Search results

In the link below there are some maps on the Jewish community in Spain with the Jewish communities (Juderías) or Jewish quarters and where they were located. Toledo, Seville and Cordoba seemed to have the largest Jewish communities in size and the Jewish population was overwhelmingly urban in...

Napoleon could have lived into his early 80s, though it was somewhat rarer than today, but it was not completely unheard of. If individuals lived past adolescence, they usually managed to live into their 50s and 60s and even into the 70s. Around one in thirty adult males seemed to make it to 80...

The VOC balked at the cost of establishing settlers at the Cape as it was meant to be nothing more than a provisions station, and they remained stingy until 1795. The VOC was after all a for profit company, and every piece of its commercial empire was meant to be profitable. The most likely...

It is wrong to assume that any sort of conquest would occur all at once, even the reconquista in the peninsula took centuries and was a process that did not result in the wholesale conquest and expulsion of Muslims at once. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, both the Portuguese and...

The problem with the Dutch holding onto Angola is that though they managed to capture both Luanda and Benguela they would have had to have capture the forts of the interior where the Portuguese had retreated to (Massangano, Muxima, etc). This would have been possible if more funds were spent on...

It is important to note that Mozambique was governed by the State of India until 1752. The economy was tied to that of India where East Africa exported ivory and slaves in exchange for cotton textiles. In the Zambezi River valley Portuguese and Indian men from Portuguese India were settled onto...

The sugar lobby in parliament was also against acquiring more islands in the Caribbean as they feared a glut of sugar. This was the same reason that Martinique and Guadeloupe were returned. Dominica, Grenada, St Vincent and Tobago were acquired, but these islands were still not fully...

I'm not sure I quite understand, but yes the Lesser Antilles did produce more than enough sugar at the time. Sugar production was initially concentrated in Madeira, the Canary Islands and Andalusia. It later spread to Cape Verde and São Tomé and to islands like Cuba and Hispaniola. I imagine it...

French exploration and trade into the interior of North America was undertaken in the XVII century, but no real attempt to settle the lands between Montreal and Natchez with settlers was undertaken. With the exception of Sainte-Genevieve none of these settlements in the interior were...

As most deaths in the Caribbean were due to disease there would need to be a way to make the inhabitants of these islands more resistant to disease by exposing their ancestors to Europeans and Africans earlier. Additionally, they would need to possess technology that could defeat the Europeans...

More than likely this would have been their most successful strategy, one where France allows settlers to move down the Saint Lawrence and into the more fertile areas of Southern Ontario, and from there into the Great Lakes region and then southwards. It really would not have been a huge...

I still think they would have gone after parts of New France, at the very minimum in 1754, the British claimed everything East of the Mississippi till the Ohio River and from forming a line up to Lake Erie and South of the Saint-Lawrence Rivers. if they somehow aquiesce to letting France keep...

Between 1718 and 1721, Louisiana received 7,021 European settlers (including 1,215 women) compared with 1,901 African slaves. These numbers were far larger than anything that New France gained during its century and a half. However, as most of these were dumped in the brackish areas of the...

Early on the Compagnie du Mississippi was founded to settle the area, it seems that it went bankrupt. In 1717, the French Crown granted the trading monopoly to Scotsman John Law who was also Controller-General of Finance for France. He renamed the company, "Compagnie d'Occident", (Company of the...

Throughout the XVIII century, the Portuguese government had been pressing the British government to occupy Buenos Aires. The Portuguese had claimed what is now Uruguay and as a result they pressed the British Ambassador in Lisbon to help them fend off the Spanish whom had founded Montevideo in...

That would probably lead us into ASB territory. However, England and especially France had larger home markets than Portugal or the Dutch Republic. I imagine a French Brazil would have a protected home market for its sugar (much like England). Below is a comparison from 1700 to 1787 and it shows...

The Portuguese Crown claimed the regions shown, but in reality, at the close of King Sebastian's reign in 1578 the permanent Portuguese presence was reduced to a string of forts and some vassal states along the Swahili Coast. They did their best to keep out other European powers, but in many...

Black teak wood was used for the hulls as it was more durable and lighter. The first ship built was between 1510 and 1512 in Cochin, but shipbuilding moved northwards to Goa and eventually to Bassein as there were teakwood forests managed by the Estado da India near Chaul and Salcete. The Dom...

It would be difficult to find a scenario where the Tordesillas Line is reversed, though this could occur if the Crown of Castile that focused on finding a trade route to the East, rather than the Portuguese. Perhaps if the reconquista had been accomplished earlier this would have been possible...

From reading the letters from Napoleon to his brother Joseph in 1808, he seemed to believe that Spain would be a quick victory. He was under the impression that his brother and Murat were incompetent. He especially blamed Murat for the Madrid uprisings and felt that Joseph should be more...