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Review in agreement to written sources[edit]

Firstly, although discoveries and possessions are related it does not imply that they should put them together, also discoveries and commercial routes are related and neither nor the commercial routes nor the goods appear in the map. Neither a direct relation exists: although the Portuguese explored a zone, it does not mean that Portuguese established necessarily there, but in the map both appear mixed, together with the commercial posts. In addition, an anachronic view exists, mixing the discoveries of an epoch, with the possessions of another epoch. A map of the Portuguese discoveries is fully informative for itself, another map different about possessions at the time of Juan III also is informative. But joining a thing with other one have the same sense as if it also were added the Portuguese possessions in epoch of Maria I with another color retaining the title Portuguese discoveries and explorations. Or are not related the discoveries of the 15th century and the possessions of the 18th century?

But focussing on the possessions at the time of Juan III, there are issues that they are opposite to the sources:

In America, treaty of Tordesillas was not a border, a boundary of anything, since it did not achieve to be represented in the soil ever:

  • [1]: Hemos visto que en el tratado firmado el 7 de junio de 1494 se establece un periodo de diez meses para que expertos lusos y castellanos establezcan la localización de la "raya". (pag.406) [...] A pesar de los esfuerzos realizados por los monarcas castellanos, el plazo de diez meses se prorrogó indefinidamente. (pag.408) We have seen that in the treaty signed on June 7, 1494 establishes a period of ten months in order that Portuguese and Castilian experts establish the location of the "raya" (boundary). [...] In spite of the efforts realized by the Castilian monarches, the term of ten months was extended indefinitely.

and there was never known exactly where the delimiting boundary crossed really in that epoch,

  • [2] por la parte del oriente el meridiano, ó línea de demarcacion que divide los países de la corona de Castilla de los de Portugal; pero quedaron estos dudosos ó confusos allí por no haberse expresado los que lo son en realidad, nacido esto de no haberse hasta el presente determinado con formalidad por qué parte corta la tierra este meridiano.... on the part of the east the meridian, or line of demarcation that divides the countries of the crown of Castile of those of Portugal; but these remained these doubtful or confused there for not having expressed those which are them really, originated this from not to have be up to the present determined with formality wherefore part divides the land this meridian.

Depicting that boundary in the map is a current reintepretation and reconstruction. Assuming that the Portuguese border was fixed in Tordesillas, it supposes assuming that Castilian border was fixed also in Tordesillas, [3] and that the Spaniards were the owners of the rest of South America including Patagonia and Amazonia in the 16th century when such thing was never carried out. Depicting the border in Tordesillas is a theoretical representation on the paper, but that was not real in the 16th century, and later it was not respected by the Portuguese. In fact the sources indicate that the designed captaincies were a failure.

  • [4] Between 1534 and 1536 fourteen captaincies are granted to rich nobles in the hope that they will exploit brazilwood and other colonial resources. Only two of these original captaincies are successful: Sao Vicente and Pernambuco.
  • [5] Brazil was divides noth to south into 15 captaincies, each of which was "donated" by the crown to a donatario, or donce. This single individual was in the essence the gobvernor, principal judicial official, tax collector, and general big shot of a parcel of land that was 50 leagues wide and theoretically extended westward to the Tordesillas line. [...] After two decades only six of the fifteen captaincies were functioning at all, and only two of them were anything approaching successful.
  • [6] Of the twelfve captaincies only two prospered -Pernambuco, with its sugar cane in the south. People everywhere were anxious to get back to Portugal.

With what, to represent the border according to the treaty of Tordesillas as a actual possession is simply deceitful and false, a thing was to try and another thing was to achieve it. In the same way, there were another treaty of Tordesillas referred to Africa and in it, Castilla and Portugal divide both the kingdom of Fez, then where is it depicted such distribution of kingdom of Fez and the possessions corresponding to Castile and Portugal, since such distribution was not carried out either?

With regard to the possessions in Africa and Asia, the sources indicate that the coastal striping did not exist,


  • [7]:spaced stations along the African coast which the Portuguese had established and enjoyed for a century
  • [8]: By 1600, when the Portuguese Empire (apart from Brazil) remained no more than a string of forts and islands running from West Africa to Macau [...] As we have seen, the Portuguese Empire was wssentially a seaborne a commercial one, growing out of Portugal's traditions of maritime trade and Atlantic seafaring (although in Brazil even the Portuguese were drawn into creating a plantation economy and an expanding land-based empire).
  • [9] A contrast is commonly made between an empire of settlement in the Atlantic - the islands and Brazil - and an empire of trade in the Indian Ocean and the Far East. Indeed the Estado da India has even been represented as being in essence little more than a network of trade routes. So it may be appropiate to recall the exent of Portugal's territorial empire in the East and how the Portuguese envisaged its expansion and development.
  • [10]:The structure of the empire had by the 1550s become extremely complex. There were some fifty fortresses protecting Portuguese trading factories and the larger commercial towns.
  • [11]:The centre of the Portuguese trading empire in the East was India, or more precisely Goa. [...] In contrast with the smaller trading-posts, the colonial domain in Goa extended beyond the harbour region
  • [12]: Goa was a key link in a chain of Portuguese forts and factories extending from Brazil to Japan, including outposts on the Persian Gulf, the Malacca Straits, Indonesia, the East and West Coast of India, and South Africa.
  • [13]: Where no treaties were made or where the Portuguese were given no more than a simple right to trade along with the merchants of ohter nations, it was noy possible for them to entertain any pretensions to exclusive control (senhorio) over trade and navigation, let alone to full sovereignty over territory. Such sovereignty could only be exercised over those lands which had been formally incorporated into the Estado da India, either by conquest or by treaty, and therefore designated as a possessao of the crown. [...] Occasionally, local rulers submitted voluntarily to Portuguese suzerainty , a menas of attaining possessão hat was generally considered to be highly desirable.
  • [14]: with only a small number of trading posts along the coast, it is clear that the Portuguese could not claim sovereignty over the whole 5000 km strech of Guinea from Cape Blanco to the Bight of Biagra. In fact, direct Portuguese influence on the Gold Coast extended little beyond the castle walls, and certainly not beyond the adjoining Afrivcn villages.
  • [15]:The Portuguese elaborated their system on the west with a chain of forts and castles from North Africa to Angola [...] (page 17) The Portuguese penetration of the East African coast was of a different nature from that of the West Coast, as they invaded the existing well-established urban system of the Swahili towns [...] Politically though, the system constituted a group of often mutually hostile city stated with little control beyond their immediate vicinity
  • [16]:The Portuguese established a chain of outposts along India's west coast.
  • [17]: The Portuguese positions in the Lesser Sunda islands, Flores, Solor and Timor were, in reality, isolated communities surrounded by small stated that were vassals, antagonists or so insignificant as to be treated indifferently
  • [18]:and were further distributed to Portuguese enclaves on the west coast of India, to Portuguese forts and factories in East Africa, or to the Persian Gulf.
  • [19]. Tanto en África como luego en Asia, la presencia lusitana se vbasó en una serie de feitorias, similares a los fondaci establecidos durante la Edad Media por las repúblicas de Venacia y Génova en las costas del Mediterráneo oriental y del mar Negro. Por ello se ha comparado el imperio portugués en el Viejo Mundo a unas línea de diez mil millas de longitud salpicada, a manera de pequeños nudos, de puertos comerciales y fortalezas costeras., en contraste con el extenso y compacto poblamiento castellano en América.
  • [20]: In those places where the Estado da India did not exercise sovereignty and the Portuguese enjoyed only the right to trade granted them by the local ruler the feitoria was generally unfortified. Such were the feitorias in Banda, Makassar, Martaban and Tenasserim. In these places, because there was no territory under Portuguese jurisdiction -not even the small area or praça that in the fortaleza was enclosed by the walls - and so no governmental function for the feitor to perform. [21]:The Lesser Sunda islands was the only area in the Estdo da India outside the Indian sub-continent where the Portuguese had the time and the opportunity to extend their authority beyond the core provided by the feitoria-fortaleza or the municipality to cover a wider territory and embrace larger populations, made up of Christians and non-Christians alike. It was the only area where they could have attemted at an early date to dreate a form of colonial administration that would not only have safeguarded their commercial interests and protected their Christian missions but might also have achieved for them a measure of control over the territories that produced the goods in which they traded. [...] Even in the Lesser Sunda islands, however, the establishment of Portuguese administration beyond the walls of the fortalezas wich the Dominicans and later the Portuguese military authorities set up successively in Solor, Flores and Timor was never seriously or sistematically undertaken.
  • [22]: It is also interesting to note that Portugal's tenure on the Gold coast was in no respect colonialism as we think of it today. The Portuguese had no jurisdiction beyond theit forts, which were built with the permission of the local chiefs on land that was formally leased for the purpose.

and a map that aspires to be verifiable and not to being an original research, or at least it should try to be, then it must not place such strip coast at all but small squares or points. It is not a question of copying a map or other one but of acting in agreement to the written sources. To avoid the confusion between squares of outposts of discovery and squares of outposts of possession, it must be a map for the explorations, and other different one for the possessions. Therefore, the question is if really there is an attempt of representing a map according to sources. Trasamundo (talk) 20:42, 8 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Re:Review in agreement to written sources[edit]

Thanks for the extensive explanation on your objections. I will address the issues you stated.

  • A diachronic view is, of course, implicit: if not, one could never have depicted any two explorations for two different years. It ranges from circa 1415 to 1543 (although early claims on Canaries are depicted), and shows an overview on the progress of exploration between the usually accepted beacons of exploration (Ceuta conquest to Tanegashima landing), about one hundred years of intensive exploration.
  • As you stated, exploration and possessions are related (discoveries, exploration but also conquest, were seldom disparate: Can you point pure "discoveries"? was reaching India a discovery?. Portuguese were moved by trade and conquest culminating in king John III of Portugal territorial claims. This connection is significant for understanding the expansion movement, as such, territories are depicted. While you may prefer a more abstract approach, you didn't advanced any rational or referenced argument not to show them together - if you want to make a map, say, of tomato origin in the new world and its trade routes, you could - and should- relate it with early areas of tomato consumption in the world. The map depicts relevant information contemporary to the discoveries, and territorial claims -however limited-are one of them.
  • Brazil captaincies claims - Captaincies established in 1534-36 were well defined and limited in Tordesilhas line ( "bandeirantes" and "entradas" were soon sent inland exploring towards Tordesillas limit)- it does not state that all land was effectively colonized- but clearly states that the king claimed those lands, mapped and distributed them. Its just historical data, as as such it shows on the map. I'm not aware of the Spanish territorial claims, but it would be perfectly sound to show those on a map of contemporary claims, if they indeed were claimed. I've used the commons map of Portuguese empire during John III rule, but users like you having questioned it, it would be very useful to have it corrected. It is a crucial phase in the Portuguese empire, and maybe you could help designing this map- it does no make sense to jump from zero possessions to large diachronic depictions of territories like imperio total map - this is a significant map for the history of the empire.
P.S. Again about your quotes: for the early sixteen century, I must agree that there were few or even none territorial claims, beside forts an factories- having researched that while defending that the Portuguese empire was by then a thalassocracy. My problems rest with finding a credible or sourced map for John III rule- most are not accessible online. I have Ralph Boxer's "The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415–1825". Hutchinson. ISBN 0-09-131071-7 (unfortunately not open source), an expert on the empire in Africa, and he has a map (p.141) of East and West Africa regions colonized or influenced by the Portuguese -those are marked in Angola, inland to the river Cuanga; and in Mozambique, inland to Monomotapa and Zumbo; but this map is not dated and it can be for a much later settlements. If there are such sourced data, can you help redesigning a map like map Portugal 1521-1557. I will apply those results to this map. Thanks--Uxbona (talk) 11:22, 11 April 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Newfoundland in 1473?[edit]

This predates the Columbus voyage of 1492 by almost two decades. The source for this?

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