⌂ Atlas ☰ Read as a page The thread: How did Portugal, ruled from Madrid, lose its Asian empire, and then take back its crown, Brazil and Angola?
 —

Key

Portugal and its empire The Habsburg court and Spain The Dutch companies Safavid Persia The kingdom of Kandy Njinga's Ndongo and Matamba bond — succession, office, alliance conflict — war, revolt, prosecution

Sources & method

  1. Iberian Union: the Cortes of Tomar (1581), Portugal's separate laws and offices, the viceroys, the Dutch attacks — source
  2. Dutch–Portuguese War: the Lisbon spice embargo, Malacca, Bahia, Pernambuco, Ceylon, Luanda, the 1641 truce, the outcome — source
  3. Santa Catarina (ship): captured off Singapore, 25 February 1603; Grotius's defence of the seizure — source
  4. Battle of Cape Rachado (16–18 August 1606) and Matelief's siege of Malacca — source
  5. Capture of Ormuz (1622) and Rui Freire de Andrade's Qeshm fort — source
  6. Jornada dos Vassalos: the 1624 capture of Salvador, Bishop Marcos Teixeira's resistance and the 1625 recapture — source
  7. Dutch Brazil: Olinda and Recife (1630), the Arraial do Bom Jesus, Johan Maurits, Guararapes, the surrender of Recife (1654) — source
  8. Kandyan Treaty of 1638: Batticaloa, Westerwolt and Rajasinha II; Galle 1640 — source
  9. The 1640 Macau embassy to Nagasaki and the ban on Portuguese ships (1639) — source
  10. Portuguese Restoration War: 1 December 1640, Montijo (1644), the Lines of Elvas (1659), the Treaty of the Pyrenees — source
  11. Insurreição Pernambucana: the 1645 rising, Tabocas, Guararapes, the fleet off Recife and the capitulation of 1654 — source
  12. Recapture of Angola (1648): Salvador de Sá's fleet from Rio de Janeiro — source
Method. The chain of people follows a sourced account of the polity, 1600–1660; every claim the narration makes was checked against the sources above. Borders: historical-basemaps (A. Ourednik, GPL-3.0), the c.1650 snapshot, simplified — schematic, the right states in roughly the right places. Territorial changes: modern provinces (Natural Earth) or later snapshots standing in for historical ones. Portraits: each credited with its author, licence and source on the readable page. Relief: Esri World Physical Map. Narration: Azure neural voice.
A narrated polity atlas · 1600–1660

Portugal, 1600–1660

How did Portugal, ruled from Madrid, lose its Asian empire, and then take back its crown, Brazil and Angola?
Scroll to drive the map, or press begin for the narrated film. Scrub backward and everything un-draws.
or read it as a page, with still maps