Religion and Commerce in Portuguese Overseas Expansion Essay

Abstract

In the early 15^th Century Prince Henry the navigator started to organize a team in preparation for overseas exploration. In his team were sailors, astronomers, instrument makers, mapmakers and shipbuilders to help him navigate his way around Africa with a sole aim of reaching the wealth of the orient. In the year 1497 a Famous Portuguese by the name Vasco Da Gama sailed across the Indian Ocean leading to a great leap forward to the exploration of the Portuguese to other worlds. With this step and using the naval powers they set up a chain of trading bases consisting of warehouses and forts along the coasts. It has been reported that the reasons that led to their great success could be wrapped up in to two factors: Religion and Trade. The Portuguese concentrated their contacts with Africans and Asians to missionaries and trading i.e. spreading the gospel, looking for market for their products, as well as raw materials for their industries. With the involvement of the Spices in the trading activities the Portuguese’ Slave [mainly from Africa] trade flourished a great deal such that they could easily obtain the luxurious imports from the Spices of the East.

Their strategy was first to try to win over the peoples’ trust by sharing their faith with them as missionaries, then later in the process they start introducing business proposals, the two ideas were therefore intertwined and were depended on each other; religion to set off commercial activities, and business to fund religious movements and other areas of interest.

Introduction

The Portuguese have been reported to be the earliest and longest lived European Colonial Emperor which stood for a period well over six hundred years, thanks to their expertise in trade and missionary activities. This essay will highlight the factors that led to the expansion of the Portuguese to the overseas and how they became influential and managed to establish firm bases in Asia, Africa and South America. It will also determine the role that religion played in this expansion and the eventual development and growth of Portugal into a world wide commercial enterprise. The expansion to the overseas to look for greater profits and boost the economy had multitude of effects, bringing merits and opportunities alike. The Christians on their part criticized the direct rule arguing that it was simply impossible. The Muslims too had their take on the changes (Godinho et al, 1970, 1680-1720).

The studies of the role of religion in shaping up societies revealed that religion was not just to convert people and gain religious favor, but it carried with it economic and political benefits. The conflicts between the Muslims and the Christians as well as the needs to spread each of these contributed to further explorations.

Exploration of India and West Africa

The idea to explore the West Africa coast had got two main objectives: to determine how deep the Islamic culture had taken root in the area and to capture Morocco. But with geographical ignorance in play, the navigators mistakenly lost rout and ended up making more important discoveries than they had earlier anticipated. Henry and his men came to discover the Canaries, Azores, Archipelagos, Madeira and Porto Santo ion their struggle to locate Morocco. This created more opportunity for exploration and commerce. The discoveries were so sweet and enticing and they were tempted to move even further into the south to exploit more of the African riches (gold and slaves).

By 1487 when they crossed Cape of Good Hope, they proved unstoppable. Ten years later, Vasco Da Gama entirely circumnavigated Africa to reach India by sea, by this time commercial activities were at their peak. Vasco Da Gama and his men managed to locate a rout that could connect North Europe, Africa Coast India and Portugal. They mainly dealt in goods like Gold, Ivory, Ivory, Red peppers and later expanded to wine, salt, sugar cane, fruits and olive oil (O’Brien, Patrick, 1998, 1688-1815).

There were no major competitions by then since the Portuguese had mastered the art so well that no other emperor could match them. The only major huddle to the trade structure was that threat from the French, British, Spanish and Holland pirates.

Because of lack of any potential competitor, the economic base of the Portuguese expanded by several folds. They gained access to various sources of precious items, raw materials and slaves. With these factors playing to their advantage, they were then able to penetrate the European market as well as enlarge the import volume from Europe.

Role of Religion in shaping the Society

With the traditional religious practices, no one in the society was ready to embrace a foreign behavior or commodity, that is why it was important for the Portuguese explorers to first influence the people’s political and social decisions that are based on moral standards by making them adopt their religion. The religion that the Portuguese brought with them allowed for some percentage of flexibility of ideologies. When they finally succeeded in making the people change their cultural practices, then they can go along way to alter the peoples’ morals, hence allowing them to accept their products.

There was little bit of some resistance that were threatening to bar any attempt to change the traditional way of life, a number of die-hard conservatives struggled to sustain the status quo, but the economic forces proved unwavering and the exchange of different kinds of goods through trade rapidly helped change the society completely. The conservatives eventually changed their tune and started saying that the changes that were being witnessed were part of God’s grand plan to the world.

The Portuguese were smart enough and knew how religion affects the people’s choices in life. So, through their missionaries, they brought up only those religious doctrines that could act to their advantage. They manipulated religious rhetoric to justify their practices. The overall results of the missionaries effort was found to be very rewarding as the mindset of those people who had initially rejected the Portuguese commercialization strategy were altered and they felt that the society was no longer under any form of threat by the practices, but that the economic times demanded for a change of attitude and overall way of life.

The protestant Reformation made it much cheaper for the Portuguese to expand there bases. Though no clear evidence prove that the Protestants were more enlightened than the Catholics in terms of market economy, we have to accept that their differences on promoting individualism help the Portuguese a great deal. As people strived to seek more personal relationship with Christ, they read and interpreted the bible as they understood it. This weakened the papal powers and the overall lifestyle was altered to fit the then economic times. The changed doctrines and ideologies of religion gave them justification on their new found beliefs [no more feeling guilty] (Wrightson, 2000 334).

Religion became a tool that the state used to create a monarchical identity where propaganda concerning religious doctrines was spread to achieve given objectives like when they unanimously want to adopt a certain new culture. This was reported in Dutch when the Protestants “forged, retained and reinforced an identity to become competitive against their Catholic Foes…” (Patrick O’Brien. 1585-1815: 482). The Catholic foes too had used their religion inclination to unite their people on maters concerning economics and regionalism.

General Role of Commerce

After the arrival of Vasco Da Game in the Indian Port of Calicut, a big difference was made in the business and commercial scene of the Portuguese. He succeeded in opening up practical and highly profitable new water rout around Africa to Asia, making it much easier to navigate and explore those areas. The merchant community used port Lisbon and Oporto cities as bases of their major operations, the finances got from these activities were used to fund explorations and trading activities in different areas where they had vested interest.

Conclusion

As the churches spread dotting every countryside and city so did the Portuguese expansion to such areas. Religion therefore remained a significant factor in the expansion and exploration of the Portuguese in the early society. To sum up this essay, we can therefore conclude by stating that the expansion of the Portuguese to the overseas depended on [and chiefly arose due to] three major factors (Birmingham, David 1993) namely: –

• Search for commercial wealth, particularly through the Spice Trade.
• The quest for Prester John (the Mystic Christian of the East.) and development of a firm and stable [geopolitical relationship with the Muslim community
• Unrelenting crusading zeal to search for precious metals (especially gold)

References

1. Birmingham, David: “A Concise History of Portugal”: Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.
2. Boxer, C.R.: “The Portuguese Seaborne Empire”: 1415-1825. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1969.
3. Godinho, Vitorino Magalhães: “Portugal and Her Empire, 1680-1720.” The New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. VI. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.
4. O’Brien, Patrick. “Inseparable Connections: Trade, Economy, Fiscal State, and the Expansion of Empire, 1688-1815.”, Vol. II, edited by P.J. Marshall, 54-77. Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1998
5. Oliveira Marques: “History of Portugal”: New York: Columbia University Press, 1972.
6. Wheeler, Douglas: “Historical Dictionary of Portugal”: London: Scarecrow Press, 1993.
7. Wrightson, Keith. “Earthly Necessities”. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000