These two works are reprints by two well-known Portugese scholars. Luís de Albuquerque, longtime librarian of the University of Coimbra, was the author of more than 650 articles and books concerned with Portugal’s nautical history between the fourteenth and eighteenth centuries. The nine meticulously crafted essays in this collection, originally published between 1961 and 1987 in relatively obscure journals, demonstrate his interest in and knowledge of the histories of cartography, pilotage, and mathematics.
One of the most interesting essays discusses Portuguese royal support of corsairing against Muslim positions in Granada and Morocco during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Others examine the ideas of the seventeenth-century writer Antonio de Naiera, the first Portuguese scholar to employ spherical trigonometry in the solution of astronomical problems; the writings of Pedro Nunes, Portugal’s first royal cosmographer (1529) and cosmographer general (1547), who served in the Casa da Mina; and the origins and limitations of Portuguese portolani and their relationship to the earlier, idealized T and O maps of the Middle Ages. The final essay attempts, unconvincingly, to demonstrate that the eighteenth-century critic Luís António Verney exaggerated when he contended that the study of geometry was unknown in Portugal.
Jorge Borges de Macedo, currently director of Portugal’s national archives (the Torre do Tombo), has published many studies of Portugal’s economic history during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. His dissertation, completed about 1945 but not published until 1951, broke new ground by shifting away from the traditional emphasis on the personality, despotism, and anti-Jesuit sentiments of the man best known as the Marquis of Pombal, Portugal’s dominant figure from 1750 to 1777, to less well understood aspects of that period.
What is now termed a third edition is no more than a reprint of an earlier one. The author has made no serious effort to utilize the findings of foreign or Portuguese authors who have further explored themes he originally brought to scholarly attention. These include the Portuguese economic crisis born of declining bullion yields from Brazil; and the diminishing value of exports such as cane sugar, tobacco, and wine. The author insists that in exalting the power of the state, Pombal employed traditional rather than revolutionary measures. Borges de Macedo emphasizes the minister’s pragmatism and his propensity to adopt monopolistic schemes to solve serious economic problems. He demonstrates the quite limited role the state actually played in promoting import-substitution industries, such as hats, leather goods, soap, and textiles; and the prominent role foreign-born entrepreneurs played in their development. In addition, Borges de Macedo observes that except for promoting export-oriented wines, the government neglected the kingdom’s agrarian sector.
The book’s five chapters remain essential reading, and their value is enhanced by the inclusion of nine significant documents, but the bibliography is carelessly presented and woefully out of date.
