History Summarized: The Portuguese Empire

It's not every day that you see a fairly small and politically insignificant corner of the world's turn around and changed the course of human history overnight, but at the turn of the sixteenth century That's pretty much exactly what happened in the Iberian Peninsula in 1493 Christopher Columbus returned from what he thought was Southeast Asia and then Europe collectively lost their Minds while the Spanish crown was economy crushingly giddy at the thought of all that golden pepper It proved an equally momentous turning point for their neighbor Portugal today we'll dig into Portuguese history during the ensuing Age of Discovery to see what they made of this situation and how Let's do some history but first big ups to world of warships for sponsoring this video and letting me double down on today's nautical themed world of warships is A free-to-play strategy game where you command huge fleets of the 20th century's most iconic seafaring pew pew boats. That's the technical word I know because I'm a real-life historian who doesn't have a history degree Oh my god Deliberate tactical gameplay over 200 lovingly rendered and historically accurate ships and constant support for new and seasonal content It's an entire world of Warships if you're a fan of historical ships There's a lot to enjoy and if you Harbor a pathological hatred of the Yamato class battleship, then you can gleefully blow it to bits everyone wins So click the link below to play world of warships and collect a special bonus starter pack by using promo code play warships 2018 You'll receive two hundred fifty two balloons 1 million credits for the HMS campbellton premium ship and three days of premium You'll be supporting the channel and having a great time doing it and let's return to our regularly scheduled portugal while the iberian peninsula was in a near constant state of flux between 300 BC and 1100 AD changing hands between the Carthaginians The Romans the Visigoths in the North African Moors the kingdom of Portugal got its proper start in 1139 during the several century long Reconquista it was originally one of the few kingdoms fighting back against Muslim rule including Lyon Castile Aragon and neva while those four gradually coalesced to form Spain Portugal kept to itself on the Atlantic coast and the centuries between their founding and the final expulsion of the moors in 1492 Which is the same year as boat boy go figure Portugal didn't have much in the way of economic opportunities with the Straits of Gibraltar blocking their connection to the Mediterranean and not A lot of natural resources to work with at home that started to change with the reforms of Prince Henry the Navigator Who maybe possibly started a navigation school at his villa on the southern tip of Portugal? It was supposedly here that the fledging portuguese naval tradition really picked up steam teaching a generation of baby explorers all sorts of cartography geography ship engineering and sailing techniques I'm hedging my words here because there's actually some debate as to whether this famous Schoolroom was really that big of a deal or if it was just a myth I can't say for sure either way, but the fact of the matter is that somewhere in Portugal people were learning how to boats They were also making some moves in ship construction itself such as the lateen sail rig a large triangular sail that allowed boats to tack against the wind as well as a new type of ship called a caravel which wasn't especially Tanky but was highly maneuverable Thanks to those new sails before Portugal the best navigators from the Greeks to the Vikings used Square-rigged sails and crews of rowers to navigate along the coasts But this new rig made it possible to sail in any direction without doling out fridge I can't a growing crew this meant that Portuguese and Spanish sailors in their hot new Caravels could take on harder southern winds and navigate stretches of the ocean that were otherwise too impractical to sail with this Technology, the whole globe was fair game now and since Portugal was right on the Atlantic They took advantage of their newfound naval manoeuvrability to flirt with island exploration off the African coast in the latter 1400s their big break came in 1493 when Columbus returns to Europe Although it wasn't immediately obvious that this was a good thing for Portugal Spain asked Pope Rodrigo Borgia Spaniard to grant them dominion over all the Newlands they found along with all the ones they hadn't yet because Colonialism Portugal naturally wanted to avoid getting stiffed on global property rights. So soon after flexing their navigational muscles for the first time so the two nations made a deal Spain gets everything west of an arbitrary line and Portugal gets everything east of that arbitrary line sounds fair said nobody else on the planet since the new Territories had barely been mapped. This deal didn't really mean all that much yet But the implication was clear that the following centuries would bring Portugal eastward now before 1500 Venice and the Ottomans were the big boys of trade in and around Europe because they were the ones who respectively had a giant Navy And direct access to all those Eastern markets on paper being a coastal Kingdom facing to an Atlantic Ocean that belongs to your highly territorial Neighbors sure seems pretty restrictive for poor Portugal, especially with Venetians and Ottomans acting as middlemen to Eastern trade But in 1499 one brave boy named Vasco da Gama said screw it and sailed underneath the southern tip of Africa to reach India Marking the first time any European made it there exclusively by sea And this was a serious game-changer the Ottomans had to make overland passes to connect goods with Europe Which was time consuming? And inefficient compared to the ocean route and it's also worth noting that most of Europe didn't really like the Ottomans all that much So a half decade after getting unceremoniously screwed by Rodrigo Borgia as Rodrigo Borgia is wants to do portugal saw an opportunity For securing naval trade dominance and ran with it. Well, really they sailed with it, but you know what? I mean anyway, moving on now Portugal had a fraction of Spain's population So they couldn't support the same kind of deep and Linde colonialism as their neighbors to adapt they pulled a page out of Venice's book and constructed a series of several dozen fait Turia's coastal and island naval bases that served as waypoints supply stations and trade hubs These outposts dotted the path around Africa and across the Indian Ocean and they powered the Portuguese trade empire the most well known Fitori Ezra Goa in India pretty much the entire island of Sri Lanka Malacca in the East Indies and Macau in China This was a fantastic set up for Portugal because they could access loads of highly sought-after Resources like pepper across giant safe and easily navigable stretches of coastlines unlike the relative unpredictability of the Atlantic Ocean the Indian Oceans monsoon winds were predictable and actually helpful for sailing and especially when the Portuguese started rolling out the kerrick's which were legendarily huge by the day's standards and Unsurprisingly the forerunner to the galley and their naval merchants could carry far more than land bound horses and carts ever could Faster to they're only serious competition was from the Ottomans since the native peoples They were in and - couldn't really put up that much of a fight now The thing is the Portuguese system of naval dominance was rather brutal to anyone who wasn't a part of it and they had a tendency To kick the crap out of anyone who they saw is intruding on their system So to solve a problem that they more or less Created they implemented the cart eyes system where in Portugal sold off the rights for third parties to trade in the Indian Ocean? Offering their trade routes access to Portuguese ports and protection from pirates for a price obviously now that might sound like your typical criminal protection racket because Well, it kind was you can really look at this one both ways It was a means to enforce a maritime order and make loads of money doing it But it was also a more polite form of outright piracy enforced by a sovereign state So it's a bit of a dodgy subject on a less Monopolistic note to navigators to mention in the years after Vasco de Gama were Ferdinand Magellan and Amerigo Vespucci you might recognize the Vespucci first name because he was the Cartographer who likely figured out that the new world was in fact the new world and not East Asia and we rewarded his keen cutting Intellect by naming half of the land on earth after him and I joke but honestly props to Vespucci for being the only guy in Europe to look around and say um Guys, are we really sure that this is Asia any chance? This is a brand new entire continent that we've just never known about before Because that's a bold statement to make in any case a decade after Vespucci observations Translated into new maps Magellan and his crew sailed beneath South America and Africa to circumnavigate the entire world for the first time it took three years and Magellan did get killed in the Philippines along the way but some of his crew made it back to Lisbon to share what they Saw and prove that it was possible And that's what matters Magellan and Friends definitely took one for the team there now Portugal in the middle 1500s is killing it They're rolling in money They have some of the best-tasting food on earth at the time on account of all of those spices And they have basically no enemies to worry about however It's all about to go downhill because King Sebastian hopped across the Straits of Gibraltar hoping to just stroll into Morocco and colonize the place only to be routed in battle and killed without an heir to replace him the crisis ended with King Philip of Spain also Becoming King of Portugal which kicked off the Iberian Union a partnership between Spain and Portugal that on paper Sounded like it could be really cool. But in practice turned out to be kind of a gigantic dumpster fire The first red flag was the complete stomping the Spanish Armada got from the British Just eight years into the Union crippling the navies of both Spain and Portugal see while Portugal was friendly with everyone except for the whole extortion piracy thing Spain was at odds with the British the French and eventually the Dutch each of them started chipping away at their territory in the new world and the Indian Ocean as a polite fu to The Iberian Union and later fought against them out During the thirty years war as a rather less polite fu Portugal eventually wanted out for reasons. That should be obvious So they waged a 28 year long restoration war against Spain to thoroughly destain themselves. It's like a mini Reconquista It's great all told portugal got roped into a solid century of war that left them in a really rough place when they finally got out of Their bad marriage with the English and Dutch East India. Company's springing up in the early 1600s Portugal's. Hold on the Indian Ocean Gradually slipped away so they had to start looking westward to their colony in Brazil Which conveniently had a Gold Rush in the early 1700s to keep them on the up and up? So by and large Portugal was still doing okay They weren't masters of the Seas anymore obviously, but they also didn't have any absurd world ending calamities to deal with yet through the 1516 and early 1700s Lisbon was a gorgeous city filled to the brim with some of the most beautiful art and architecture that Empire could buy if you go Today you can see the Royal balem district and the jeronimos monastery Stylistic Testaments to Portugal's mastery of the sea in the early 1700s the city adopted Baroque architecture in full force supposedly rivaling the contemporary masterpieces over in Madrid and even Rome but until on All Saints Day in 1755 a massive earthquake Rattled the city causing a giant tidal wave and knocking over enough candles to set parts of Lisbon on fire The triple tragedy ruined the city and it took decades to rebuild while modern Lisbon is undoubtedly, beautiful It's almost entirely different from what it was before 1755 so it's much harder to see the lasting legacy of the Portuguese Empire the way you can in neighbouring Spain in an era driven by the triumph of human reason the Lisbon earthquake sent metaphorical shockwaves all across enlightenment era Europe traumatizing everyone and reminding them what humans can and can't control the quake was really only part of a downhill slide and luck continued to conspire against Portugal as Napoleon invaded the kingdom from 1807 to 1814 the colony of Brazil declared independence in 1822 and there was a civil war in the early 1830s after that things shuffled along for a mercifully quiet century until the monarchy was deposed to 1910 and Portugal became a republic but for me the 20th century is a barren wasteland of Confusion and misery so I am going to leave it there and that is the kingdom of Portugal in the Age of Exploration Although they didn't come out on top in the end the Portuguese Empire undoubtedly had a colossal affect on the Fundamental way that humans traversed the seas and that rippled across the histories of Europe South America and the Indian Ocean I think their stories pretty damn cool and my takeaway here Is that even when you're on the ass end of Europe facing into a seemingly empty ocean? There's still an opportunity to do great things If you focus on your strengths, yeah Portugal might have gotten beat out by the Dutch in the English a century down the line but they took the risk to sail underneath the tip of Africa and make it to India in the first place and if you ask me that Determination to try is the real accomplishment Once again a huge thank you to world of warships for sponsoring today's video please check that link down in the description to go give the game a look give those ships a spin and give the Yamato a firm kick in the pants

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Views: 849,791

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Keywords: William Shakespeare (Author), Shakespeare Summarized, Funny, Summary, OSP, Overly Sarcastic Productions, Analysis, Literary Analysis, Myths, Legends, Classics, Literature, Stories, Storytelling, History, Historical, Portugal, Portuguese, Vasco, Da Gama, Magellan, Globe, Age of, Exploration, Discovery, Carracks, Nau, Caravel, Sailing, Ships, Boats, India, Indian Ocean, Trade, Merchant, Routes, Circumnavigate, Sea, Atlantic, Columbus, New World, Asia, Empire, Colony, Spain, Iberia, Spanish, Lisbon, Earthquake, Spices

Id: WhVFf5-qi1k

Length: 12min 2sec (722 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 09 2018

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Videos acerca da história de Portugal são sempre fixes, mas a ver bem este aqui é um bocado "história de Portugal a reboque de Espanha".

Edit: Na verdade, está bastante fraquinho... um vídeo acerca do império português que não diz nada acerca de Ceuta, do Brasil, do Afonso de Albuquerque, da chegada à China ou Japão, mas começa com o Colombo e fala imenso do Magalhães, que na verdade desertou de Portugal para mostrar aos Espanhóis o caminho para as Molucas (foi somente disso que se tratou a viagem dele) e que já ouvimos milhentas vezes noutros sítios... Fazem falta documentários de jeito acerca de Portugal.