A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire by A. R. Disney - 9780521843188

A History of Portugal and the Portuguese EmpireFrom Beginnings to 1807\nAuthor(s): A. R. Disney\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521843188, 978-0521843188\nSynopsis\nThe Kingdom of Portugal was created as a by-product of the Christian Reconquest of Hispania. With no geographical raison d'tre and no obvious political 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.