1787) and the Inconfidencia Mineira (1789).^[2088] However, the Portuguese never faced an overwhelming revolt until the independence of Brazil.

The two principles of the colonial pact—that is, protected, compartmentalized production and trade from different colonies that were monopolized by the metropolis, which controlled the right to redistribute or transform products—eroded over time. The direct connection between Asia and Brazil—something explicitly forbidden in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries—became common practice throughout the eighteenth century, which helped to stabilize the economy of the Portuguese enclaves in the East.^[2089] Spices and cotton were introduced in Maranhao, North Brazil, which would change the profile of the province in the last decades of the eighteenth century due to the Industrial Revolution in England.

Political changes favored a surprisingly long-lived prosperity for the colonial system, which managed to overcome the decline of Brazilian gold production after the 1760s. The reforms introduced by the government of Pombal during the reign of D. Jose (1750-1777) accomplished several goals. It created chartered companies trading with different parts of Brazil, expelled the Jesuits, improved the rights of the Indians, abolished the slave trade to (as well as slavery within) Portugal, abolished the Inquisition in Goa (though it was re-established in 1778), modernized education at all levels, sponsored new manufacturing projects, and reorganized the financial structure of the kingdom.^[2090] These changes significantly reduced the dependence on imports (and re-export to Brazil) of British textiles. They furthermore contributed to the first (and only) period of commercial surplus in Portuguese history, during the 1790s and 1800s.^[2091]

However, external factors intervened in this period of reassertion and renewal, which was followed by disruption and decline. The Seven Years' War, the American War of Independence, the French Revolution, and the Continental Blockade (imposed by the French) disrupted maritime trade during the second half of the eighteenth century, although the impact varied in different parts of the world. The export of cotton from Maranhao to England, for instance, benefited from international difficulties. The production of sugar in Brazil benefited from the revolution in Saint Domingue (Haiti) in 1791-1803, which interrupted the operations of what was previously the world's greatest producer. Asian-Portuguese trade, kept at a low level until the mid-eighteenth century, registered an enormous increase in the last decades of the eighteenth and first decades of the nineteenth century. This prosperity in a period of tense international relations, exposed directly or indirectly to war, was short-lived. The threat of a French invasion became reality in 1807.

The escape of the royal family to Brazil, protected by the British fleet, was followed by thousands of noblemen, merchants, and administrators.^[2092] The ports of Brazil were immediately opened to foreign trade for the first time, while prohibitions on local manufactures were lifted, thus terminating the three centuries-old colonial pact.^[2093]

New industries and precarious agriculture were destroyed in Portugal after two years of war against the French, and Portugal became the periphery of a newly configured empire centered on Brazil, which was elevated to the status of kingdom in 1815. The dual monarchy was kept until 1820, when a liberal revolution in Portugal required the return of the king and attempted to restore the previous colonial pact. Brazilian refusal was formally voiced by Prince D. Pedro, who proclaimed the country's independence in 1822.^[2094] It would be the only case of a European royal family managing to survive colonial disruption on both sides of the chessboard, in the metropolis and the main colony. While imperial projects started off in Brazil, maintaining and enlarging the territory that had been inherited from the colonial period, contrary to the fragmentation of political entities in Spanish America, Portugal took several decades to implement new colonial projects in Africa. However, the link between Portugal and Brazil was not lost, due to the perpetuation of the slave trade until 1850, the partial recovery of commercial trade, and strong Portuguese emigration up to the 1930s.^[2095]

To sum up, six points are crucial for our understanding of the Portuguese Empire: it had a variable geometry over time, compensating losses, shifting investments, and enlarging certain territories; local conditions shaped different geographic and ethnic configurations; strong and constant emigration maintained connections between territories and favored a renewal of cultural identity; the slave trade and slavery in Brazil were the levers of the Atlantic world; the circulation of elites, shared institutions, the adaptation of local traditional law, and different degrees of miscegenation kept communities simultaneously rooted and connected; and the creation of a cluster of competing local and regional powers under royal tutelage kept the system working in a relatively flexible way.

Bibliography

Alencastro, L. F. 2000. O trato dos viventes: Formando do Brasil no Atlàntico Sul. Sao Paulo.

Alexandre, V. 1993. Os sentidos do impèrio: Questdo nacional e questdo colonial na crise do Antigo Regimeportugues. Porto.

Alexandre, V 2000. Velho Brasil/Novas Africas: Portugal e o impèrio (1808-1975). Porto.

Amaral, I. de. 1996. O reino do Congo: Os Mbundu (ou Ambundos), o reino dos “Ngola” (ou de

Angola) e a presenta portuguesa de finais do sèculo XV a meados do sèculo XVI. Lisbon.

Antunes, C. 2004. Globalisation in the Early Modern Period: The Economic Partnership Between Amsterdam and Lisbon. Amsterdam.

Arasaratnam, S. 1996. Ceylon and the Dutch, 1600-1800: External Influences and Internal Change in Early Modern Sri Lanka. Brookfield, VT.

Balhana, A. P. 1986. “A populaqäo.” In M. B. N. da Silva, ed., O impèrio luso-brasileiro, 1750-1822, 19-62. Lisbon.

Bethell, L. 1970. The Abolition ofthe Brazilian Slave Trade. Cambridge.

Bethencourt, F. 2005. “Low Cost Empire: Interaction between Portuguese and Local Societies in Asia.” In E. van Veen, and L. Blusse, eds., Rivalry and Conflict: European Traders and Asian Trading Networks in the 16th and 17th Centuries, 108-130. Leiden.

Bethencourt, F. 2007a. “European Expansion and the New Order of Knowledge.” In J. J. Martin, ed., The Renaissance World, 118-139. London.

Bethencourt, F. 2007b. “Race Relations in the Portuguese Empire.” In J. A. Levenson, ed., Encompassing the Globe: Portugal and the World in the 16th and 17th Centuries, 45-53, 263265. Washington, DC.

Bethencourt, F. 2007c “Political Correspondence of Albuquerque and Cortes.” In Francisco Bethencourt and Florike Egmond, eds., Correspondence and Cultural Exchange in Europe, 219273. Cambridge.

Bethencourt, F. 2009. The Inquisition: A Global History, 1478-1834. Translated by J. Birrell. Cambridge.

Bethencourt, F. 2011. “Creolization of the Atlantic World: The Portuguese and the Kongolese.” Portuguese Studies 27, no.

1: 56-69.

Bethencourt, F. 2013. Racisms from the Crusades to the Twentieth Century. Princeton.

Bethencourt, F., ed. 2018a. Cosmopolitanism in the Portuguese-Speaking World. Leiden.

Bethencourt, F., ed. 2018b. Inequality in the Portuguese-Speaking World: Global and Historical Perspectives. Eastbourne.

Bethencourt, F., and K. Chaudhuri, eds., 1998-1999. Historia da expansao portuguesa, 5 vols. Lisbon. Bethencourt, F., and D. R. Curto, eds., 2007. Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800. Cambridge. Bethencourt, F., and A. Pearce, eds. 2012. Racism and Ethnic Relations in the Portuguese-Speaking World. Oxford.

Biedermann, Z. and A. Strathern. 2017. Sri Lanka at the Crossroads of History. London.

Boschi, C. 1986. Os leigos e o poder. Irmandades leigas e politicas colonizadoras em Minas Gerais. Säo Paulo.

Botero, G. 1997. Della Ragion di Stato. Edited by C. Continisio. Rome.

Bouza, F., P. Cardim, and A. Feros, eds. 2019. The Iberian World. London.

Boxer, C. R. 1951. The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650. Cambridge.

Boxer, C. R. 1952. Salvador Correia de Sä and the Struggle for Brazil and Angola, 1602-1686. London.

Boxer, C. R. 1963. Race Relations in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, 1415-1825. Oxford.

Boxer, C. R. 1965. Portuguese Society in the Tropics: The Municipal Councils of Goa, Bahia and Luanda, 1510-1800. Madison, WI.

Boxer, C. R. 1967. Francisco Vieira de Figueiredo: A Portuguese Merchant Adventurer in SouthEast Asia, 1624-1667. The Hague.

Boxer, C. R. 1969. The Portuguese Seaborne Empire, 1415-1825. London.

Boxer, C. R. 1978. Church Militant and Iberian Expansion. Baltimore, MD.

Boyajian, J. C. 1993. Portuguese Trade in Asia under the Habsburgs, 1580-1640. Baltimore.

Brockey, L. M. 2007. Journey to the East: The Jesuit Mission to China, 1579-1724. Cambridge, MA. Brockey, L. M., ed. 2008. Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World. Farnham, UK.

Caldeira, A. M. 1997. Mulheres, sexualidade e casamento no arquipèlago de S.

Tomè e Principe (sèculos XVaXVIII). Lisbon.

Cardim, P., T. Herzog, J. J. Ruiz Ibanez, and G. Sabatini, eds. 2014. Polycentric Monarchies: How Did Early Modern Spain and Portugal Achieve and Maintain a Global Hegemony? Eastbourne, UK.

Carita, H. 2008. Arquitectura indo-portuguesa na regiao de Cochim e Kerala. Lisbon.

Cortesäo, A., and A. T. da Mota, eds. 1960. PortugaliaeMonumenta Cartographica, 6 vols. Lisbon. Costa, L. F. 2002. O transporte no Atlàntico e a Companhia Geral do Brasil, 1580-1663. Lisbon.

Costa, L. F., N. Palma, and J. Reis. 2014. “The Great Escape? The Contribution of the Empire to Portugal’s Economic Growth, 1500-1800.” European Review of Economic History 19: 1-22.

Couceiro, G. 1997. A igreja de S. Paulo de Macau. Lisbon.

Couto, J. 1997. A construfdo do Brasil, 2nd ed. Lisbon.

Curto, D. R. 2009. Cultura imperial eprojetos coloniais (seculos XV a XVIII). Lisbon.

Dias, P. 1998. Historia da arteportuguesa no mundo (1415-1822): O espa$o do indico. Lisbon.

Emmer, P C. 1998. The Dutch in the Atlantic Economy, 1580-1880: Trade, Slavery and Emancipation. Aldershot, UK.

Emmer, P. C., and M. Morner, eds. 1992. European Expansion and Migration: Essays in the Intercontinental Migration from Africa, Asia and Europe. New York.

Ferräo, J. E. M. 1992. A aventura das plantas e os descobrimentos portugueses. Lisbon.

Figueiredo, L. 2005. Rebelioes no Brasil colonia. Rio de Janeiro.

Flores, J. M. 2001. Hum curto historia de Ceylan: Quinhentos anos de relates entre Portugal e o Sri Lanka. Lisbon.

Flores, J. M. 2015. Nas margens do Hindustao: o Estado da India e a expansao mogol c. 1570-1640. Coimbra.

Godinho, V. M. 1989. Os descobrimentos e a economia mundial, 2nd ed., 4 vols. Lisbon.

Godinho, V M. 1992. “Portuguese Emigration from the Fifteenth to the Twentieth Century: Constants and Changes.” In P C. Emmer, and M. Morner, eds., European Expansion and Migration: Essays on the Intercontinental Migrations from Africa, Asia and Europe, 13-48. New York.

Godinho, V M. 2008 A expansao quatrocentistaportuguesa, 2nd ed. Lisbon.

Green, T 2012. The Rise of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade in Western Africa, 1300-1589. Cambridge. Guedes, M. N. C., ed. 1996. Encounter of Cultures: Eight Centuries of Portuguese Mission Work. Vatican. Havik, P. 2004. Silences and Soundbites: The Gendered Dynamics of Trade and Brokerage in the PreColonial Guinea Bissau Region. Münster.

Henriques, I. C. 1997. Percursos da modernidade em Angola: Dinamicas comerciais e transformafoes sociais no seculo XIX. Lisbon.

Henriques, I. C. 2000. Sao Tome e Principe: A invenfdo de uma sociedade. Lisbon.

Hespanha, A. M. 1996. Panorama da historia institucional e juridica de Macau. Macau.

Heusch, L. de. 2000. Le roi de Kongo et les monstres sacres. Paris.

Heywood, L. M. 2017. Njinga of Angola: Africa's Warrior Queen. Cambridge MA.

Heywood, L. M., and J. K. Thornton. 2007. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585-1660. Cambridge.

Hilton, A. 1985. The Kingdom of Kongo. Oxford.

Israel, J. 2002. Diaspora within the Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World Maritime Empires (1540-1740). Leiden.

Johnson, H. B. 1984. “The Portuguese Settlement of Brazil, 1500-1580.” In L. Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, 249-286. Cambridge.

Klein, H., and F. V Luna. 2010. Slavery in Brazil. Cambridge.

Lapa, J. R. A. 1968. A Bahia e a Carreira da India. Säo Paulo.

Lawson, P. 1993. The East India Company: A History. London.

MacGaffey, W 1986. Religion and Society in Central Africa: The Bakongo of Lower Zaire. Chicago.

Marcilio, M. L. 1984. “The Population in Colonial Brazil.” In L. Bethell, ed., The Cambridge History of Latin America, vol. 2, 37-63. Cambridge.

Mark, P., and J. da Silva Horta. 2011. The Forgotten Diaspora: Jewish Communities in West Africa and the Making of the Atlantic World. Cambridge.

Marques, A. P. 1996. The Portuguese Cartography of Japan (XVI-XVII Centuries). Lisbon.

Marques, J. P. 2006. The Sounds of Silence: Nineteenth Century Portugal and the Abolition of Slave Trade. Oxford.

Massing, J. M. 2007. Studies in Imagery, vol. II. London.

Matos, A. T de. 1974. Timorportugues, 1515-1769. Lisbon.

Mauro, F. 1960. Le Portugal et lAtlantique au XVIIe siecle, 1570-1670: Etude economique. Paris. Maxwell, K. 1973. Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750-1808. Cambridge. Maxwell, K. 1995. Pombal, Paradox of the Enlightenment. Cambridge.

Mello, E. C. de. 1998. Olinda restaurada: Guerra e afücar no Nordeste, 1630-1654, 2nd ed. Rio de Janeiro.

Monteiro, N. 1998. O crepusculo dos grandes: A casa e o patrimònio da aristocracia em Portugal (1750-1832). Lisbon.

Mungello, D. G. 1994. The Chinese Rites Controversy: Its History and Meaning. Nettetal.

Newitt, M. 1995. A History of Mozambique. London.

Novinsky, A. 1972. Cristaos Novos na Bahia. Säo Paulo.

Paiva, J. P. 2017. “The Inquisition Tribunal of Goa. Why and for What Purpose.” Journal of Early Modern History, 21, 6: 565-593.

Paquette, G. 2013. Imperial Portugal in the Age of Atlantic Revolutions. The Luso-Brazilian World, c. 1770-1850. Cambridge.

Pedreira, J. M. 2000. “From Growth to Collapse: Portugal, Brazil, and the Breakdown of the Old Colonial System (1760-1830)” Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 4: 839-864.

Pedreira, J. M. 2007. “Costs and Financial Trends in the Portuguese Empire, 1415-1822.” In F. Bethencourt and D. R. Curto, eds., Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800, 49-87. Cambridge.

Pennec, H. 2003. Des Jesuites au Royaume du Prètre Jean (Ethiopie). Paris.

Postma, J., and V. Enthoven, eds. 2003. Riches from Atlantic Commerce: Dutch Transatlantic Trade and Shipping, 1585-1817. Leiden.

Reis, J. J., and F. S. Gomes, eds. 1996. Liberdadepor um fio. Història dos Quilombos no Brasil. Säo Paulo.

Rivara, J. H. da Cunha. 1875. A conjurafdo de 1787 em Goa. Nova Goa.

Rocha, R. 1998. A Voyage Around Tastes. Lisbon.

Rossa, W 1997. Indo-Portuguese Cities: A Contribution to the Study of Portuguese Urbanism in the Western Hindustan. Lisbon.

Rowland, R. 1998. “Velhos e novos Brasis.” In F. Bethencourt and K. Chaudhuri, eds., Història da Expansao Portuguesa, vol. 4, 303-373. Lisbon.

Russell-Wood, A. J. R. 2000. “ ‘Acts of Grace': Portuguese Monarchs and Their Subjects of African Descent in Eighteenth Century Brazil.” Journal of Latin American Studies 32: 307-332.

Sa, I. dos G. 1997. Quando o rico se fazpobre: Misericòrdias, caridade epoder no impèrio portuguès, 1500-1800. Lisbon.

Schwartz, S. 1992. Slaves, Peasants and Rebels. Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery. Urbana.

Serräo. J. V, B. Direito, E. Rodrigues, and S. M. Miranda, eds. 2014. Property Rights, Land and Territory in the Overseas European Empires. Lisbon.

Silva, A. da C. e. 2004. Francisco Felix de Souza, mercador de escravos. Rio de Janeiro.

Silva, F. R. da. 2011. Dutch and Portuguese in Western Africa: Empires, Merchants and the Atlantic System, 1580-1674. Leiden.

Silva, N. V e, ed. 1996. The Heritage of Rauluchantin. Lisbon.

Sobral, L. de Moura. 2007. “The Expansion and the Arts: Transfers, Contaminations, Innovations.” In F. Bethencourt and D. R. Curto, eds., Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800, 390-459. Cambridge.

Souza, G. B. 1986. The Survival of Empire: Portuguese Trade and Society in China and the South China Sea, 1630-1754. Cambridge.

Souza, I. L. C. 2000. A independència do Brasil. Rio de Janeiro.

Souza, L. de Mello e. 2006. O sol e a sombra: Politica e administrafdo na America portuguesa do seculo XVIII. Säo Paulo.

Souza, T R. de 1979. Medieval Goa: A Socio-Economic History. New Delhi.

Standaert, N. 2012. Chinese Voices in the Rites Controversy: Travelling Books, Community Networks, Intercultural Arguments. Rome.

Steensgaard, N. 1973. The Asian Trade Revolution of the Seventeenth Century: The East India Companies and the Decline of the Caravan Trade. Chicago.

Strathern, A. 2007. Kingship and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Sri Lanka: Portuguese Imperialism in a Buddhist Land. Cambridge.

Studnicki-Gizbert, D. 2007. A Nation Upon the Sea. Portugal's Atlantic Diaspora and the Crisis of the Spanish Empire, 1492-1640. Oxford.

Subrahmanyam, S. 1990. Improvising Empire: Portuguese Trade and Settlement in the Bay of Bengal 1500-1700. Oxford.

Subrahmanyam, S. 1992. The Portuguese Empire in Asia, 1500-1700: A Political and Economic History. London.

Teixeira, M. C., and M. Valla. 1999. O urbanismo portugues, seculos XIII-XVIII. Portugal-Brasil. Lisbon.

Thomaz, L. F. 1994. De Ceuta a Timor. Lisbon.

Van Leur, J. C. 1955. Indonesian Trade and Society: Essays in Asian Social and Economic History. The Hague.

Valladares, R. 2001. Catilla y Portugal en Asia (1580-1680): decline imperialy adaptacion. Leuven. Vansina, J. 2004. How Societies Are Born: Governance in West Central Africa before 1600.

Charlottesville, VA.

Wachtel, N. 2013. The Faith of Remembrance: Marrano Labyrinth. Translated by Nikki Halpern. Philadelphia.

Wilcken, P. 2004. Empire Adrift: The Portuguese Court in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1821. London. Winius, G. D. 1971. The Fatal History ofPortuguese Ceylon: Transition to Dutch Rule. Cambridge, MA. Yun-Casalilla, B. 2018. Iberian World Empires and the Globalization of Europe, 1415-1668. Basingstoke.

<< | >>

↑

Source: Bang Peter F., Bayly C.A., Scheidel Walter (eds.). The Oxford World History of Empire. Volume Two: The History of Empires. Oxford University Press,2020. — 1352 p.. 2020

Disruption

More on the topic Disruption: