Malyn Newitt has produced a compelling new work of scholarship, important for its innovative framing of Portuguese history on a global scale by exploring the multiple ways that, since initiating the era of European overseas expansion in 1415, a Portuguese demographic and cultural diaspora has influenced and contributed significantly to world history. The book has a novel approach, describing global Portuguese impact through complex patterns of immigration over six centuries. Newitt’s writing is strong (though the book’s organization is oddly nonchronological); his highly erudite narrative showcases the author’s decades of teaching and writing related to this subject. From 1998 to 2014 Newitt was a professor of history in the Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies at King’s College, London. His prior publications focus on the colonial era in the Indian Ocean, particularly the Portuguese in Mozambique.
Emigration and the Sea opens with a consideration of recent historiographical trends and theories...
