Just before midnight on 10 November 1975 Portugal's high commissioner in Angola, along with the last remnants of the Portuguese army in Africa, embarked for Lisbon. Earlier in the day he had formally transferred sovereignty not to a successor government but to ‘the Angolan people’, a formulation which permitted Portugal to ‘decolonise’ without taking sides in the civil war which was at that time reaching its climax in Angola. Immediately the perfunctory ceremony in Luanda ended, the Portuguese officials left at speed for the harbour and the relative safety of their ships which departed immediately. Thus ended Portugal's 500-year empire in Africa. It is tempting to see Portugal's indecorous withdrawal from Angola as an emblematic climax to an increasingly destructive relationship with the former jewel in its African crown. In this view, the chaotic circumstances of Angola's road to independence had brought Portugal's own fragile and unstable post-revolutionary state to the point of destruction. Yet a quite different view can be proposed. The political and diplomatic challenges thrown down by the Angolan crisis might be seen, on the contrary, to have had a ‘disciplining’ effect on a revolutionary process in Portugal which was threatening to spin out of control as a result of its own internal pressures. Arguably, rather than exacerbating these pressures, the demands of events in Angola had a unifying effect on an otherwise fragmenting state.

The old debate amongst historians as to whether the testimony of the sixteenth century really bears out Adam Smith's claim that the rounding of the Cape of Good Hope constitutes ‘one of the two and most important events in the recorded history of mankind’ was, it seems, put to sleep with Niels Steensgaard's thesis of 1973. Steensgaard argued that ‘a structural revolution’ and which truly sounded the death-knell of the old overland caravan trades competing with the sea borne routes, was not effected by the Portuguese from 1498 but awaited the Dutch. The debate, however, was couched very much on the theory of the operation run by the Portuguese, and which was typologised as reactionary in that it relied upon the threat of force rather than commercial competitivity. Whilst price movements between Portuguese and Red Sea pepper on the European market have been analysed by historians such as Herman Van Der Wee and Rene Gascon, nobody has really stopped to consider the complex of factors intervening on the demand side. Pepper, like ginger, was not a unitary good as misleadingly assumed by Douglas Irwin in his attempt to analyse the Anglo-Dutch rivalry for the East India trade with the Brander-Spence analysis of duopolistic export competition. Price lists suggest that pepper came in manifold shapes, sizes and qualities, let alone competing species, all of which rendered the market remarkably heterogeneous with up to seven-fold price divergences between, for example, the different products that would pass as ‘pepper’. This article discusses some of the factors that made for market variegation, and focuses on the market consequences of a Portuguese policy of transportation in the open ship's hold. It suggests that quality was one of the demand factors that shaped the competition between the Adantic and Mediterranean spice trade.

[T] he Paravas [are] a maritime people, seated on this Pearle Coast, whose greatest livelihood is Natures bounty, which she in that kind annually bestowes and which art qualifies them in like manner to receive… This nation about one hundred and thirty yeares agoe was a limb of heathenisme, out of which roughquarry it was hewen by papall industry and so became a Jewell of the Triple Crown. The Jesuites, who at first converted them, for a long time after govern'd them in a way both ecclestiasticall andcivill. This latter yoake weares of and delivers up civill concernments into the hands of the civill power, the corruption of one kindof government being the generation of the other. In this state matters rested when, about five yeares agoe (the Portugall greatnesse being then far declin'd from its zenith) the Dutch possesse[d] themselves of this coast, which ever since, they have govern'd by way of judicature and awed by their power. This gave occasion for the persons above mentioned [certaine persons of quality, natives of Tutticorrim and heads of their nation] to recede [into the interior]… This [loss of Cochin in early 1663] involves them in fresh cares, and those send them in great quest of other props to stay themselves upon… Their desires therefore are that themselves, together with their adherents, may be taken into the protection of the English; that they with their padre (who is the hinge whereon they turne) may have their dwellings at Cale Velha [Palaiyakkayal], the seate of our factorie, free from violence; and their boates, by virtue of our passeports, to navigate the seas void of all disturbances.

Throughout the last decade a number of rather detailed studies on eighteenth-century Atlantic merchants and merchant colonies in Atlantic port cities has been published. The works ofJacob Price, David Hancock, Jonathan Israel, Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, and Manuel Bustos Rodríguez demonstrate the growing historical interest in maritime trade and Atlantic studies. All of these works carry on the investigative traditions of the authors respective countries, represented, for example, by Bernard Bailyn's works on the New England merchants, Pierre and Huguette Chaunu's and Paul Butel's studies on the economies of the Spanish and French Atlantic, and the investigations of Antonio García-Baquero González on the topic of Spanish Atlantic trade. As a pervasive pattern within this field of research it can be observed that, since the foundations had been laid with these classical studies, the focus of historical inquiry has shifted from quantitative investigations (that is, those on the currents of ships, goods, and precious metals) and from studies on the legal frameworks regulating the Atlantic trades to detailed studies of the individuals responsible for this trade. Arising from their countries colonial pasts, it is not surprising that most of these author's works concentrate on the colonial trade of the Western European sea powers, thus neglecting the central and eastern interiors of the continent. In the 1960s and 70s, some German historians, notably Hermann Kellenbenz and Hans Pohl, published studies in this area, but it has lain fallow ever since. The aim of this article is to shed some light on the perspectives that might open up by reconsidering the influence of Atlantic trade on Central Europe in the Early Modern period.

In his review of my doctoral thesis on the Portuguese decline in Asia Timothy J. Coates expresses amazement that so little time was spent in the archives or on the old historiography on Portuguese Asia and that I largely relied on the work of modern authors who did. My explanation for this well considered omission is quite simple: after the uncovering of so many new data by excellent historians it was about time to take a step back to see whether the many existing intersections through the archives, that had the Portuguese-Spanish-Dutch triangle as a subject, could be interrelated. I think the final conclusions were worth the effort.

In my review of Dr van Veen's work, I stated that his lack of archival and other primary sources was ‘inexplicable’. This was a polite way of pointing out what was to me the obvious. If one wants to construct an original thesis that the Portuguese Habsburg kings turned to other investments that they felt would yield greater profit than the Estado da India, the possible proof of tfiat thesis is in the archives in Simancas. By the same token, if one wants to examine the profit and losses in Portuguese Asia, the place to look is the Historical Archives of Goa and the Overseas Archives in Lisbon. There is no substitute for working in the archives and using the very rich published primary literature on the subjects of van Veen's work. His avoidance of these sources and complete lack of any archival work in Spain, Portugal, or India is well, inexplicable.