Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400?-1800

Portuguese Oceanic Expansion, 1400-1800, edited by Francisco Bethencourt and Diogo Ramada Curto, is an extremely valuable contribution for all those interested in studying the Portuguese overseas empire. It is also a work that is particularly welcome in the market formed by the more than forty postgraduate courses in History already existing in Brazil. The book’s quality is immediately guaranteed by the recognized excellence of its contributors, who include Stuart Schwartz, A.J.R. Russell-Wood and J. Thornton. These are senior researchers and experts in the travelers and chroniclers of the time, who are also fully conversant with the primary documentation and the recent postgraduate theses written in their specialist areas. New imperial spaces – particularly Africa – are analyzed in the book, which turns out to be an important innovation in comparison with the studies already published on the theme. Attention is also drawn to the concern shown with studying the relational dynamics between groups and territories within the imperial complex itself, in both economic and religious terms. In the same way, concern is also shown with adopting more general approaches to studying the performance of the Portuguese imperial economy over the long term, while, in the last part of the book, a study is made of the dynamics of the Portuguese empire within the overall context of the modern age. Lastly, the work also includes a number of other extremely valuable contributions, such as those provided by Jorge Pedreira, Luiz Felipe Alencastro, Isabel dos Guimarães de Sá and Anthony Disney, amongst others.