[hearsathought]

You would first have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of the iberian peninsula. Hard to imagine.

Passing that hurdle, then you'd have to imagine portuguese being the lingua franca of western europe. Hard to imagine that.

Then of europe as a whole and so on. Almost a joke now.

Portuguese was never the major power of it's immediate vicinity, let alone the world. Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire. And portugual, like the netherlands, were minor powers within europe. Neither were major global powers as we understand the term and neither were powerful nor significant enough to produce a lingua franca of anything.

[leflambeur]

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.

[alephnerd]

> 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.

[rmah]

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 :-)

[vondur]

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

[gib444]

> 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.

[TheOtherHobbes]

The 1755 earthquake effectively nuked the capital and killed maybe a third of GDP.

Portugal was never interested in dominance of Europe - hard to project power to the centre when you're out on the far edge and have more of a navy than an army.

But the trade network was the first truly global network, and very much non-trivial.

[denismenace]

> Portugual, like the netherlands, was a glorified trading network rather than a legitimate empire.

nothing more than a glorified crew in New Jersey

[andrepd]

In this house, Vasco da Gama is a hero, end of story!

[antsou]

There is a very good reason why Portugal and the Netherlands were so similar, in this regard!