Malyn Newitt – författare

A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 provides an accessible survey of how the Portuguese became so influential during this period and how Portuguese settlements were founded in areas as far flung as Asia, Africa and South America.

Malyn Newitt examines how the ideas and institutions of a late medieval society were deployed to aid expansion into Africa and the Atlantic islands, as well as how, through rivalry with Castile, this grew into a worldwide commercial enterprise. Finally, he considers how resilient the Portuguese overseas communities were, surviving wars and natural disasters, and fending off attacks by the more heavily armed English and Dutch invaders until well into the 1600s.

Including a detailed bibliography and glossary, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 is an invaluable textbook for all those studying this fascinating period of European expansion

A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 provides an accessible survey of how the Portuguese became so influential during this period and how Portuguese settlements were founded in areas as far flung as Asia, Africa and South America.

Malyn Newitt examines how the ideas and institutions of a late medieval society were deployed to aid expansion into Africa and the Atlantic islands, as well as how, through rivalry with Castile, this grew into a worldwide commercial enterprise. Finally, he considers how resilient the Portuguese overseas communities were, surviving wars and natural disasters, and fending off attacks by the more heavily armed English and Dutch invaders until well into the 1600s.

Including a detailed bibliography and glossary, A History of Portuguese Overseas Expansion 1400-1668 is an invaluable textbook for all those studying this fascinating period of European expansion

The Zambezi is the fourth-longest river in Africa, and one of the continent’s principal arteries of movement, migration, conquest and commerce. In this book, historian Malyn Newitt quotes rarely used Portuguese sources that throw vivid light on the culture of the river peoples and their relations with the Portuguese creole society of the prazos.

Hitherto unused manuscript material illustrates Portuguese and British colonial rule over the people of the long-lived Lunda kingdoms, and the Lozi of the Barotse Floodplain. The Zambezi became a war zone during the ‘Scramble for Africa’, the struggle for independence and the civil wars that followed the departure of colonial powers. Recent history has also seen the river’s wild nature tamed by the introduction of steamers and the building of bridges and dams. These developments have changed the character of the waterway, and impacted–often drastically–the ecological systems of the valley and those settled along its course.

The Zambezi traces the history of the communities that have lived along this great river; their relationship with the states formed on the high veldt; and the ways they have adapted to the vagaries of the Zambezi itself, with its annual floods, turbulent rapids and dramatic gorges.