How Portugal Became the World's First Global Empire

Portugal is considered by many historians to be the first world superpower. But this raises the question, how did such a small country with a tiny population become so powerful in the 15th century?
Well, there’s not a straight answer to this question but there are a group of factors that greatly contributed to it:
-First there was the location, which it being located in the south of Europe near to the exit of the Mediterranean provided a good food supply and helped to develop of an unrivalled knowledge of Atlantic winds, weather and tides.
- Secondly there was Portugal’s ability to absorb “new Christians”. What do I mean by this, well, as Jewish merchants and scholars were driven out of Spain after the “Reconquista” they brought with them not only knowledge but just plain man power and with this flow of people coming into the country to take refuge, there was a boost in the size of the Portuguese population.
But these topics are not the main subject of this video, that will come later on the channel, so subscribe if you don’t want to miss it. This video focus on the fourth and in my opinion more interesting factor which helped Portugal become so dominant at sea. Which is their expertise in ship building.
You see, Portugal wasn’t the only country with a great location, along with England, France and Spain these European nations are considered to be the main characters in the Age of Exploration. All of them bordered the Atlantic Ocean and had easy access to the sea with many seaports and experienced sailors, which allowed these four nations to have the ability to explore further into the Atlantic while other European nations did not.
But Portugal had something, the other didn’t have, experience in naval warfare and leading edge technology in ship building. Since the year 1180, the Portuguese navy had been constantly fighting the Muslims, trying to expel them out of the Iberian Peninsula with the famous Reconquista. So it’s only natural that 300 years later the country had one of the best navies in the world.
And the Portuguese have one man to thank for that, Prince Henrique “The Navigator”, Henrique was responsible for kick starting the age of exploration in Portugal and consequently Europe. He started carrying out multiple expeditions to places around Portugal such as Madeira and Açores and although he never directly carried out any trips of his own, Henrique was vital in Portugal’s earliest trips and for revolutionizing the way that these trips were recorded.
He set up a school of navigation in 1419 and under his direction sailors perfected sailing techniques, navigational tools, designs for sails and different mapping techniques. For example, he is credited with being the first to require captains of ships to keep a record or log of their journeys. This was important because it allowed different explorers to combine their findings to build up a common knowledge base of discoveries.
This Navigation School of Sagres, studied and developed cosmography, astronomy, cartography and basically all sciences that helped navigators to sail further into the unknown. People from all over the world came to this institute to learn everything they could and bring the knowledge to their own countries, the institute can be thought as sort of the NASA of its time.
The Portuguese galleon even started to be hired by other countries, with the famous instance of when Charles V of Spain asked for help from the king of Portugal and with the São João Batista galleon they were able to finally conquer Tunis and capture the famous pirate “Redbeard”.
The Conquest of Tunis happened in 1535, when the city, then under the control of the Ottoman Empire after the captain Redbeard raided southern Italy and Malta decided to settle at the Spanish colony. Its fleet was pretty big, and a successful re-conquest of the city would be very costly for Spain, but with the help of the most powerful ship at the time, everything was possible.

Select video clips courtesy of Pexels

[maxheadrom]

Portugal took chilli to Asia and brought Sugar Cane to South America. Very very smart people!!! Very wise, also. Abraços do Brasil, companheiro!

[binalcensored]

Portugal was one of the richest and most developed nations in Europe at the time of D. Dinis (1261-1325), the vision and entrepreneurial capacity allowed the royal treasury to dispose of funds to make loans to its neighboring kings, as documented in the chronicles: ao rei of Aragon and the King of Castile. It also allowed him to be generous in the gifts he made whenever he went on diplomatic missions.
Numerous Europeans, coming from France, England, Italy, Germany and other places, came to live in Portugal, taking advantage of the dynamism that the king gave and due to the more favorable and abundant situation in Portugal.
The Iberian Peninsula was known for its abundant resources even before the Romans and grew more than the rest of the European areas. “It grows even more in the 9th-10th century, being the richest area in the 10th century and this growth is never stopped. Christian gains must be understood by this growth.” To this we must add a series of "favorable circumstances", among them their stable monarchies, with the kingdom of Castile and Aragon "very organized, composed of a warrior society with warriors who were created in the border struggle". Portugal, for its part, seeks above all “control of the Atlantic, where it has invested heavily, and allows it to conquer a position of global leadership, especially in what will later be called Brazil”.
In the distribution of the new lands, other western European kingdoms are excluded for various reasons”, as can be seen by the thousands of famines in northern Europe, by the countless migrations from northern Europe to Portuguese territory over almost every century, in the last thousands of years and, finally, by the large number of monuments, documents, churches and castles that exist in much greater numbers in the Iberian Peninsula.
The so-called Great Famine was restricted to northern Europe, including the British Isles, northern France, the Netherlands, Scandinavia, Germany and western Poland. In the north, crops were very often destroyed by cold weather, rain, hail and frost. The famine was limited to the south by the Alps and the Pyrenees. Famines were familiar occurrences in medieval Europe. Localized famines occurred in the Kingdom of France during the 14th century in 1304, 1305, 1310, 1315–1317 (the Great Famine), 1330–1334, 1349–1351, 1358–1360, 1371, 1374–1375, and 1390. England, there were additional famines in 1321, 1351 and 1369. Even King Edward II himself in 1315 could not get bread. But it was in Scandinavia that famines were more intense and constant, the cold climate and low light made famines prevail over time. That's why they were forced to risk their lives in stormy seas to steal from other peoples in order to survive, living with the limitations and uncertainties that war always determines. Hence the lack of monuments and constructions of the time, because only a society with resources that guarantee food, with a stable agriculture, peace and confidence in the future, can achieve this.
There is still great confusion about this, due to what was romanticized and fictionalized, or just built more recently, at the end of the 19th century but described as medieval. The truth of northern European reality has been transformed into fictional tales about princes and princesses wrapped in wealth, but the documentary and monumental truth is completely different. Furthermore, the Nazi office of falsification of historical facts, manipulated the Nordic weakness to appear as "superior to everything".
Added to this is the poverty caused by the endless wars over territorial limits that destroyed and ruined the resources of European countries, but which in Portugal no longer existed (*with rare exceptions), as Portugal was the first country in Europe to have its border limits demarcated . Hence the Lusitanian nation, with a stable present, turned to the future and looked to the unknown world, to the sea beyond and how to create and develop the technological and scientific means to get there.
There is positional and internal organization so that the countries of the peninsula have an undisputed hegemony. In Iberia, the climate was warm, mild, the region was diverse and crossed by countless rivers that irrigated the land and served as transport routes, connecting and transporting the economy of this region full of varied resources, from the sea rich in fish, to to the interior of the Iberian Peninsula and vice versa. In addition, agriculture evolved a lot, with the introduction of new Arab cultivation and irrigation techniques, hitherto unknown in Europe.
The great scientific, technical, maritime and human development that Portugal created to travel around the world and beyond, was prepared over the centuries and that is why Portugal made Europe rich and developed, changing its small, poor, closed, in the medieval era, on the continent that lead the world to this day.
D. Dinis established a centralizing policy, articulated with important economic promotion actions, such as the creation of numerous municipalities and fairs.
He ordered the exploitation of copper, silver, tin and iron mines and organized the export of surplus production to other European countries.
Foreign trade - Cereal production soon surpasses domestic consumption and Portugal becomes an exporting kingdom, establishing commercial relations with ports in Catalonia, Brittany, Flanders and England, signing the first commercial treaty with Edward II of England in 1308. Wine, olive oil, salt, salted fish and dried fruit are also exported to these ports. Even abroad, Portuguese merchants began to gain privileges: Philip IV of France donated privileges to Portuguese merchants on two occasions, in 1290 and in 1310, on this date specifically to the merchants of Harfleur.
Once the Reconquest was concluded, Dinis I of Portugal became interested in foreign trade, organizing exports to European countries. In 1293 he instituted the so-called Bolsa dos Mercadores, a maritime insurance fund for the numerous Portuguese merchants residing in the County of Flanders, who paid certain sums according to tonnage, which reverted to their benefit if necessary. Algarve wine and chestnuts were sold in Flanders and England, salt from the Lisbon, Setúbal and Aveiro regions were profitable exports to Northern Europe, as were leather and Kermes, a scarlet dye.
Internal trade - This commercial increase resulted in an increase in the number of fairs. Dinis continues his father's impulse in this field: the regions of Entre Douro e Minho, Beira and Alentejo were covered with fairs, namely tax free fairs, that is, fairs with privileges and exemptions.
To avoid dependence on neighboring states for the transport of goods, he ordered the construction of ships in the kingdom's shipyards. The country claims leadership in trade between the North Atlantic and the South and therefore, the king lays the foundations for the construction of innovative ships, which combine the characteristics of resistant Atlantic ships, with the lightness and versatility of navigability in the Mediterranean. Foreign sailors even came to combine specific knowledge of their maritime regions, with what Portuguese specialists and researchers were looking for and this is how the Genoese Manuel Pessanha is attributed the position of admiral as a privilege, founding a true Portuguese navy at the service of the Crown and the Kingdom.
He pursued relevant judicial reforms, instituted the Portuguese language as the official language of the court, created one of the first European Universities, freed the Military Orders in the national territory from foreign influences and continued to systematically increase royal centralism.
In a time of national affirmation of economic prosperity and peace led by a king with an administrative and economic vocation, it would confirm the continuation of the use of new money as opposed to old money. There is also a novelty in a silver alloy coin, with its name Tornes. This coin is a reflection of the success of the coin in France and a sign of growing trade in Europe. It was also a credibility mechanism showing that there was good silver currency in Portugal.
A monarch more devoted to economics and the arts than to war, he developed a policy of monetary stability and boosted the economy, especially agriculture. He promoted the extraction of various minerals, the creation of fairs and the development of the navy. "In these lands, countless knights from France became residents, who integrated themselves into local life. Their descendants, already assumed themselves completely as Portuguese".
During his reign, D. Dinis founded 44 villages throughout his kingdom, including the village of Atouguia. In them he built and repaired his castles. He created one of the top 3 universities in Europe, the University of Coimbra / Lisbon.
Cultivated and curious about letters and science, he would have stimulated the translation into Portuguese of many important works, among them the treatises of his grandfather Afonso X, the Wise. In this way, his Court was one of the greatest literary centers in Europe.

[juancarlosvaldes]

As a Cuban-American living in the USA, my DNA is mostly from Spain and Portugal as everyone from my grandparents from both my mom and dad's side are from those countries.

Also, I have always been fascinated with 15th to 18th century Galleons and have personally built about 20 of them. I have either sold them, or gave some away to good friends and co-workers through the years butIi don't make them any more.

Hope to visit Spain and Portugal in the near future as I enjoy traveling and learning about different cultures! Thank you for your time! JC

[asgautbakke]

I've been to Lisbon, I visited the museum of the Portuguese navy - it is no coincidence that it was much larger and with better exhibitions than the army museum... In it I found a special presentation of a archaeological excavation of a ship which foundered in the Tejo estuary during the early 18th century.
The greatest cost with sailing vessels wasn't the metal for cannons and fittings but the timber for the hull. It helped that ever since king Dennis (Diniz in Portuguese) the nation has been one of the most wooded country of all of southern Europe, he ordered extensive forest planting for expressed benefit of the navy. Portugal is nowadays one of the big exporters of wood product in the world.
But there was more to it than availability of timber, studying the excavated shipwreck showed that there was something to the construction too. Ever since the Viking ship age ships in the Atlantic have been built with sturdy frames the board of the hull was nailed onto. In this ship though the frames were much thinner but also much tighter together, and nailed together with the neighbouring frames. Thus could Portuguese shipwrights use the valuable timber more sparingly and still build very seaworthy vessels.
It is no coincidence that the navy Royal Navy had most respect for during the age of sails was the Portuguese one... As men-of-war went, the Portuguese vessels were less solid than British vessels but cheaper and faster to construct, and manned by sailors of expertise only matched but not exceeded by Royal Navy.

[fireblade]

Tenho muito orgulho da nossa História e da nossa Cultura. Hoje somos pequenos e os outros não sabem quem fomos, mas o sangue de aventureiros conquistadores correrá nas nossas veias para sempre. Viva Portugal!

[gatesofkilikien]

Great video! It's quite impressive what such a small country like Portugal was able to accomplish in so short a time.

[jvaikido]

After the crusades the templars moved to Portugal and were given land and property. Famous templars castles and temples ruins are all over Portugal. They help the rulers with knowledge and experience.

[binalcensored]

It wasnt England, it was Portugal who created the Galleon! In fact when English corsairs captured a Portuguese Galleon, when it was receiving water, they took it to England and everyone stayed astonished about how it was possible to build such a big ship. It took 100 years after Portugal, for England to make Galleons!

[vigiler]

An excellent video - I learned quite a bit (as I was hoping). I'm subscribing and looking forward to more of your videos! :)

[danielrodriguessilva]

Meu irmão, os Galeões também foram inventados pelos Portugueses, está historicamente comprovado que os tugas tinham embarcações iguais e ainda mais impressionantes

[Wertyuiop]

Henrique! You need to coming back for the new reconquista!

[binalcensored]

The Galleon was a ship invented from 1518, by the Portuguese as a weapon to give a proper answer to the Indias Career, to the big ships coming from India full of very valuable cargo. There are records of the powerful Portuguese Galleon Sao Joao Baptista in 1535 leading the attack of the Christian Armada to Tunez, which proves that only the Portuguese has such a powerful ships on that date.
In a leaflet written in the time of King D. João III, it is said that its keel was the length and a half of the largest ship in India. The number of people he transported to the capture of Goleta could also be used to judge the extraordinary dimensions of this ship, truly extraordinary for that time. In addition to the crew, which would have been very numerous to be able to sail a similar ship, it took on board 600 musketeers, 400 men with swords and rodelas, and 300 artillerymen. In addition to including 366 bronze pieces.
As historians point out, this galleon had a steel tackle on the beck, with which, in the second attack, it broke the iron chain with which the moors closed the entrance to the port of Goleta. There is even Tapestry of the series The Conquest of Tunis designed by Jan Cornelis Vermeyen & woven by Wilhelm de Pannemaker in 1549-1551, in there we can see the Galleon St John Baptist nicknamed Bota Fogo "Set Fire".
It is undeniable that the aforementioned galleon, to which the people gave the name "Bota Fogo" due to the great amount of fire vomited from itself, rendered great service in that memorable action, not only due to the activity of its fire, but also because it was directed in a superior position, which was the cavalier of the other ships of the fleet and of the port's own batteries.
This galleon was built in Portas do Mar, one of the navy arsenals in Lisbon, by master João Gallego; which began on August 29, 1533, and which, employing 230 workers in its construction, launched into the sea on June 24 of the following year.
In other words, at least since 1534 we have evidence that galleons were already being built in Portugal.
The fact that Charles V of Habsburg, the emperor of Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, part of France and Italy, as well as king of Spain, specifically asked the king of Portugal for the Galleon St John Baptist to lead the attack to Tunez in 1535, demonstrates that only Portugal had such a powerful ship and only Portugal had galleons.
There are reports of the construction of Portuguese galleons since 1518 and in Spain just seven decades later. England only built its first galleon 100 years later.

"Good food suplie" well, the conquest of Ceuta was to get farm fields

[renatogomescosta]

O Português é um povo diferente, não foi por acaso.

[Gloriaimperial]

There are no Portuguese conquests before 1415.
Spain sailed before Portugal, and we had more naval experience in war.
A Spanish fleet conquered Sicily in 1282 (1282-1759). Another fleet of Spanish conquered Athens in 1311 (1311-1379). Also Corsica and Sardinia in 1326. We defeated the English fleet at La Rochelle 1372, sinking 48 ships. Spanish invasion of southern England in 1377, 1380-81 and 1411. Before Henry the Navigator was born, Spain already had lands in Africa: Djerba, Tunisia, 1380. When Henry the Navigator was 10 years old, the Spanish were already in the Canary Islands, 1404 (but there were Spanish settlers before, in 1341). The only thing Portugal did in the entire 15th century was reach Ceuta in 1415, Madeira in 1419, Azores in 1427. And explore the west African coast. That is important, but it is not a European power nor is it a global empire nor is it the beginning of exploration navigation in Africa. In 1442, the Spanish of the Aragon empire defeated the French in Italy, conquering the entire kingdom of Naples and Sardinia. Spain arrived in America in 1492. It was the first time that a power crossed the Ocean at the time of the discoveries. Spain is on 3 continents. Portugal in Portugal and Africa. Portugal was never a greater power than Spain. The great moment of Portugal begins in 1500, when they arrived in India in 1498 and Brazil in 1500. These are the 20 years in which Portugal is on 4 continents and Spain on 3. But Spain annexes the Netherlands and Franche-Comté in 1519, and The Spanish king, Carlos I, is also named emperor of Germany. In 1520 Spain reached the fourth and fifth continents, crossing the entire Pacific Ocean for the first time, which is half of the earth.
But Portugal did have, as you say, a good tradition of sailors, and they expanded throughout Africa and Asia, with multiple colonies: Mozambique, Kenya, Arabia, Oman, China, India, Indonesia, Ceylon, Japan.
Spain did it in the Philippines, then Brunei, Malaysia, Indonesia, Cambodia, Taiwan and almost all the archipelagos of the deep Pacific Ocean, including Hawaii (16th century Spanish map) and New Zealand (16th century Spanish helmet there)
But I consider that it was a parallel expansion of the two Iberian countries.
Only 1 in 7 Jews left Spain in 1492. The rest became Catholic. And they did not choose Portugal especially, but went to the Turkish empire or Italy, where there are still tens of thousands of Sephardim who speak ancient Spanish. The Jews of Portugal were also forced to become Christians in 1496

[stoned]

portugal was the first, other countrys just do the same.

[Luzitanium]

small country??? Portugal is bigger than Belgium and Netherlands together

[BanzodoAndarilho]

Botafogo Football club has what??? Oh, man, your video was amazing until this madness!

[imadouazzate]

you missed something when you said "small country"
you have to know that portugal controled almost the whole iberic penensula until they lose a battle against morocco(the battle of the three kings) then spain took advantage and took most of the penensula
but before that portugal was the superpower and spain was small

[MarcosFerreira-kzhe]

0:51 - Gay Pride already existed in Portugal? Wow