Appearance of this New History of Portugal by Livermore naturally suggests comparison with his History of Portugal, published by Cambridge in 1947. The present work is not a revised edition of its predecessor; it is different in the main and shorter, the former 500 pages being reduced to 365. Because of a new format, the reduction in wordage is even greater.
Livermore obviously agrees with his nineteenth-century compatriot, Edward Augustus Freeman, that “history is past politics.” He has made this clear in the earlier book on Portugal, in his History of Spain (1958), and again in the present work. Almost the only interruptions in the political narrative are those devoted to government finance. Portugal has had many literary lights, but the only mention of the greatest, Camões, is the reminder that he returned in poverty from India.
Assuming this kind of history to be somewhat out of date in the last third of the twentieth century, the question arises whether Livermore’s political chronicle is accurate enough to compensate for its singleness of theme. Often it is not. Occasional errors in ancient history may seem unimportant from the standpoint of modern Portugal, but their frequent occurrence causes a reader to lose confidence in the work as a whole. Arius, founder of the Arian heresy, did not baptise Constantine on the latter’s deathbed as is alleged (p. 21); Arius died first and the real baptiser was Eusebius of Nicomedia. Theodosius died in 395, not 396 (p. 24), and Suevian king Rechiarius could not have been an ally of Roman emperor Honorius (p. 24), who died twenty-five years before Rechiarius commenced his reign. A mysterious Roman emperor Artemius turns out on closer scrutiny to have been Anthemius.
Turning to medieval Portugal, every Almoravid and Almohad ruler is a “caliph” to Livermore. These Africans never assumed such a title, and the founder of the Almoravid dynasty acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the Abbasid caliph of Bagdad. It may be overly finicky to dispute Livermore’s statement that the Turks captured Constantinople in 1454 (p. 120), but the fact remains that the city fell in 1453. John I, who founded the House of Avís was twentyeight and not twenty-six in 1385 (p. 102). Columbus never said or thought that he had discovered India (p. 131), and Livermore is four years off in dating the last known correspondence between John II of Portugal and Columbus. The assertion (p. 138) that at the time of Cabral’s departure for India in 1500 “it was now realized that Columbus’s ‘Indies’ were in fact a new world” cannot be supported by evidence; for Amerigo Vespucci did not understand this until several years later; and even then it was far from universally accepted. Sebastian Cabot is confused with his father John on pp. 143-144.
In a later period it is misleading to say that Leopold II of Belgium engaged the services of the “traveller” Henry M. Stanley at the Brussels conference of 1876; Stanley was exploring the course of the Congo River at that time. On p. 306 Livermore credits Serpa Pinto with having made an expedition across Africa in 1884-1885 that was really the work of Brito Capelo and Ivens. Serpa Pinto was then attempting unsuccessfully to explore the Rovuma-Nyasa region. Also there was no international naval demonstration off the Venezuelan shore just before 1892, as the somewhat confused statement on p. 309 seems to indicate.
In October 1888 British Foreign Secretary Lord Salisbury did offer Portugal the essence of its “Rose-Colored Map” claim: namely a corridor of territory through Africa connecting Angola with Mozambique. Portuguese Foreign Minister Henrique de Barros Gomes turned down the offer because he hoped to gain more and counted most fatuously on German support. According to Livermore, Salisbury was uncompromising on the subject.
Livermore’s work has redeeming features; some observations about Portuguese historical characters and situations are shrewd. The maps are useful, and the illustrations, if partly the same as in the author’s earlier volume, are generally an improvement. Yet it is impossible to call this a satisfactory presentation of Portuguese history. For the most part, and except for the few pages devoted to contemporary matters, the reader will be well advised to use Livermore’s first book.