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Comment by leflambeur | Hacker News Reader

I think the comparison with the Netherlands is generally appropriate, but we must recognize that what they did in Brazil was exceptional (meaning not comparable to their former possessions in Asia and Africa, a difference from the mere trading nodes) and the NL never did achieve anything like it.

The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.

The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.

So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.

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> the NL never did achieve anything like it.

> The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.

Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans and had access to gunpowders, naval yards, literacy, and proto-industrialization - and unifying them into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.

do 99.9% of the people born there speak Dutch? When they became independent, were they 80%+ Reformed Dutch protestants?

I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.

Was Brazil inhabited by countries with access to gunpowder, naval yards, proto-industrialization, and allies with transcontinental empires? No.

It was largely Amerindians who were exterminated and genocided with ease.

Conquering empires that were near-peers technologically is different from settling a continent which was at the losing end of the Colombian exchange.

You may want to look into the genetic composition of modern-day Brazilians to consider whether "Amerindians were exterminated" is a coherent way to represent it.

edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just talking about a different thing than I :)

edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory by other powers.

My point still stands. Their culture was completely decimated and they were largely replaced by European and African migrants, indentured servants, and slaves.

Subjugating a native people that lacked metalworking, gunpowder, and literacy is different from conquering multiple nations that had all of those and was backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans.

You are imprinting your worldview on someting that differs from historical facts, maybe influenced by anglophone chronicles of what the spanish did in the americas. Spanish were no angels, however, much of what is published tends to be biased and differ quite a bit from what happened on the ground.

Despite neighbour to Spain: Portugal built a different culture altogether since its inception as an iberian kingdom. For example, instead of wiping out the muslim populations, the first king established a policy nowadays known as "don't ask, don't tell" in regards to religion. Which clashed with the Spanish/Italian approaches but at the same time permitted rapid expansion of territory since the population was absorved rather than decimated.

The Brazilian land has dense vegetation and native populations that never generated large settlements nor advanced cultures as you'd see in other parts of America, existing in a continuous state of tribal warring against each other.

The crown/church forbid portuguese women from travelling overseas and the number of sailors travelling was low (the kingdom was small population-wise). Portuguese technology and culture were very, very, very attractive to the native populations who came in contact with these sailor crews. They quickly mixed with the locals to create blood-related families on those locations with local leaders (same as done in India). The portuguese doctrine remained the same as during foundation times of the kingdom, aimed to mix as much as possible with local populations to thrive. This resulted in centuries of family ties across the atlantic that still last until today. Looking on my own example, I keep family ties on three different continents that all speak the same language.

All of this to say that integration was very fast from the native population point of view to join the empire because of mutual benefits for either parties, to the point that the portuguese army in the Americas was composed and lead in majority by natives themselves which went to subjugate rival tribes with better equipment than the counterparts.

No, lol, that is not how that works. Your point is factually wrong, your point doesn't "stand".

and just how did they got the gunpowder? ;)

The Rajahdoms and Sultanates that became Indonesia and Malaysia did so via existing domestic capacity and intercultural exchange with the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, and other "Gunpowder" empires [0][1].

Heck, the only reason the Dutch couldn't completely invade Aceh was because the Ottomans and Mughals threatened to sanction the Dutch [2] in the 17th century for threatening a fellow Sunni state.

We are reverting to the historical norm where we don't need you Farangis anymore. O facto de o IDH da Malásia ter atingido o IDH de Portugal de há 7 anos mostra que vocês, portugueses, precisam de rever os vossos egos. Tendo passado anos em Boston, conheci muitas pessoas do seu tipo - Brasileiro e português.

[0] - https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/V/bo595652...

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottoman_expeditions_to_Aceh

[2] - https://brill.com/display/book/9789004454460/B9789004454460_...

This is one resentful individual. Likes to imply how this or that people is inferior to the other (I thought we were discussing differences in forms of settlement, colonization and maritime expansion) then pivots to modern day economic statistics to again imply that some people are superior to others then finally succumbs to racism but is careful enough to change the language!!

...and yet you speak portuguese while trying to dismiss (and rewrite) a post about 15th century events with data from the 17th century

The Dutch had more in common with British East India company phase of the British expansion.

Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying that you rule over people that have literally never heard of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a bit :-)

Since when is taxing all subjects a necessity? Britain didn't tax people in the 13 colonies so could we conclude that before the American Revolution they were not part of the British Empire?

Didn’t the Dutch basically take over the Portuguese trading empire from them?

Yes! The losses were due to independence loss to Spain. In a sense the loss of sovereignty to Spain destroyed the Portuguese empire.

Spain joined the Portuguese and Spanish armada and went on to fight the English (and Dutch to some extent), with catastrophic results for both Spain and Portugal fleets. When Portugal regained independence 1640 it needed to get back sovereignty of overseas territories, including from the Dutch.

The Dutch controlled a big part of north Brazil when Portugal and Spain were the Iberian Union, but the Dutch and were driven back afterwards at great cost. The damage was done, and 1755 earthquake was the final nail.

There were also terrible mistake in terms of state management up to the XX century where the natives, were not seen as full citizens, and naturally rebelled.

As a post colonial portuguese citizen, it seems like an incredible fantasy that our society descends from such a grandiose history. Even in this thread i see the name Henry the Navigator and am incredulous people know who he was.

A less known both inside and outside Portugal bad ass dude was Afonso de Albuquerque. This is from his English wikipedia page about Hormuz in the middle east:

> At the same time, Albuquerque decided to conclude the effective conquest of Hormuz. He had learned that after the Portuguese retreat in 1507, a young king was reigning under the influence of a powerful Persian vizier, Reis Hamed, whom the king greatly feared. At Ormuz in March 1515, Afonso met the king and asked the vizier to be present. He then had him immediately stabbed and killed by his entourage, thus "freeing" the terrified king, so the island in the Persian Gulf yielded to him without resistance and remained a vassal state of the Portuguese Empire.

Here came a dude that does both diplomacy and war in person, and moved on. Vasco da Gama was a bit similar. Portuguese were quite out of their minds and for me shows shows the pedigree of bloodlust[1] that Europeans must have gained after endless continental strife. That is why I am really afraid of the rearming of Europe, I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.

[1] https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-storia-do-mogor-by-nicco...

>I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.

I don't think that is the case, but more so they were better at war then everyone else.

Yes, to a significant but not total degree. Some of those losses were later recouped by Portugal (current Northeastern Brazil and Angola).

I think that the losses in Asia were more lasting, or permanent.

> The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K

Every time I meet a laid back, easy going and kind Portuguese person — which is most of them — I always think that explains their relatively unambitious world domination plans.

The Portuguese sometimes describe themselves as the "povo de brandos costumes" (people of mild customs).

True. Most of them were just trying to live better and enjoy life outside.

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