What if Portugal became the dominant country in Iberia after the Reconquista.
- Thread starter ThatBronzeBoiJ
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Butterfly away John III of Portugal's issue problem, meaning marry him to someone not his cousin and thus no Sebastian I might help.
One more solution would be to have prince Alfonso survive and have children with Isabella of Aragon, thus unifying the entire peninsula under one king.
Theoretically, it can. They ~just~ would need more success in the New World and the Mediterranean, pulling some strings with their british allies. Later, an early industrialization. Though yes, it's unlikely they would just keep it cool with their european borders if they were that stronger than Castille.
Also, they don't necessarily need to get any bigger, we can just keep Leon, Aragon, Navarra and maybe even Galicia independent and let Portugal with a slight advantage in the Americas.
80% of the population of Castile and León lived in Andalucia and the Castillian plateau. Burgos+Valladolid+Toledo almost had as much population as all of Portugal back then. All the kingdoms that you mentioned combined would have less population a vanilla kingdom of Castile. Demographically is totally unviable for Portugal to dominate Castile by any means unless they make a huge power grab in Andalucia and Extremadura which Portugal would have a really hard time to settle all that land without importing massive settlers from Castile itself which could be a time bomb just like American settlers in Texas
We're talking about a PoD around the late middle ages, so pretty much anything can happen. It's not like countries way less populous never turned the tide against bigger ones (like Britain and France), nor as if there weren't times when Portugal actually was a real threat to Castille.
Portugal was not a threat against Castile. The Castillian nobility was a threat against Castile (the same goes with England and France btw).
A Portuguese king in Castile would just mean that Portugal wpuld Castillianized sooner or later just as it happened to Aragon or to England if they won the 100 years war.
A alternative would be Portugal have the more successful empire, &/or internal economy. With a less successful Spanish empire Portugal dominates Spain. Another related route is for Castile to never consolidate the rest of Iberia into 'Spain'. The place remains three or more smaller states, which never acquire much of a empire.
If Portugal somehow manages to take most of Andalusia (say, they don't get cut off at the Algarve- maybe they manage to get Galicia and León?) then they're at a far better position to benefit from Atlantic trade and colonisation, and might become stronger colonial powers than a boxed-in Spain whose greatest opening to the sea is Asturias and Granada.
This is sort of like asking if Scotland could dominate Britain. You could make the King of Scotland the King of England, but over time you can't overcome the demographic weight.
Lusitania
Donor
What are you implying!!!!!!!
While the Portuguese did ”convert” Jews, their attempts were only half hearted and it was only after its bigger and stronger neighbor Castile / Spain demanded the enforcement of the public conversion that most Portuguese Jews fled.
So now let’s take our supposedly WANKED history and move it forward a bit. After independence king Henriques actually conquered a large portion of Galicia from his uncle /cousin. He was forced to turn them over to Castile when his heir was captured a cidade rodrigue.
So we can very well say that Sancho does capture cidade rodrigue and puts Portugal in much stronger position to capture rest of Galicia. Portugal was involved in the Castilian succession war and a stronger Portugal could extracted territory or even through marriage and conquest captured Leon and now we have the kingdom of Portugal, Galicia and Leon.
Reconquista of Muslim land would of progressed similarly but a county twice the size of iOTL Portugal should of taken all of Andalusia thus pushing Castile to secound place.
TruthfulPanda
Gone Fishin'
Simples!
Having both Carl's suggestions happen:
1 - no union of Castile and Aragon
2 - no South American conquest
This way Portugal - rich from Indian and African trade - becomes the main player on the Peninsula.
For more lulz have some genius arrise in Morroco, who unites most of North Africa and invades Castile c.1500 on a Jihad. Or c.1480-90, while there still is Grenada as a beach-head. And have it take a generation or two before the Castillians throw the Moors into the sea.
Having both Carl's suggestions happen:
1 - no union of Castile and Aragon
2 - no South American conquest
This way Portugal - rich from Indian and African trade - becomes the main player on the Peninsula.
For more lulz have some genius arrise in Morroco, who unites most of North Africa and invades Castile c.1500 on a Jihad. Or c.1480-90, while there still is Grenada as a beach-head. And have it take a generation or two before the Castillians throw the Moors into the sea.
Yes and no. I have a nice POD: IOTL during the Iberian Union there was a plan to move the capital to Lisbon, which was much better placed than Madrid or Seville to rule over a huge overseas empire. If Phillip makes Lisbon his capital he'll most certainly move most, if not all, the colonial institutions from Seville to Lisbon, making Portugal the economic heart of the Iberian Monarchy.
Also, I personally don't think it'd be Castillianized that easily, as Lisbon already was a huge metropolis by contemporary standards. IMHO the aristocracy will shift to Castillian, but the lower classes will continue to speak the "Portuguese dialect" until the introduction of free education, mass media, etc. kinda like OTL Italy.
That is not how the hispanic monarchy worked. America belong to Castile so moving la cada de contratación to Lisbon would just created an uprise in Castile that the king would had no chance to supress as 70-80 of king Phillip's army came or was financed by Castile. Sevile and then Cadiz would have kept the institution and in fact Cadiz-Gran Canaria-Cuba is way faster to arrive to North America than just going straight from Lisbon due the oceanic currents
Aragon produced less than than 1 tone of silver in taxes in 1504 and never raised more than 20,000 troops on its own. Castile in 1504 produced almost 50 tones of silver and in the conquest of Granada alone queen Isabel was able to raise over 80,000 troops. Portugal in 1504 had a total revenue of around 7 tonnes of silver and its army was more or less the size of that of Aragon. Not even at the peak of mining production the revenue from America made more than 1/5 of the revenue of the Castillian treasury so if you add that to the Portuguese treasury they would still manage a smaller budget and a way smaller population than that of Castile.
Portugal needs to blob way before the XV century to even have a chamge to become the major force in the Peninsula.
Edit:I miscalculated the exchange. Castile produced 22 tones of silver,Portugal 5.3 tones of silver and Aragon 1.7 tones of silver
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