THE PORTUGUESE SEABORNE EMPIRE, 1415-1825

BOXER, C. R. (1973) THE PORTUGUESE SEABORNE EMPIRE, 1415-1825. PELICAN BOOKS. DE 18X10 CM. COM 436 PÁGS. ILUST. B.

Portugal's halcyon days were the work of her seamen, of men like Vasco da Gama, Cabral, and Albuquerque, who sailed the globe, raising fazendas and factories from Rio to Goa and Moçambique to Macao. Portuguese navigators became the pathfinders of Europe's seaborne empires, inaugurating – as Professor Plumb writes in his introduction to this volume – 'as savage, as piratical an onslaught on the dazzlingly rich empires of the East as the world has ever known'.

Professor Boxer's work, which has been described as 'a unique masterpiece . . . the culmination of a monumental career of scholarship in Portuguese studies', is both a comprehensive record of nearly four centuries of exploitation and bureaucracy in India, the Orient, Africa and Brazil, and a detailed study of the fleets, the men, the missions and the racialism involved in this extraordinary maritime achievement.

'This ripe and measured "social history" is likely to last for many years as the authoritative introduction to its subject' – The Times Literary Supplement

Nota: capa com desgaste e miolo com alguma acidez e amarelecido.