I was reading this article on the expansion of the portuguese empire when I started to notice something fishy about the article:
OK so I guess that could be one theory on why columbus acted so confident about finding India. But the most obviously wanked part of this paragraph is the "due to recent proof that has come to light." yet no citation immediatly after this reference to "recent proof."
This seems to be an attempt to kill alot of scholarly work done in order to further the writer's point of view. But at the same time it gives us a huge can of What ifs to play around with. So my challenge to you is to come up with either some justifications for the authors claims, or come up with some good outcomes for the portuguese aparent secret mastery of asia. I'll start:
1421: after skipping the canaries and most of the coast of western africa. A young Gil Eanes reaches the Cape of Good Hope along with 100 portuguese settlers.
1431: by this time the small settlement has expanded to almost 200 and over 4,000 slaves. Machiavelli is exiled there and writes "the Prince." and gunpowder is first used extensively by the settlers
1939: Hitler attacks poland and the Portuguese of South Africa fully mobilise their dirigble air armada.
2000: we all speak portuguese
One theory which has some support, due to recent proof that has come to light, is that Columbus was indeed Portuguese as stated initially, but he was a spy from the Portuguese kingdom sent to Spain to redirect Spain's efforts elsewhere than the territories Portugal had its focus on. However, this is controversial. Actions such as this would come as no surprise, though, since competition between the two kingdoms was intense and both had their secret service networks which were in constant conflict with one another, by providing misleading information and in hiding territories and trade routes discovered by each country (but especially Portugal) by either keeping them concealed or by providing false dates and also false locations. This constant secrecy effort was what led to the creation of many "false" documents and thus many of the remaining documents from that time may not be reliable. As a consequence some historians believe that territories such as Brazil, several African locations along its coastline and north America (due to the voyages made westward) may have been discovered before the known dates.
OK so I guess that could be one theory on why columbus acted so confident about finding India. But the most obviously wanked part of this paragraph is the "due to recent proof that has come to light." yet no citation immediatly after this reference to "recent proof."
The effort to colonize and maintain territories scattered around the entire coast of Africa and its surrounding islands, Brazil, the Indies and Indic territories such as in Malaysia, Japan, China, Indonesia and Timor was a challenge for a population of only one million. Combined with constant competition from the Spanish this led to a desire for secrecy about every trade route and every colony. As a consequence, many documents that could reach other European countries were in fact fake documents with fake dates and faked facts, to mislead any other nation's possible efforts.
This seems to be an attempt to kill alot of scholarly work done in order to further the writer's point of view. But at the same time it gives us a huge can of What ifs to play around with. So my challenge to you is to come up with either some justifications for the authors claims, or come up with some good outcomes for the portuguese aparent secret mastery of asia. I'll start:
1421: after skipping the canaries and most of the coast of western africa. A young Gil Eanes reaches the Cape of Good Hope along with 100 portuguese settlers.
1431: by this time the small settlement has expanded to almost 200 and over 4,000 slaves. Machiavelli is exiled there and writes "the Prince." and gunpowder is first used extensively by the settlers
1939: Hitler attacks poland and the Portuguese of South Africa fully mobilise their dirigble air armada.
2000: we all speak portuguese