Expansão ultramarina portuguesa no século XVI: diferenças com outras

Brad DeLong, no seu blogue Grasping Reality with Both Hands, fala da expansão portuguesa no Extremo Oriente, no início do século XVI, e das suas diferenças com a extensão ultramarina árabe e chinesa da altura, na base de citações do livro de David Abernethy (2000), The Dynamics of Global Dominance: European Overseas Empires 1415-19890 (New Haven: Yale). São referidas também as razões das diferenças verificadas na expansão europeia a oeste (Novo Mundo) e no Extremo Oriente. A última nota refere a importância mundial da batalha de Diu, em 1509. Excertos das notas:

The European Seaborne Empires I: "To Serve God, to Win Glory for the King, and to Become Rich"

"The multifaceted nature of Europe's assaults is highlighted when contrasted with the overseas activities of the Chinese and the Arabs. The ideal site for comparison would be a place distant from Europe, China, and Arabia, hence unlikely to be controlled by any of them, where people arriving by sea from all three areas were present at about the same time. That such stringent conditions could be met seems highly unlikely. But in fact they do apply to one case: Malacca during roughly the first century of [European imperalism] phase 1."

"This is a sophisticated and powerful rendition of the argument that what mattered most from 1500-1850 was the triple-threat reinforcing nature of European imperialism--the importance of all three parts of the Spanish hidalgo's explanation of why they had left Iberia: 'to serve God, to win glory for the king, and to become rich...'"

The European Seaborne Empires II: Malacca and Tenochtitlan

"Beijing... was the capital city of a powerful state lacking both an expansionist foreign policy and an expansionist religion. Mecca was the central city of an expansionist religion but not of a state. Lisbon was the capital city of a state with an expansionist foreign policy and a strong commitment to spread an expansionist religion."

"By examining actions, motivations, and institutions at a critical juncture of world history when representatives of the three leading candidates for global dominance were present at the same place and time, the case study of Malacca in 1511 tests--and supports--the book's central proposition. The Portuguese were unlike the Chinese and Arabs in the number and variety of sectoral institutions at their disposal, in the stretch of these institutions far from their home base, and in the way agents of different sectors worked together for mutually beneficial ends. The Malaccan case highlights not only the contrast between Europeans and others who might have formed equivalent empires, but also the empowering effects when cross-sectoral coalitions were assembled..."

The Battle of Diu (1509)

"One of the great might-have-beens in world history concerns the 1509 Battle of Diu. What if it had gone the other way? Or what if Sultans Beyezid II, Selim the Grim, Suleiman the Lawgiver, and Selim the Sot, and Murad III had shifted a small additional part of the military effort they were making in the Balkans and the Mediterranean into the Indian Ocean?"