AHC Portugol a major power

Portugal does not have the population, resources, or economy to be a major power. At best, they could be a rich, developed country on par with the Nordics or post-WWII Netherlands.

Small countries like this can have a period where they punch above their weight. It can be argued this was the case with Portugal from 1450 to 1600 when Portugal lead Europe with its maritime technology and geographical discoveries. But once other countries caught up, they eclipsed Portugal.

If I wanted to write a timeline where Portugal does much better, I would do away with the 1580 succession crisis (caused when King Sebastian died in the Battle of El Kesir in Morocco). That would mean the Portuguese Empire would be run in the interest of Portugal, not the Spanish Crown. It would mean less attacks on it by the Dutch and English. Perhaps there could be butterflies where Portugal would develop the commercial traditions of the Anglo-Dutch, although such a change is perhaps a bridge too far to be realistic.
 
How, its not as if Portugal was a front runner to pull them along.

Portugal (in the 19thC) had the navy, money, knowledge and most importantly, stability. Well, maybe not a lot of money, or a big navy.

Brazil couldn't really develop OTL because of a lack of stability.
 
Last edited:
Just the opposite. During Salazar years Portugal DID have a strong economic growth. Stagnation came AFTER Salazar. Portugal is relativly in the same place today as it was in 1975.
So keeping of colonies is the basic thing for economic development of Portugal.
Yeah, apparently most of Portugal's gold reserves (worth roughly £11.5 billion) was built up by Salazar during his rule.
 
Honestly,the brazilian elite iwas not a great problem,give RIO a status and efectly a second capitol for the kingdom would probably be enough.A deal somewhat like the Austro-Hungarian empire,comon citzenship,currency,militaries,foreign police,constitution and monarch but individual or domestic homerule,two domestics and united royal parlament.Being considered "part" of Europe would wonders for the brazilian elite.
 

abc123

Banned
Honestly,the brazilian elite iwas not a great problem,give RIO a status and efectly a second capitol for the kingdom would probably be enough.A deal somewhat like the Austro-Hungarian empire,comon citzenship,currency,militaries,foreign police,constitution and monarch but individual or domestic homerule,two domestics and united royal parlament.Being considered "part" of Europe would wonders for the brazilian elite.

Very intresting.
So, United Kingdom of Portugal and Brazil could work?

But, than it would be a Brazil a major power, not Portugal. How to expect equality if Brazil is much bigger than Portugal?
 
Spain enjoyed a modest economic growth period in the 1950's under Franco. I never understood why Portugal could not do the same under Salazar. Both dictators ran similar clerico-fascist states (Opus Dei, anyone?)

Even today the Spaniards are weathering the Euro-crisis better than their neighbors to the west. Why is this the case?

Perhaps Portugal should've jettisoned its colonies much sooner than they did. Holding on until the 1970's was probably a huge drag on one of Europe's already weakest economies.

They are in a worse position than Spain (which commands the entrance to the Med) and they have a smaller population. This combines to mean their economy simply isn't robust enough nor can they build a large military-industrial complex to compete with the big powers.

Basically, unless you get a PoD in the early years of the 19th century, then Portugal will either remain a weak power or become consumed by Spain (and that is very unlikely).
 

archaeogeek

Banned
The capital never moves back from Brazil. That's the only way.

Basically; the only way for a Portuguese great power is if the metropolis swallows its pride and admits that, yes, they're the european province of an american empire and not the reverse.
 
Basically; the only way for a Portuguese great power is if the metropolis swallows its pride and admits that, yes, they're the european province of an american empire and not the reverse.

They always can say that their brothers have the impulse and the resources to grow larger (pun intended)....

But any European country giving up ( or even sharing ) its capital with another continent before the 21 st century its a bit ASB ...
 
Spain enjoyed a modest economic growth period in the 1950's under Franco. I never understood why Portugal could not do the same under Salazar. Both dictators ran similar clerico-fascist states (Opus Dei, anyone?)

Even today the Spaniards are weathering the Euro-crisis better than their neighbors to the west. Why is this the case?

Perhaps Portugal should've jettisoned its colonies much sooner than they did. Holding on until the 1970's was probably a huge drag on one of Europe's already weakest economies.


Well, probably I forgot many things and I'm wrong in many others but, in the top of my mind I would say that spanish economic development in the late 50's and 60's was more extensive and intensive than portuguese's (though Portugal followed a similar model, as said) simply due to the policies enacted by each government. Perhaps it's illustrated by the fact that, though nowadays spanish rate of urban population is similar to that of France (almost 80%), Portugal still has a low rate for western european standards (about 60%) Also, Spain is a bigger country, with a biggest potential internal market and workforce. Furthermore, in Spain there were some areas with certain industrial tradition which acted as "locomotives", like Catalonia and Basque Country, mining infrastructures and deposits in the north and south-west, plus the big industrial expansion in the area around Madrid since the late 50's, thus creating a better point of departure for the western neighbour. Well, and Spain is closer to the european economical heartlands and that helps to attract foreing investors and to export goods. Anyway, I'd say that spanish economical development in the 60's was more than modest. Still, until the mid 70's Portugal had the higher growth rate in Europe.

Also, the political transition to democracy was, for the good or the bad, more progressive than in Portugal, reducing at some extent the posterior "chaos", and unlike Salazar, Franco created a social welfare system, which though a precarious one, was much more meaningful than the portuguese one, so the democratic state didn't have to start to build it almost from zero like Portugal, skyrocketing its public expenses. Other factors, like tourism, were (and are) an important asset in both contries, but I guess spanish mediterranean has more demand than portuguese atlantic.

On the other hand, in more recent times, spanish economy managed to internacionalize more efficiently than portuguese's, specially the banking sector, but also tele-comunications, hoteliers, constructors and printing/comunication industries, specially in the Latin-American markets. Also, though spanish investments and strategies in the field of innovation and diversification are not an example at all, some token sectors have managed to be at a good level in the world stage, like naval and trains design, aeronautics and more recently renewable energies, something that Portugal has neglected even more than Spain. The portuguese flood of brians in the immediate years after the Carnage Revolution probably didn't help in this matter.

Just the opposite. During Salazar years Portugal DID have a strong economic growth. Stagnation came AFTER Salazar. Portugal is relativly in the same place today as it was in 1975.
So keeping of colonies is the basic thing for economic development of Portugal.

The part about the economical development under Salazar is factually true, though I would dismiss the importance of the colonies in the economical development of Portugal during the second half of the 20th century. Anyway I think we should put the economics under Oliviera Salazar in its context to understand the timing.

Salazar rose to power, and get the support to implement the Estado Novo, under the promise of financial stability, statal economical direction (mainly in the behalf of the 10 famillies that controled portuguese economy, the Espirito Santo and co) and "disciplination" of the workforce. The last one, the disciplination, is of course an euphemism for social compulsion, or in other words, social and labour exploitation and repression. The financial stability, after the previous convulse decades marked in the economy by the deep crisis in the 1880's and latter by the Great Depresion, was reached through a severe plan of budget balance, which is also related to the big gold reserves inherited from salazarism that someone mentioned.

After Salazar's initial playings with the idea of autarchy and its failed measures to develop the grain production in the south of the country at the extent he and his cronies wanted, those inside the portuguese elites that defended the priority to develop the industrial sectors and infrastructures instead of agriculture gained influence. Like Franco, who had similar autarchic and agrarian ideals at the beggining, the reality imposed a change of direction that was specially notable in Portugal after the WWII. It has to be noted also that Portugal was included in the Marshall Plan, and that allowed a very usefull inflood of capitals in a time when the world demand was also boosting. So, after timid startings, in the early 60's, including agreements with the EFTA, the industrial development reached its climax, accompained obviously by economical boost. In this context we have to take into account that it's relativelly easy to get high rates of growth when you start to industruialize a previously agrarian and poor economy, because generally the industrial productivity and added value of industrial goods is much higher than their agrarian counterparts. It's a bit, in a raw picture, the model followed by other developing economies in the latter decades, for example China, though in the case of the iberian states of course at a much smaller scale due to their smaller size. The problem is that, once the maximun potential has been reached in this economcial shift, in order to stay competitive in the world market and to keep growing (probably at a lower rate) you need to introduce new elements and strategies in the production, like for example innovation, something that requires also a more skilled population and other structural changes. In the case of Portugal, like in Spain, I think we have to wonder wether the social changes created by the industrial boost influenced the political changes that came in the 70's, specially once the inistial boost cooled due to internal (like outdated structures, neglected social issues...) and external reasons (like the oil crisis). Besides, that ambiance of "disciplination of the workforce", couldn't work, fortunatelly, under the new political circumstances.

Thus, I think the colonial holdings were as much a secondary factor in this process where aperture and internacionalization where key factors, offering more interesting markets (Brazil, Spain, France...), more attractive places to emigrate etc to the portuguese entrepenurs and people in general. In fact, the metropolitan development caused troubles and imbalances in the colonial economy, even more considering that in the international climate of the time, colonialism was an obstacle to those aims of aperture and internacionalization. If Portugal had insisted in keeping the colonies, besides the social and human costs in both the metropolis and the colonies, she wouldn't have joined the European Community ever, causing more bad than good IMO. It's interesting to note also that most of the colonial production was in the hands of foreing enterprises and capitals, not portuguese ones.

That said, is difficult to make an small country like Portugal a world power. As others have said the most likely option is to make it a prosperous small country with high life levels. To this we probably need a POD in the mid 19th century in order to have time to change the structural fundaments that allowed big inaquilities, exterior dependency, too powerful elites and things like the Estado Novo in OTL.


Cheers.
 
It was just a second rate power, to be honest. Maybe if Portugal held on to its colonies and integrated them properly into the metropolitan it could be seen as a semi-important European power but it wouldn't be a major power.

You would need a pre-1900 POD. Ask Lusitania.

Anybody ever seen this nationalistic map from the 1920s that proclaimed "PORTUAL IS NOT A SMALL COUNTRY!"?

Incidentally, most of the Portuguese colonies were considered overseas provinces of Portugal.
 

elkarlo

Banned
I've read that even hundreds of years ago Portugal didn't have what it takes to be a major colonial power. They lacked the domestic industry to do much with the imports they got from their empire, basically they ran an extortion racket in the Indan Ocean and carried home the profits. Apparently they even shipped their Indian good to Amsterdam or Antwerp markets because Portugal wasn't an important enough commercial centre.

I don't know if this could be changed, Portugal is on Europe's periphery which isn't a good place for a trade entrepot.


This. Port just didn't have the population to support any real empire, just like the Dutch. They had 1million people around the late 1400's, and a lot of times there was about 10k people on their explorations, which is 1% of their pop.
Macao had more Europeans than all of Ceylon.

And as you said, they had to take their goods to Antwerp, as no one came for them in Lisbon, which is kinda odd.

Now if they colonized Cape Verde and some other islands, and used those as jump off points for further colonies, they could have had a bit more.
 
maybe if they managed to colonize the area of zambia and zimbabwe first? iirc, they were striving towards that IOTL but the british beat them to it, so they couldnt connect angola and mozambique
 
Portugal does not have the population, resources, or economy to be a major power. At best, they could be a rich, developed country on par with the Nordics or post-WWII Netherlands.
With Brazil, there would be the resources an population for it,a nd it would have been possible to add and keep population and resources from other colonial holdings.

Small countries like this can have a period where they punch above their weight. It can be argued this was the case with Portugal from 1450 to 1600 when Portugal lead Europe with its maritime technology and geographical discoveries. But once other countries caught up, they eclipsed Portugal.

If I wanted to write a timeline where Portugal does much better, I would do away with the 1580 succession crisis (caused when King Sebastian died in the Battle of El Kesir in Morocco). That would mean the Portuguese Empire would be run in the interest of Portugal, not the Spanish Crown. It would mean less attacks on it by the Dutch and English. Perhaps there could be butterflies where Portugal would develop the commercial traditions of the Anglo-Dutch, although such a change is perhaps a bridge too far to be realistic.
A better POD would be Prince Peter winning the civil war against his nephew, Afonso V. He was much more friendly to the mercantile class, and a competent regent.
 
Top