A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, A. R. Disney, Cambridge University Press

A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire
A. R. Disney

The Kingdom of Portugal was created as a by-product of the Christian Reconquest of Hispania. With no geographical raison d'être and no obvious roots in its Roman, Germanic, or Islamic pasts, it for long remained a small, struggling realm on Europe's outer fringe. Then, in the early fifteenth century, this unlikely springboard for Western expansion suddenly began to accumulate an empire of its own, eventually extending more than halfway around the globe. A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire, drawing particularly on historical scholarship postdating the 1974 Portuguese Revolution, offers readers a comprehensive overview and reinterpretation of how all this happened – the first such account to appear in English for more than a generation. This volume traces the history of the Portuguese overseas empire.

'A remarkable achievement, combining rigour with lucidity and offering expert guidance across a complex and varied historical terrain.' Times Literary Supplement

A. R. Disney was educated at Oxford and Harvard Universities and has taught history at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities. His publications include Twilight of the Pepper Empire (1978) and numerous articles, papers, and essays, published variously in the Economic History Review, Studia, Indica, Mare Liberum, Anais de Historia de Alem-mar, and other journals and proceedings.

• Published: June 2009 Cambridge University Press
• format: Paperback
• isbn: 9780521738224
• dimensions: 234 x 154 x 26 mm
• contains: 19 maps
• 438 pages
• Used, good condition