Why was Portugal, a small nation of fewer than 2 million people and light navigation history, the first to discover the passage to the Indian Ocean below the tip of Africa?Why did it say no to financing both Columbus and the Portuguese Magellan?Why does all of Latin America speak Spanish except for Brazil?Why is Portuguese so similar to one of the regional languages spoken in Spain?Why was Portugal the wealthiest nation on Earth at some point, and why did it lose it all?Why does it still own, to this day, the most valuable islands in the middle of the North Atlantic?
I would like to add one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, Portugal embarked on its expansion towards the coasts of Africa.
The means for the expansion were certainly the improvements of navigation that arose in the XV century, and these were not due to chance. A Portuguese prince "Henry the Navigator" established what amounted to a state sponsored research effort and set about improving all aspects of the art of navigation. An effort to draw charts , note currents and winds and set up a school for navigators was financed by the Prince. New instruments, the compass of Chinese origin and the Arabian Astrolabe were perfected. Maps and information were a state secret. The expeditions were financed by the Crown, of course, but the ships themselves were improved using funds provided by the Crown. In this Portugal´s situation, close to the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic was favorable, their sailors had experience on both seas.
Henry´s wide ranging program of research started around 1430, was probably the first applied research program in Europe, and had wide ranging consequences, although Henry died before Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498.
Two things about this are ironic.
In the first place, Henry did not go out to sea much. His nickname was coined centuries later, he was an armchair seaman, but he did give a Navy to his country.
Secondly, his main motivation seems to have been religious, rather than political. And it was the result of fake news. Henry was a deeply religious man, as was common in the late Middle Ages . He heard of a legendary kingdom, situated in the unknown Continent of Africa, whose leader was a "Preste Juan", reputed to be Christian, and anxious to contact other kingdoms of the same faith. Hence, his own motivation was based on his deep faith coupled with some false premises, although of course, other motivations pushed the continuation of his program and were probably there all the time in other less idealistic actors of this drama. The slave trade and the spices of the east were powerful incentives.
Portugal was in the right place at the right time to start her Empire. However it is worth remembering that human beings are complex systems. This gives History a very non-linear character. The role of a single, powerful individual at the right point in time can be important sometimes, and historical accidents happen.
Thanks! I had read his story, but didn’t know the religious impulse. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t share the narrative of extraordinary people though. In some junctions in history some randomness like this can happen, but most of the time this is just humans making up the things they understand.
Here’s a counterfactual. Why did it take 150 years for Portugal to seriously pay attention to the oceans? Maybe a more educated king or their siblings could have thrown the country to the sea much earlier. Why didn’t they?
Maybe Henry the navigator was actually late! But we don’t think about the lack of a Henry the navigator 100 years earlier. We just focus on his feats when he does exist.
My hypothesis is that the idea of the sea was ripe at the time, and Henry the navigator was its best representative. That’s all.
And here’s the data point that corroborates this version: the Canary Islands.
If Henry the navigator was so ground-breaking, surely the Canary Islands would be Portuguese. But Portugal had to fight for them with Castilian nobles (not even the crown). The Castilian nobles, by the way, got there after a few travels by Genoans.
So bottom line several independent polities were vying for the same thing at the same time. Henry the navigator was not prescient or special. The only thing that made him special is being the sibling of the king of the piece of land best suited for Atlantic discovery in the late 1400s.
I agree that Henry may have been special but he was not the only factor, the time had to be right, and the sailors and ships willing to risk it, probably for more selfish reasons.
Why not 100 years earlier, indeed?
History always has an unpredictable element, although the circumstances, terrain, economy, social organization provide a framework that makes things possible.
Around the time of Henry, a little earlier in fact, (1405-1435) the Chinese sent fleets which crossed the Indian Ocean towards Africa, reaching all the way to Madagascar. However, the Emperor responsible for this died and his successor abandoned the project. Probably China, much more populous, with better ships at the time, and with great resources was a candidate for discovering America! However their centralized government decided otherwise. It is true they did not have a strong motivation to explore or expand an Empire that was big enough, but opening a trade route to Europe could have been possible and profitable if they had kept on.
Anyway, I agree that geography and resources dictate a lot, but quirks of History are important as well... Thank you for your answer and interesting posts!
I'm not entirely on par with you on this point Tomas. History abounds with examples of missed opportunities, that in retrospect are obvious.
Javier shared it in the comments, and it's a great example : the world would be very different today if China would have seized the same opportunity that Portugal had, at the very same time.
Sometimes to be an extraordinary person, you just need to seize the right opportunity at the right time. It may not seems much, but it can completely change the face of the world, and so these persons do have an outsized impact on history.
But that’s driven by economics, not people or chance. China didn’t colonize the East African coast or sponsor much state-supported trade because it already had a robust internal economy that produced pretty much everything that people (or at least elites) needed and wanted. I suppose there is the chance factor that the Chinese were also not driven by a proselytizing religion while Europeans were, but that’s about the only one.
However, the right circumstances are just as important as the individual. And usually it is not a lone individual but a group or a team. Hero, in Alexandria, did not have coal mines and iron ore to kick start a steam engine revolution. Neither did he have much incentive in a slave society. The first team engines (made by Thomas Newcomen in the early XVII century) were used in coal mines to pump water, because of the scarcity of firewood at the time. Then James Watt perfected Newcomen´s design and the abundance of coal made iron smelting more economical, iron was used for making better and cheaper steam engines, thus starting a feedback cycle in which many others participated. The cylinder boring machines invented by John Wilkinson are a case in point, they made a tight fitting of the cylinder and piston, less steam was lost and the eficency increased. A relatively small detail, but non trivial to develop.
Leonardo is a case of technology not being ripe enough for an inventors imagination. Until the internal combustion engine was developed and made light enough, Leonardo´s designs for flying machines were just dreams. When the gasoline engine did arrive, both the Wright brothers and
Alberto Santos Dumont independently built airplanes that flew.
The place and time have to be right (or wrong, as one could argue in the case of Hitler or Genghis Khan).
I agree with Richard’s point. And this is the crucial point around all my geohistory articles, so it’s important to drive it home.
We mentioned Henry the Navigator, and I explained why he just happened to be at the right place at the right time rather than being amazing.
I’ve mentioned another non-coincidence: that the Spaniards and Portuguese discovered alternative routes to India when they did (instead of 100 or 200 years earlier) was due to the right time: tech being mature enough + an increased value of an alternative path due to the Constantinople route being closed to Christians.
In short: China eliminated all neighboring enemies and with lack of competition turned inwards.
Da Vinci is an even better example. It’s said that if he had built his helicopter he would have realized that the engine was backwards, he would have corrected it, and built the first helicopter.
But he didn’t. Why. Because he would have had to invent along with the helicopter ways to get all the other elements that make a helicopter, which were not readily available at the time. It was impossible. It was an idea whose time had not come.
The thing is these patterns are very hard to discern, and so our brains turn to an easier version that they can easily grapple based on what they see and the human brain’s preference for stories: big men (usually) made big history.
But that gets the causality backwards. Big history makes big men.
Something similar has happened with religions. We made up stories to explain the world while we didn’t understand it. The more we’ve understood how the world works, the less religious creation stories have been needed to explain it.
I agree that there are factors, and also that sometimes a particularly brillant or audacious individual can be this factor.
>China eliminated all neighboring enemies
As did Portugal and Spain at exactly the same time. But they chose to turn outward instead of inward.
Granted, China was much bigger, so it had more incentives to go inward. But it was also an accident of history : if the eunuch establishment would have prevailed, or another, more adventurous emperor, was at the helm, they could just have continued their expeditions.
One different guy at this moment of history could have turned it completely around, and we would think of this as obvious today.
>Leonardo and the helicopter
I completely agree that Da Vinci could not have invented the helicopter. I shared the example of the steam machine, which was more accessible to the technology of these days.
>Protestantism and the printing press
I completely agree that Protestantism would have been crushed without the printing press, as was Catharism and numerous other proto-protestant mouvements before.
But someone could have invented the printing press 100 years earlier, and then maybe the Lollard movement would have won and been the equivalent of Protestantism : if the conditions were right for Gutenberg to invent the printing press in 1440, for how long have the conditions been right and were "waiting" for the right individual to use them ? 10 years ? 20 ? 50 ? 100 ? 200 ?
Or, if Gutenberg would not have been born, the printing press could have been invented 100 years *later*, Protestantism would have been crushed, and another form of revolution against the Catholic Church would have won later.
My point is, sometimes the conditions are here but nobody seizes the opportunity. The opportunity seems obvious only in retrospect (and sometimes never), and we tell stories to ourselves about how history is determined only by external factors and not by humans.
I guess also a more fundamental premise in this whole argument is if you believe or not in a form a free will, and so if some individuals really do have a chance to influence history.
Another example is Elon Musk : he showed us that the conditions were right to create a sustainable reusable rocket that is effectively reducing dramatically the costs of access to space.
His take was against the prevalent wisdom that most of the professionals were expressing less than 10 years ago.
Without Elon Musk, how long would it have taken to discover that the conditions for a sustainable reusable rocket were right ?
As a Portuguese I can say these is a myth, there is no documentation to back the doings of prince Henry, even for the above average medieval lord he is said to accomplish too much, he looks like a renaissance men, also the school that you reference is not true a myth again.
I can share some good Portuguese podcasts with accomplish historians that corroborate what I'm saying, but it is in Portuguese.
Anyway @Tomas Pueyo you forgot to point what for me are the main factors if you remove geographical and the will to do it, the astrolabe, the quadrant, cartography and the ability the sail at night by looking at stars.
All of these was because we mingle the the Arabs/Moors and they were the ones in possession of the mathematical and astrological knowledge at the time, in the end we were doers, tradesman and smooth talkers
Portugal did not complete it's Reconquista 243 years before Spain did, because if you look at the 1249 map of Spain depicted above you clearly see that over 90% of Spain is Independent from Moorish rule, only Granata is Moorish ruled. And in 1292 200 years before Cristobal Colombo Grenata had become significantly smaller and in 1392 it was the same as the day it was bought in 1492. Also 711 to 1492 is 781 years not 800 years. Also from 1249 when Moorish rule ended in Spain it was 538 years not 781 or 800. And another thing, in 2030 Portugal will have been independent for exactly 781 years :)
Portugal did not complete it's Reconquista 243 years before Spain did, because if you look at the 1249 map of Spain depicted above you clearly see that over 90% of Spain is Independent from Moorish rule, only Granata is Moorish ruled. And in 1292, 200 years before Cristobal Colombo Grenata had become significantly smaller and in 1392 it was the same as the day it was bought in 1492. Also 711 to 1492 is 781 years not 800 years. Also from 1249 when Moorish rule ended in Portugal and most of Spain, it was 538 years not 781 or 800. And another thing, in 2030 Portugal will have been independent for exactly 781 years :)
Great piece!! Very insightful and always good to read a underdog taking the world eheh
Just some small points:
- 1143 it's the key date that every Portuguese know, since it was when it was signed the Treaty of Zamora recognized Portuguese independence;
- also, throughout the post, it seems that it was the obvious choice to explore the ocean... it was not the case, and we can clearly see that through story records like "The Old Man of Restelo";
Interesting article.
I would like to add one of the reasons, perhaps the main one, Portugal embarked on its expansion towards the coasts of Africa.
The means for the expansion were certainly the improvements of navigation that arose in the XV century, and these were not due to chance. A Portuguese prince "Henry the Navigator" established what amounted to a state sponsored research effort and set about improving all aspects of the art of navigation. An effort to draw charts , note currents and winds and set up a school for navigators was financed by the Prince. New instruments, the compass of Chinese origin and the Arabian Astrolabe were perfected. Maps and information were a state secret. The expeditions were financed by the Crown, of course, but the ships themselves were improved using funds provided by the Crown. In this Portugal´s situation, close to the Mediterranean and on the Atlantic was favorable, their sailors had experience on both seas.
Henry´s wide ranging program of research started around 1430, was probably the first applied research program in Europe, and had wide ranging consequences, although Henry died before Vasco da Gama reached India in 1498.
Two things about this are ironic.
In the first place, Henry did not go out to sea much. His nickname was coined centuries later, he was an armchair seaman, but he did give a Navy to his country.
Secondly, his main motivation seems to have been religious, rather than political. And it was the result of fake news. Henry was a deeply religious man, as was common in the late Middle Ages . He heard of a legendary kingdom, situated in the unknown Continent of Africa, whose leader was a "Preste Juan", reputed to be Christian, and anxious to contact other kingdoms of the same faith. Hence, his own motivation was based on his deep faith coupled with some false premises, although of course, other motivations pushed the continuation of his program and were probably there all the time in other less idealistic actors of this drama. The slave trade and the spices of the east were powerful incentives.
Portugal was in the right place at the right time to start her Empire. However it is worth remembering that human beings are complex systems. This gives History a very non-linear character. The role of a single, powerful individual at the right point in time can be important sometimes, and historical accidents happen.
Thanks! I had read his story, but didn’t know the religious impulse. Thanks for sharing!
I don’t share the narrative of extraordinary people though. In some junctions in history some randomness like this can happen, but most of the time this is just humans making up the things they understand.
Here’s a counterfactual. Why did it take 150 years for Portugal to seriously pay attention to the oceans? Maybe a more educated king or their siblings could have thrown the country to the sea much earlier. Why didn’t they?
Maybe Henry the navigator was actually late! But we don’t think about the lack of a Henry the navigator 100 years earlier. We just focus on his feats when he does exist.
My hypothesis is that the idea of the sea was ripe at the time, and Henry the navigator was its best representative. That’s all.
And here’s the data point that corroborates this version: the Canary Islands.
If Henry the navigator was so ground-breaking, surely the Canary Islands would be Portuguese. But Portugal had to fight for them with Castilian nobles (not even the crown). The Castilian nobles, by the way, got there after a few travels by Genoans.
So bottom line several independent polities were vying for the same thing at the same time. Henry the navigator was not prescient or special. The only thing that made him special is being the sibling of the king of the piece of land best suited for Atlantic discovery in the late 1400s.
I agree that Henry may have been special but he was not the only factor, the time had to be right, and the sailors and ships willing to risk it, probably for more selfish reasons.
Why not 100 years earlier, indeed?
History always has an unpredictable element, although the circumstances, terrain, economy, social organization provide a framework that makes things possible.
Around the time of Henry, a little earlier in fact, (1405-1435) the Chinese sent fleets which crossed the Indian Ocean towards Africa, reaching all the way to Madagascar. However, the Emperor responsible for this died and his successor abandoned the project. Probably China, much more populous, with better ships at the time, and with great resources was a candidate for discovering America! However their centralized government decided otherwise. It is true they did not have a strong motivation to explore or expand an Empire that was big enough, but opening a trade route to Europe could have been possible and profitable if they had kept on.
Anyway, I agree that geography and resources dictate a lot, but quirks of History are important as well... Thank you for your answer and interesting posts!
China did get the Suahili cost earlier than Portugal.
Portugal ultimate goal was to reach Jerusalem from the backyard, the Red Sea. The final Crusade. At least that was.the official claim.
Even Columbus carried a letter for Preste Juan in his first trip, written by the Catholic Kings.
I'm not entirely on par with you on this point Tomas. History abounds with examples of missed opportunities, that in retrospect are obvious.
Javier shared it in the comments, and it's a great example : the world would be very different today if China would have seized the same opportunity that Portugal had, at the very same time.
Imagine if Archimedes or Hero of Alexandria or Leonardo da Vinci would have realized the potential of the steam machines they invented https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steam_cannon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile . The world would be very, very different today.
Sometimes to be an extraordinary person, you just need to seize the right opportunity at the right time. It may not seems much, but it can completely change the face of the world, and so these persons do have an outsized impact on history.
But that’s driven by economics, not people or chance. China didn’t colonize the East African coast or sponsor much state-supported trade because it already had a robust internal economy that produced pretty much everything that people (or at least elites) needed and wanted. I suppose there is the chance factor that the Chinese were also not driven by a proselytizing religion while Europeans were, but that’s about the only one.
I agree with this, in part.
However, the right circumstances are just as important as the individual. And usually it is not a lone individual but a group or a team. Hero, in Alexandria, did not have coal mines and iron ore to kick start a steam engine revolution. Neither did he have much incentive in a slave society. The first team engines (made by Thomas Newcomen in the early XVII century) were used in coal mines to pump water, because of the scarcity of firewood at the time. Then James Watt perfected Newcomen´s design and the abundance of coal made iron smelting more economical, iron was used for making better and cheaper steam engines, thus starting a feedback cycle in which many others participated. The cylinder boring machines invented by John Wilkinson are a case in point, they made a tight fitting of the cylinder and piston, less steam was lost and the eficency increased. A relatively small detail, but non trivial to develop.
Leonardo is a case of technology not being ripe enough for an inventors imagination. Until the internal combustion engine was developed and made light enough, Leonardo´s designs for flying machines were just dreams. When the gasoline engine did arrive, both the Wright brothers and
Alberto Santos Dumont independently built airplanes that flew.
The place and time have to be right (or wrong, as one could argue in the case of Hitler or Genghis Khan).
That is exactly my point. Thank you, I agree!
I agree with Richard’s point. And this is the crucial point around all my geohistory articles, so it’s important to drive it home.
We mentioned Henry the Navigator, and I explained why he just happened to be at the right place at the right time rather than being amazing.
I’ve mentioned another non-coincidence: that the Spaniards and Portuguese discovered alternative routes to India when they did (instead of 100 or 200 years earlier) was due to the right time: tech being mature enough + an increased value of an alternative path due to the Constantinople route being closed to Christians.
You mention 2 other examples so let’s go through them. First China. I go into the detail of why China moved inwards during the Ming period here: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/world-chessboard
In short: China eliminated all neighboring enemies and with lack of competition turned inwards.
Da Vinci is an even better example. It’s said that if he had built his helicopter he would have realized that the engine was backwards, he would have corrected it, and built the first helicopter.
But he didn’t. Why. Because he would have had to invent along with the helicopter ways to get all the other elements that make a helicopter, which were not readily available at the time. It was impossible. It was an idea whose time had not come.
The same as Protestantism before the printing press, as I explained in here: https://unchartedterritories.tomaspueyo.com/p/internet-blockchain-kill-nation-states
There’s a fantastic article explaining this in detail for the process of bikes, arguably a much much simpler concept that could have been invented in Roman times, yet wasn’t: https://rootsofprogress.org/why-did-we-wait-so-long-for-the-bicycle
The thing is these patterns are very hard to discern, and so our brains turn to an easier version that they can easily grapple based on what they see and the human brain’s preference for stories: big men (usually) made big history.
But that gets the causality backwards. Big history makes big men.
Something similar has happened with religions. We made up stories to explain the world while we didn’t understand it. The more we’ve understood how the world works, the less religious creation stories have been needed to explain it.
I agree that there are factors, and also that sometimes a particularly brillant or audacious individual can be this factor.
>China eliminated all neighboring enemies
As did Portugal and Spain at exactly the same time. But they chose to turn outward instead of inward.
Granted, China was much bigger, so it had more incentives to go inward. But it was also an accident of history : if the eunuch establishment would have prevailed, or another, more adventurous emperor, was at the helm, they could just have continued their expeditions.
One different guy at this moment of history could have turned it completely around, and we would think of this as obvious today.
>Leonardo and the helicopter
I completely agree that Da Vinci could not have invented the helicopter. I shared the example of the steam machine, which was more accessible to the technology of these days.
>Protestantism and the printing press
I completely agree that Protestantism would have been crushed without the printing press, as was Catharism and numerous other proto-protestant mouvements before.
But someone could have invented the printing press 100 years earlier, and then maybe the Lollard movement would have won and been the equivalent of Protestantism : if the conditions were right for Gutenberg to invent the printing press in 1440, for how long have the conditions been right and were "waiting" for the right individual to use them ? 10 years ? 20 ? 50 ? 100 ? 200 ?
Or, if Gutenberg would not have been born, the printing press could have been invented 100 years *later*, Protestantism would have been crushed, and another form of revolution against the Catholic Church would have won later.
My point is, sometimes the conditions are here but nobody seizes the opportunity. The opportunity seems obvious only in retrospect (and sometimes never), and we tell stories to ourselves about how history is determined only by external factors and not by humans.
I guess also a more fundamental premise in this whole argument is if you believe or not in a form a free will, and so if some individuals really do have a chance to influence history.
Another example is Elon Musk : he showed us that the conditions were right to create a sustainable reusable rocket that is effectively reducing dramatically the costs of access to space.
His take was against the prevalent wisdom that most of the professionals were expressing less than 10 years ago.
Without Elon Musk, how long would it have taken to discover that the conditions for a sustainable reusable rocket were right ?
Same for Artemis vs Spaceship.
Agreed!
As a Portuguese I can say these is a myth, there is no documentation to back the doings of prince Henry, even for the above average medieval lord he is said to accomplish too much, he looks like a renaissance men, also the school that you reference is not true a myth again.
I can share some good Portuguese podcasts with accomplish historians that corroborate what I'm saying, but it is in Portuguese.
Anyway @Tomas Pueyo you forgot to point what for me are the main factors if you remove geographical and the will to do it, the astrolabe, the quadrant, cartography and the ability the sail at night by looking at stars.
All of these was because we mingle the the Arabs/Moors and they were the ones in possession of the mathematical and astrological knowledge at the time, in the end we were doers, tradesman and smooth talkers
Portugal became independent from the kingdom of Leon, not Galicia, and almost 100 years earlier. Check your sources!
You made me realize I had not pasted the footnotes. Corrected. Thanks!
I know this is not key to your post but for the sake of historical accuracy (and since I am from León) : https://es.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tratado_de_Zamora
I didn’t know these details. Thank you!
Vimara Peres, a knight of Alfonso III of León, conquered Portucale in 868. The place was resettled of people from León.
Alfonso I of Portugal defeated his mother, Theresa, who was loyal to León in the battle of Sao Mamede in 1128.
In 1143 León accepted the new kingdom.
I think there is something wrong in there.
Portugal did not complete it's Reconquista 243 years before Spain did, because if you look at the 1249 map of Spain depicted above you clearly see that over 90% of Spain is Independent from Moorish rule, only Granata is Moorish ruled. And in 1292 200 years before Cristobal Colombo Grenata had become significantly smaller and in 1392 it was the same as the day it was bought in 1492. Also 711 to 1492 is 781 years not 800 years. Also from 1249 when Moorish rule ended in Spain it was 538 years not 781 or 800. And another thing, in 2030 Portugal will have been independent for exactly 781 years :)
Portugal did not complete it's Reconquista 243 years before Spain did, because if you look at the 1249 map of Spain depicted above you clearly see that over 90% of Spain is Independent from Moorish rule, only Granata is Moorish ruled. And in 1292, 200 years before Cristobal Colombo Grenata had become significantly smaller and in 1392 it was the same as the day it was bought in 1492. Also 711 to 1492 is 781 years not 800 years. Also from 1249 when Moorish rule ended in Portugal and most of Spain, it was 538 years not 781 or 800. And another thing, in 2030 Portugal will have been independent for exactly 781 years :)
Great piece!! Very insightful and always good to read a underdog taking the world eheh
Just some small points:
- 1143 it's the key date that every Portuguese know, since it was when it was signed the Treaty of Zamora recognized Portuguese independence;
- also, throughout the post, it seems that it was the obvious choice to explore the ocean... it was not the case, and we can clearly see that through story records like "The Old Man of Restelo";
So much fun reading it! Thx! :)