Portugal discovers the new world

Mad idea I had, after looking at a few Columbus threads...

POD: Christopher Columbus does not exist or doesn't get funded by the Spanish government in 1492.

In this TL then, America will be discovered in 1500 by Pedro Alvares Cabral, commander of a Portuguese convoy bound for India that got blown off course by a storm (you can argue Cabral might be butterflied, but if not specifically him, its quite likely some other Portuguese ships get blown off course in the South Atlantic and hit Brazil sometime before 1520).

After Cabral reports back, the Portuguese will probably sit on their discovery for a while-whats the worth of some random bit of land in the South Atlantic compared to the Spice Trade-but Cabral will have claimed it, so lets say they send a few more expeditions in the 1510's-1520's, which gradually reveal just how large this "random bit of land" is. Word of this new discovery gradually leaks out, and Spain and England began talking to their fisherman about the productive cod grounds (around Newfounland) that they've found in the North Atlantic. By the late-1520's-early-1530's, non-Portuguese explorers have reached the New World as well, and Portugal has found it necessary to begin setting up outposts and settlements along the coast of South America and the Caribbean. By now, they've also realized that the Carribbean islands and Brazil are good for growing sugar, and begun to set up Sugar plantations.

And now, of course, we can all figure out what happens next...a few armed Portuguese raiding expeditions are going to reach the Inca empire, Incans have no familiarity with gunpowder...and by 1560 (if not before) the Aztecs will likely have followed. And then, Portugal discovers Potosi, and the wonders of Peruvian silver and Mexican gold.

Portugal would probably lack the manpower on its own to exploit their new mines, so I suspect they would go about getting it the exact same way the Spanish did. If anything, the Portuguese might even be more brutal, and in addition to Indian forced labor we might also see large populations of slave miners from Angola and the other Portuguese possessions in Africa.

Portugal's by-now massive empire in the New World will make it a world power far beyond its size. Every year, whole convoys of ships come into Lisbon loaded with gold and silver, and the Portuguese proceed to plow that income back into a first rate army and navy, again much like the Spanish.

However, Portugal has one critical difference from Spain-Spain had enough population and resources in Spain itself to be a world power, whereas Portugal...does not. In many ways, it would be a sort of 16th century version of Saudi Arabia, its army (and to a lesser extend, navy) composed of foreign mercenaries and its status as a great power essentially dependent on the income from its mines.

Of course, the problems with this will show fairly quickly-the massive influx of precious metals from Portuguese mines will cause spiraling inflation, which will dilute the one thing allowing Portugal to have such a massive empire in the first place. The Portuguese will notice this, and I expect the solution will be to try to increase production of precious metals in the new world, by expanding the mines and increasing exploration. Unfortunately, production can only be increased by so much, and in the end there's still spiraling inflation and debt...by the early 1600's, Portugal, I expect, will be flirting with bankruptcy. Much the same way Spain eventually did, and TTL will be a Portugal wank turning into a Portugal-screw in much the same way OTL was a Spain wank that turned into a Spain screw after 1600-1650. But as mentioned, Spain had enough manpower and resources in its metropole that it could keep up a reasonably strong military and navy, and settle its colonies with native Hispanophones who remained loyal to their declining motherland for a remarkably long time. Portugal...a strong majority of its colonial "settlers" will be either enslaved Africans or non-Portuguese Europeans. But non-Portuguese aren't that invested in the Empire's continuation, mercenaries have this little habit of not working anymore when they're not paid, and slaves whose guards leave tend to try their best to stop being slaves. And other European powers also have their own little habit, of swooping in on empires that are quite obviously self-destructing.

So therefore, I expect Portugal's fall to be much sharper and much harder than Spain's was. Within a few short years, once it becomes apparent that Portugal can't hold its empire anymore, everyone is going to swoop in for a chunk of the pie. At the end, Portugal itself might get taken over by Spain, and rather than being dominated by Spanish-speakers as OTL, Latin America is probably going to get divided up fairly evenly among the British, French, Spanish, and whoever is running the Netherlands.

Europe meanwhile-without access to the Spanish fortunes from the new world, the Hapsburgs are in a much worse position. Assuming that the division of Charles V's holdings and the early reformation all go as OTL, the Dutch war will probably end much more quickly, and the Italian Wars might go more in France's favor (since Spain has way less money to throw at either). Without Potosi to pay for it, there will be less Spanish troops in Germany to fight Protestants in the late 1500's and early 1600's (if a Thirty Years War analogue occurs ITTL, it might be the war that results in the Portuguese Empire's dismemberment, and will likely be remembered much more for that than for what goes on in Germany). Germany-and maybe even Europe-will end up being a much more Protestant place.

Thoughts?
 
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I quite like this idea, and notice that Portugal may in one sense end up being the Scotland of this timeline. However, I'd like to see more discussion on what the consequences are for Southeast Asia of Portuguese domination of South America in the sixteenth century, to the probable detriment of interventions in Ethiopian and Omani conflicts in our timeline by the maritime lusophone power.
 
Interesting, in my own Portugal Discovers New World TL, Colombo Servant of Portugal I am trying to decide if I want Portugal to remain seperated from Spain or Unite the Iberia.
 
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