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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
The search to understand the motives behind Portuguese overseas expansion has long preoccupied historians of the early modern period. Numerous articles, surveys and studies have addressed its economic incentives, achievements and legacies to the point where the historiography has obscured a holistic understanding of the forces at play in the early sixteenth century. Moreover, in this field of study overseas policy has been set apart from the domestic political and social climate, giving the impression that events taking place in Southeast Asia were foremost the concern of the policy makers in Lisbon. D. Manuel (1495–1521) who was king of Portugal and driving force behind the expansion during its arguably most crucial period, was neither warrior king nor astute entrepreneur, but rather the proponent of ambitious political reforms. The tenuous nature of his succession and his relationship with the highest stratum of nobility demands that scholarly attention focus on domestic politics during the so-called ‘Vasco da Gama era’. This paper contends that placation of the grandes (titled elites and their families) was D. Manuel's primary motivation behind continued expansion and conquest, superseding aspirations to economic and imperial power. It asserts that in an attempt to defuse his legacy of political instability left to him by his predecessor, D. Manuel manufactured a culture of chivalry that was linked to the overseas expansion and provided venues for noble combat away from the political centre.
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20 D. Manuel's decision to recall the Duke of Bragança is interestingly similar to the decision taken by D. João I in 1407 to authorise the return of D. Pedro de Meneses, later first Captain of Ceuta, and illustrates the degree to which exiled magnates residing in Castile were seen as a threat by the Portuguese crown.
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24 Goís, Croóica de D. Manuel I, 8.
25 Evidence of covert patronage exists in the form of payments for which no original record can be found in the Manueline chancery books but for which confirmations are listed in the chancery books of D. João III. While it is possible that the original records were either lost or destroyed, the magnitude of the contia and the status of the recipient of these payments suggest that the crown attempted to conceal some of its patronage.
26 See Table 1.
27 See Table 2. Controversy is mentioned in João José Alves Dias, Isabel M.R. Mendes Drumond Braga and Paulo Drumond Braga, ‘A Conjuntura’, 713.
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43 Jeronimo Osorio, De Rebus Emmanuelis Regis Lusitaniae.… Gestis libri duodecim: The History of the Portuguese During the Reign of Emmanuel: Containing All their Discoveries from the Coast of Africk to the Farthest Parts of China: Their Battles by the Sea and Land, their Sieges, and other Memorable Exploits: With a Description of those Countries, and a Particular Account of the Religion, Government and Coustoms of the Natives: Including also their Discovery of the Brazil and their Wars with the Moors II (London 1752) 215.
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