The Global History of Portugal

This ambitious historical survey repositions Portugal not as a peripheral European nation but as a central node in global networks for millennia. Through 93 concise chapters spanning from pre-history to the modern world, the book traces the continuous flow of peoples, cultures, and commodities through this Atlantic gateway, examining both the enriching exchanges and the violent conflicts that shaped its global footprint. The accessible structure, with each chapter opening with a clear contextual anchor, makes this complex history digestible without sacrificing scholarly depth. It presents a comprehensive narrative of how a small territory became an outsized force in world affairs.

What distinguishes this history is its unflinching dual perspective, celebrating Portugal's cultural miscegenation and global influence while directly confronting the suffering and resistance its expansion provoked. Readers seeking a nuanced understanding of how empires form and function will find compelling analysis of the multimodal connections—from spices to slavery, ideas to institutions—that linked continents. This is global history at its most effective: local in focus, worldwide in implication, revealing how one nation's story is inseparable from the larger human drama of encounter and exchange.