A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire

A. R. Disney was educated at the University of Oxford and Harvard University and has taught history at Melbourne and La Trobe Universities. His publications include Twilight of the Pepper Empire (1978) and numerous articles, papers, and essays, published variously in the Economic History Review, Studia, Indica, Mare Liberum, Anais de Historia de Alem-mar, and other journals and proceedings.

'This trenchant second volume sets a new standard for reflecting on the Portuguese world empire during the early modern period. Covering the Lusitanian presence on five continents, it pays attention simultaneously to political decisions of opposing court factions in Portugal, to the leading role of noble captains and agents working inside and outside formal colonial institutions, and to their involvement in a variety of local cultures. As a result, Anthony Disney is able to emphasize the centrality of Portuguese colonial situations as cultural hybrids.' Diogo Ramada Curto, European University Institute, Florence and Universidade Nova de Lisboa

• 1. North Africa; 2. Exploring the coasts of Atlantic Africa; 3. Engaging with Atlantic Africa; 4. The Atlantic islands and fisheries; 5. Breakthrough to maritime Asia; 6. Empire in the East; 7. Informal presence in the East; 8. Brazil: seizing and keeping possession; 9. Formation of colonial Brazil; 10. Late colonial Brazil; 11. Holding on in India: the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; 12. Eastern empire in the late colonial era: peripheries.