Why is Portugal generally overlooked as a major power in the Age of Discovery?
It’s a complete misconception. They got left out, basically. The Spanish voyages were to the New World, and the Spanish voyages to the New World are thought of as part of American prehistory, so they’re closely part of the American school curriculum. There’s some coverage of Portuguese voyages down the African coast because that leads to Vasco da Gama getting to India. But it becomes part of Asian history after that, and it drops out of American school curriculum, at least in any detail. It just isn’t as well known in this part of the world. What actually happened was, in a very short period of time, the early 16th century, the Portuguese landed in Brazil and established a network of trading posts around the Indian Ocean, all the way to Macau. Beyond Macau, they got to Japan by the 1540s. They put together this phenomenal network that was less territorial and more commercial—the only sizable land settlements they had were in Brazil. The Portuguese were active in India and the Persian G
