00:11You see that little tiny speck at the edge of Europe? Let's zoom in a little closer.
00:16There we go. This, my friends, was the first global empire in history. Well, no, that's
00:23actually only Portugal. But if I were to show you all of its possessions, well, then it
00:28starts looking a little bit better, doesn't it? Of course, things did go wrong somewhere,
00:34but we'll get to that in a little bit. First, let's see how they did it. And more importantly,
00:40why? The short answer is that people in the Middle Ages absolutely loved their pepper.
00:46In fact, they loved it so much that whenever someone started charging too much, bad things
00:52happened to them. When the Ottomans conquered Constantinople in 1453, they too thought that
00:58controlling the spice trade was basically free money. This time, however, the Europeans
01:04weren't quite ready to give the Ottomans a taste of instant karma. And so, Europe would
01:10suffer half a century of spice withdrawal. Until Portugal found another way to Asia by sailing
01:18all the way around Africa. The Portuguese set up shop very quickly, conquering ports along
01:23the way from practically whoever. Pretty soon, Portugal was the spice daddy of Europe, giving
01:30free hits to friends and making bank off of everyone else. Suddenly, once poor Portugal had
01:37more money than it knew what to do with. Want to have the biggest ship ever built with over 300
01:43cannons? Easy. Want to buy prime real estate from the oldest empires in history? Done! Hell, you can even
01:50colonise half a continent while you're at it. In fact, since the world is practically yours already,
01:56why not just divide it up with your friends? Well, that's what Portugal and Spain were thinking
02:00during one particular spice-induced trip. Spain gets the Americas except Brazil, while Portugal
02:05keeps all of Africa and Asia as well. Sounds simple, doesn't it? So, where did it go wrong?
02:13Well, Portugal's absolute monarchy was absolutely certain that they had to have absolute control
02:20over absolutely everything. Now, the type of adventurer willing to risk life and limb thousands
02:27of miles from home doesn't generally take orders like that very well. So, many of Portugal's trusted
02:34officials were, in reality, nothing more than pirates. Happy to confiscate, steal, rage, smuggle, embezzle,
02:41and even create the odd international incident. One of the first Portuguese captains to reach China
02:48promptly stole an island as his first order of business, then built a fort on it and proceeded
02:54to kidnap local children to sell into India. Lovely. The Chinese chased him off, but that was just the
03:03beginning of thirty years of Portuguese smuggling and piracy until the Chinese finally bought them off
03:10with Macau. But, all things considered, the Portuguese Empire could have survived the rampant corruption
03:17of its unscrupulous agents. After all, they had God on their side. Or so it seemed. Until Martin Luther
03:25nailed a pamphlet to a church door in Germany, starting a theological feud that would change
03:33the course of history. The Protestant Reformation did the most dangerous thing possible. It gave
03:40people ideas. Now, ideas weren't a popular thing in the Middle Ages, and freedom of worship was definitely
03:47near the bottom of the list. Portugal itself had already exiled its Jews for refusing to convert
03:54to Catholicism. Ironically, it was these exiled Jews that came up with the idea that killed the
04:01Portuguese Empire. You see, they banded together in Holland and decided to basically invent modern
04:07capitalism. Their idea was to sell shares in their spice expeditions, and before they knew it,
04:12every Dutch citizen was lining up to throw money at them. In the 1600s, the Dutch East India Company they
04:20created became the richest entity the world had ever known, without posts all over the world and its own
04:27navy and army, all funded without the Dutch government giving a single cent. How about those exiles, eh?
04:36Across the pond, the English did the same, and created the English East India Company, which went on to
04:43conquer India in the 1700s. But Portugal had no time for this new-fangled capitalism. It smelled a bit
04:52too much like, well, you know, change. Nobody likes change, do they? Much better to keep things as they are,
04:59well, yes. After all, absolute rule had got them this far, hadn't it? Absolutely. But it would take them
05:07no further. The thing is, absolute rule relies on the ruler. Enter King Sebastian, a religious man who,
05:18in 1578, decided to go and fight the Ottomans in Africa. He didn't come back, and neither did his army
05:27or his nobleman. This brief crusade left Portugal bankrupt, but more importantly, there was no heir
05:35to the throne. Ahem. Excuse me, says King Philip II of Spain. I hear you need a king. And so
05:43King Philip II
05:44of Spain became King Philip I of Portugal, formed the Iberian Union, and placed Portugal firmly under the
05:52heel of Spain. Suddenly, Portugal inherited all of Philip's enemies, the English, Dutch, French, the
05:59Ottomans, and basically anyone who wasn't a Catholic. From then on, all of Portugal's resources would go
06:05into fighting Spain's wars. Indeed, the Spanish Armada had a contingent of Portuguese ships in it,
06:12so the storm that saved England also broke Portugal. Now, at this point, you'd think it's all over for the
06:19Portuguese, and it would have been, if not for Brazil. Golden sun, golden sand, golden sea. Lots of gold,
06:30is my point. Lots and lots of juicy gold. It was the gold from Brazil that kept Portugal on life
06:36support
06:36for most of the 18th century. Indeed, the royal family even stayed there for an extended holiday when
06:43Napoleon was conquering Europe. But the royals gave Brazil a taste for home rule. So once they'd returned
06:50to Portugal, Brazil promptly declared independence. OK, so Portugal have lost India, the Asiatic coasts,
06:58Brazil. What's left? Ah, yes, Africa. Portugal wanted to develop their African holdings by connecting
07:05Angola and Mozambique with an east-west corridor across Africa. Unfortunately, the British had
07:12their own ambitions of a north-south corridor from Cairo to Cape Town, and so got a bit cross
07:18with the Portuguese. A few more decades of royal inaction, and people finally took matters into
07:23their own hands. First, they shot the king, and then they argued for two years on what to do before
07:30settling on building a republic. Arguably, the official end of the Portuguese Empire came when it returned
07:36Macau to China in 1999, though by that point it was merely a formality. Ultimately, it was capitalism that
07:45did it in. From the moment the Dutch started their crowdfunding expeditions, the writing was on the
07:51wall, and it wasn't in Portuguese.
07:54Ladles and jelly spoons, thank you for watching, my dear, dear friends. I hope you enjoyed this video.
08:00Please do subscribe, like, forward to the world, and in case you didn't before, do it again, and I'll see
08:07you in a couple of weeks for the next side quest, I tell you. Jolly good.
Comments