During the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries, the three Portuguese military orders of Christ, Santiago and Avis became that kingdom's most important institutions for rewarding services to the Crown. Membership in these military orders was highly prized as status symbols and because of the orders' "purity of blood" statutes, these knighthoods were more highly esteemed than mere patents of nobility, especially since such knighthoods automatically ennobled. Francis A. Dutra has written widely on the Portuguese military orders of Christ, Santiago and Avis - a topic generally neglected by students of early modern Portugal. This volume brings together a selection of his pioneering essays. Based extensively on archival research, they reflect his special interest in social mobility and use of the knighthoods for patronage, while particular sections focus on the role of the orders in the Portuguese maritime expansion and in India and Brazil, and on the medical profession. The collection includes English translations of four studies that originally appeared in Portuguese, as well as a detailed index, in itself a useful research tool.

Encompassing numerous territories across four different continents, Portugal's early modern empire depended upon a vast and complex bureaucracy, yet colonial power did not reside solely in the centralized state. In a masterful reconceptualization of the functioning of empire, Erik Lars Myrup's Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World argues that beneath the surface of formal government, an intricate web of interpersonal relationships played a key role in binding together the Portuguese empire. Myrup draws on archival research in Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and China to demonstrate how informal networks of power and patronage offered a crucial means of navigating-or circumventing-the serpentine paths of the governmental hierarchy. The decisions of the Overseas Council, which governed Portugal's imperial holdings, reflected not only the merits of the petitions that came before it, but also the personal and institutional affiliations of the petitioner. In far-flung areas such as São Paulo and Macau, where the formal bureaucracy was weak, local cultural and economic factors held as much sway over the agents of the colonial state as did the dictates of the imperial court at Lisbon. Populated by a host of colorful characters, from backland explorers to colonial magistrates, Power and Corruption in the Early Modern Portuguese World demonstrates how informal social connections both magnified and diminished the power of the colonial state. If such systems contributed to corruption and fraud, they also facilitated effective cross-cultural exchange and ensured the survival of empire in times of crisis and decline. Myrup has produced a truly global study that sheds new light on the influence of interpersonal networks on the administration of a vast overseas empire.

This volume brings together a selection of Francis A. Dutra's pioneering essays on the Portuguese military orders of Christ, Santiago and Avis. Based extensively on archival research, they reflect his special interest in social mobility and use of the knighthoods for patronage, while particular sections focus on the role of the orders in the Portuguese maritime expansion and in India and Brazil, and on the medical profession. The collection includes English translations of four studies that originally appeared in Portuguese and a detailed index.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the early modern military history of Portugal and its possessions in Africa, the Americas, and Asia from the perspective of the military revolution historiographical debate. The existence of a military revolution in the early modern period has been much debated in international historiography, and this volume fills a significant gap in its relation to the history of Portugal and its overseas empire. It examines different forms of military change in specifically Portuguese case studies but also adopts a global perspective through the analysis of different contexts and episodes in Africa, the Americas, and Asia. Contributors explore whether there is evidence of what could be defined as aspects of a military revolution or whether other explanatory models are needed to account for different forms of military change. In this way, it offers the reader a variety of perspectives that contribute to the debate over the applicability of the military revolution concept to Portugal and its empire during the early modern period. Broken down into four thematic parts and broad in both chronological and geographical scope, the book deepens our understanding of the art of warfare in Portugal and its empire and demonstrates how the military revolution debate can be used to examine military change in a global perspective. This is an essential text for scholars and students of military history, military architecture, global history, Asian history, and the history of Iberian empires.

From humble beginnings, in the course of three centuries the Portuguese built the world's first truly global empire, stretching from modern Brazil to sub-Saharan Africa and from India to the East Indies (Indonesia). Portugal had established its present-day borders by 1300 and the following century saw extensive warfare that confirmed Portugal's independence and allowed it to aspire to maritime expansion, sponsored by monarchs such as Prince Henry the Navigator. During this nearly 300-year period, the Portuguese fought alongside other Iberian forces against the Moors of Andalusia; with English help successfully repelled a Castilian invasion (1385); fought the Moors in Morocco, and Africans, the Ottoman Turks, and the Spanish in colonial competition. The colourful and exotic Portuguese forces that prevailed in these battles on land and sea are the subject of this book.

John M. Flannery describes the establishment and activities of the Portuguese Augustinian mission in Persia.

This book scrutinizes literary works based on Judaism, Jews and their descendants, written or printed by the Portuguese, from the forced conversion of Jews in 1497, until the ending of the distinction between New and Old Christians in 1773. It tries to understand what motivated this vast literary production, its different currents, and how they evolved. Additionally, it studies the image of New Christians and seeks the reasons for the perpetuation of this perception of Jewish descendants in the Early Modern Portuguese world. The Imaginary Synagogue seeks to identify which Jews and which ‘synagogue’ those authors constructed in their texts and their reasons for doing so, and offers conclusions on the self-affirmed Catholic importance of this literary current.

This book investigates the impact of the dissolution of the monasteries on women religious and examines their survival in the following decades, showing how, despite the state's official proscription of vocation living, religious vocation options for women continued in less formal ways. McShane explores the experiences of Irish women who travelled to the Continent in pursuit of formal religious vocational formation, covering both those accommodated in English and European continental convents' and those in the Irish convents established in Spanish Flanders and the Iberian Peninsula. Further, this book discusses the revival of religious establishments for women in Ireland from 1629 and outlines the links between these new convents and the Irish foundations abroad. Overall, this study provides a rich picture of Irish women religious during a period of unprecedented change and upheaval.

This book examines the historical interactions of the West and non-Western world, and investigates whether or not the exclusive adoption of Western-oriented ‘international norms’ is the prerequisite for the construction of international order. This book sets out to challenge the Eurocentric foundations of modern International Relations scholarship by examining international relations in the early modern era, when European primacy had yet to develop in many parts of the globe. Through a series of regional case studies on East Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America, and Russia written by leading specialists of their field, this book explores patterns of cross-cultural exchange and civilizational encounters, placing particular emphasis upon historical contexts. The chapters of this book document and analyse a series of regional international orders that were primarily defined by local interests, agendas and institutions, with European interlopers often playing a secondary role. These perspectives emphasize the central role of non-European agency in shaping global history, and stand in stark contrast to conventional narratives revolving around the ‘Rise of the West’, which tend to be based upon a stylized contrast between a dynamic ‘West’ and a passive and static ‘East’. Focusing on a crucial period of global history that has been neglected in the field of International Relations, International Orders in the Early Modern World will be interest to students and scholars of international relations, international relations theory, international history, early modern history and sociology.

A critical reassessment of world-shaping Portuguese voyages of discovery that places these quests in historical context. The lasting impact of historic Portuguese voyages of discovery is unquestionable. The slave trade, the diaspora of the Sephardic Jews, and the intercontinental spread of plants and animals all make clear these voyages’ long-term global significance. Navigations reexamines these Portuguese quests by placing them in their medieval and Renaissance settings. It shows how these voyages grew out of a crusading ethos, as well as long-distance trade with Asia and Africa and developments in map-making and ship design. Malyn Newitt also narrates these voyages of discovery in the framework of Portuguese politics, describing the role of the Portuguese ruling dynasty—including its female members—in the flowering of the Portuguese Renaissance, the creation of the Renaissance state with its distinctive ideology, and in the cultural changes that took place within a wider European context.