Portuguese History

The Portuguese Empire, 1415-1808: A World on the Move By A. J. R. Russell-Wood The Johns Hopkins University Press Paperback (384 pages) List Price: $25.00* Lowest New Price: $14.05* Lowest Used Price: $14.04* Usually ships in 24 hours* *(As of 00:33 Pacific 29 Jul 2010 More Info) Click Here Product Description: By approaching the history of the Portuguese empire thematically, historian A.J.R. Russell-Wood paints a broad portrait of the first and one of the greatest colonial empires--its birth, apotheosis, and decline. Russell-Wood shows unique insight into the diversity and balance between competing interests and priorities that characterized the Portuguese culture and its expansion, spanning four centuries's events on four different continents. 84 illustrations.

The Portuguese in India (The New Cambridge History of India) By M. N. Pearson Cambridge University Press Paperback (204 pages) List Price: $45.00* Lowest New Price: $40.98* Lowest Used Price: $28.90* Usually ships in 24 hours* *(As of 00:33 Pacific 29 Jul 2010 More Info) Click Here Product Description: The Portuguese were the first European imperial power in Asia. Dr. Pearson's volume of the History is a clear account of their activities in India and the Indian Ocean from the sixteenth century onwards that is written squarely from an Indian point of view. Laying particular stress on social, economic, and religious interaction between Portuguese and Indians, the author argues that the Portuguese had a more limited impact on everyday life in India than is sometimes supposed. Their imperial effort was characterized more by reciprocity and interaction than by an unilateral imposition of Portuguese mores and political structures.

A Network of Converso Families in Early Modern Toledo: Assimilating a Minority (History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds) By Linda Martz University of Michigan Press Hardcover (480 pages) List Price: $95.00* Lowest New Price: $95.00* Lowest Used Price: $74.99* Usually ships in 24 hours* *(As of 00:33 Pacific 29 Jul 2010 More Info) Click Here Product Description: A Network of Converso Families in Early Modern Toledo addresses the fortunes of Jewish families who converted to Catholicism in fifteenth-century Spain. From the fifteenth through the seventeenth century, their careers, successes, and misfortunes are traced as they confront institutional and societal prejudices in the form of the Spanish Inquisition and pure blood statutes. Linda M. Martz focuses on families that were immersed in the worlds of business and finance. They formed the backbone of the trade industry and, during the economic expansion of the sixteenth century, enjoyed a high degree of affluence. The seventeenth century, however, brought harder times. How these families rose to positions of commercial eminence and then adapted to this economic downturn is one of the questions addressed in this insightful book. A Network of Converso Families in Early Modern Toledo relies heavily on archival evidence--notarial, parish, and city records--that offers new insights into the families' histories. Business endeavors, marriage alliances, involvement in local politics, and the pursuit of improved social status are all subjected to Martz's keen analysis. These families appear to have been well integrated into their contemporary society; aside from their business and financial activities, many were members of the city's governing council. But how well did they integrate with the lower classes? Assimilating minorities in the majority culture is a task that confronts most modern societies, so the experience of Spain and this particular minority may serve as an example of how earlier societies viewed and confronted this challenge. This book will appeal to historians of medieval and Renaissance Spain and those interested in the Inquisition's effect on Renaissance Spain. It will also prove to be indispensable for those interested in the history of the Jewish race, as well as for those pursuing the question of marginalization. Linda M. Martz is an independent historian as well as a freelance editor and writer.

The Mirror of Spain, 1500-1700: The Formation of a Myth (History, Languages, and Cultures of the Spanish and Portuguese Worlds) By Jocelyn N. Hillgarth University of Michigan Press Hardcover (608 pages) List Price: $95.00* Lowest New Price: $60.52* Lowest Used Price: $161.72* Usually ships in 10 to 11 days* *(As of 00:33 Pacific 29 Jul 2010 More Info) Click Here Product Description: In this major new work, J. N. Hillgarth investigates how Spain was seen by non-Spaniards in the period when it was the leading power in Europe. The author brings together a wide range of sources that elucidate Spanish history and Spanish character. He demonstrates the ways that propaganda has distorted both these things in the past and even continues to do so in the present. In the first of the volume's four parts, the author discusses the reasons--geographic, political, and religious--why Spain has proved a hard country to understand. Hillgarth looks at travelers to Spain, from pilgrims to diplomats, spies, exiles, and foreign residents. In its second part, special attention is devoted to the interaction between Christians, Jews, and Muslims, including Jewish and Muslim exiles and secret Jews within Spain. In its third section, The Mirror of Spain explores reactions to Spain by those who saw it from the outside, the Italians, Dutch, French, and English. One chapter deals with the English, Scottish, and Irish Catholics, who, like the Jewish and Muslim exiles, played a double role in that they were at once "insiders" and outsiders. Finally, Hillgarth attempts to show how two crucial centuries have affected the way Spain has been seen down to the present. The Mirror of Spain draws on a wide range of sources in different languages. It relies on documents in the Public Record Office and the British Library, the Archivo General de Simancas and the collections of the colleges founded by exiles in Spain, and on major libraries in Venice and Jerusalem. The volume will be of interest to a broad spectrum of scholars--to medievalists, historians of Spain, scholars of political and literary thought, and all those interested in notions of national identity. J. N. Hillgarth has taught for many years at the University of Toronto and the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. He is a Fellow of the British Academy and has received awards and honors from a wide variety of distinguished institutions in Europe and North America.