Spain = The Iberian Peninsula

At this time their empire was already too big to maintain, and the riches of South America were no use anymore, because the interests for their debts ate every profit.

Some king thought about moving the capital to Lisbon...
 
Phillip II ruled from Lisbon for a time.

I think the independence of Portugal was assured by some Norman adventurers who attacked Muslim Spain and managed to help some local Christians carve out a piece.

No Norman attack equals no Portugal.
 
MerryPrankster said:
Phillip II ruled from Lisbon for a time.

I think the independence of Portugal was assured by some Norman adventurers who attacked Muslim Spain and managed to help some local Christians carve out a piece.
How’s that? Why would that make it any different from Castile vs. Catalonia?
 
MerryPrankster said:
A less distinctive identity, for starters. Less enough so that they wouldn't mind being a region of Spain instead of an independent nation.

Not so sure about the Normans now. Perhaps get rid of this fellow instead:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vímara_Peres


I disagree with that statement, in Portugal there has generally been a collective distrust of Spain and before that Castille. There is a saying in Portuguese that goes "de Espanha nem bons ventos nem bons casamentos" (from Spain neither good winds nor good marriages come). The last part aludes to the marriages with the Castillian and later Spanish royals that had threatened to wipe Portugal off the map.

By 1580 Portugal had over four centuries as an independent kingdom, with the same boundaries since 1250. The country was religiously and ethnically homogenous and was perhaps the earliest unified nation state in Europe. The nobility was not powerful like in other European countries and this did contribute to a sense of nationality coming about. The nobles were the ones that revolted in 1640 but many of their slogans were distinctively nationalistic.

Portugal could have remained Spanish had Philip IV not been so intent on centralising power in Madrid. Up until his reign, Portugal was treated as a separate kingdom and had a degree of autonomy. However, he was not the wisest of sovereigns making a decision like that one at a time when Spain was growing weaker and was being attacked by the Netherlands, France and England.

The Portuguese language is also quite distinct from Castillian especially the pronunciation. Perhaps if the Spanish had been as radical as Napoleon they could have wiped out most traces of a regional identity. Remember that before him France had many different dialects, and today more Bretons speak French than Breton.
 
During most of the middle ages there was a feeling in all the Christian kingdoms of the iberian peninsula of belonging to the same entity: Visigothic Hispania. Although there were different kingdoms some time or another one of them was acknowledged by all of them as Caput Hispaniae (Leon, Navarre, Castille, Aragon, then again Castile). The term Hispania-Spain was used but for all of the peninsula and even some lands in southern France and Northern Morocco. When the Catholic Kings Isabel of Castille and Fernando of Aragon took the name Spain for their unified kingdom the Portuguese king was enraged as he considered that name as belonging to the Portuguese as well.

Maybe you could spare a unified Iberia if the grandson of Isabel of Castile and Fernando of Aragon, Miguel, survives. He had been vowed as king of Portugal, Castille, Aragon and Navarre.
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
WI Portugal had failed to break away from Spain in the 17th century?

Bored and looking for interesting old posts I never got to see before

Taking this one as it was meant, means no Braganzas which has one noticeable effect not immediately thought of - Charles II of England/Scotland marries someone else. As he many bastards from several different women, it doesn't seem too much of a stretch to say he may well marry someone who gives him some living heirs. That knocks aside James II and the Glorious Revolution, the Jacobites etc. Instead it gives us a surviving Stuart monarchy in Great Britain

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

Grey Wolf

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Another consequence is that Bombay doesn't pass to England as part of Catherine's dowry.

So, is it Spanish in this timeline then ? Charles II could marry a Spanish Infanta and gain it that way, anyway :)

How much did the Spanish manage the formerly Portuguese holdings in India and Arabia ?

Grey Wolf
 
How much did the Spanish manage the formerly Portuguese holdings in India and Arabia ?

No idea, but I expect they governed them as part of the Portuguese crown and using the established administrative structure, the same way they did with the Italian possessions they inherited from Aragon. I say this because of the way that Portugal managed to get most of its colonies back when it regained its independence.
 
A different way to do this might be to have Portugal and Castile ally by marriage earlier, as opposed to Castile and Aragon as happened in OTL. Aragon could still be absorbed later, but it would mean that Portugal was part of a more integrated nation earlier than happened in OTL.
 
I disagree with that statement, in Portugal there has generally been a collective distrust of Spain and before that Castille. There is a saying in Portuguese that goes "de Espanha nem bons ventos nem bons casamentos" (from Spain neither good winds nor good marriages come). The last part aludes to the marriages with the Castillian and later Spanish royals that had threatened to wipe Portugal off the map.

«De ponent, ni vent ni gent» - That is a Valencian proverb which means "From the West, no wind nor people". Valencia is today a clear Spanish city and despite the late revival of Valencian language everybody there feel Spanish. What does that mean? Easy, many things can change in 500 years. The proverb of above is actually "only" 300 years old.

By 1580 Portugal had over four centuries as an independent kingdom, with the same boundaries since 1250. The country was religiously and ethnically homogenous and was perhaps the earliest unified nation state in Europe. The nobility was not powerful like in other European countries and this did contribute to a sense of nationality coming about. The nobles were the ones that revolted in 1640 but many of their slogans were distinctively nationalistic.
Almost all of above can be said about Catalonia and Naples, except for the nobles part (I will return later to this).

Portugal could have remained Spanish had Philip IV not been so intent on centralising power in Madrid. Up until his reign, Portugal was treated as a separate kingdom and had a degree of autonomy. However, he was not the wisest of sovereigns making a decision like that one at a time when Spain was growing weaker and was being attacked by the Netherlands, France and England.
So what would do him? Relay more and more on a impoverished and depopulated Castile by the wars while the other Spanish Kingdoms almost don't give a coin to the treasure nor a man to the army? What he (better said, his prime minister Olivares) did was what was needed to be done. It caused troubles everywhere, in Portugal, in Andalusia, in Catalonia, in Naples... and only Portugal successfully broke out. Give the Tercios an early victory and Portugal would be controlled like any of the other kingdoms inside the Spanish Monarchy.

The Portuguese language is also quite distinct from Castillian especially the pronunciation. Perhaps if the Spanish had been as radical as Napoleon they could have wiped out most traces of a regional identity. Remember that before him France had many different dialects, and today more Bretons speak French than Breton.
Any Castilian-speaker can understand any Portuguese speaker and vice versa. This cannot be said about a Castilian speaker and a Catalan one, needless to say a Basque. Plus, there is the case of the Galicians, who speak almost the same language as the Portuguese, and they had not rebelled ever against the Spanish government. Nobody needs a Napoleon or a Franco to hold countries who had nothing in common in the 1640s. Remember Austria-Hungary? It existed till 1919. And it was an ethnic chaos compared to the closely relate peoples of the Iberian Peninsula.

In the end, the things that make the Portuguese case something really different than any other Spanish kingdom of the time and can explain why it broke out are these:

- It had its own colonial empire, making it unique. The constant English and Dutch attacks against the Portuguese holdings in Africa and Asia while the Spanish colonial authorities prefered to invest their resources in America gave the idea that Portugal was abandoned, and that it would return to the better situation of the past after achieving independence. It didn't, but that is other story.

- The Portuguese union was very late compared to the one of other Iberian kingdoms.

- As you said before, the nobles, who were the ones with local armies and weapons, chose to support independence. Other rebellions like Catalonia and Naples were more peasant and civilian uprisings.

- While Catalonia and Naples had high economic and strategic value in Europe and the Mediterranean, and especially in the face of French expansion, Portugal was secondary. So it's not so rare that Olivares chose to move the Tercios to Catalonia instead to Portugal, and when Portugal received attention it was too late. But, even in the worst case, the independence of Portugal, and even its colonial empire, it wasn't a catastrophic lose. Oh, yeah, the Iberian Union was broken, but wasn't it as well 100 years earlier? The port of Lisbon was lost, but there were others more profitable like Seville and Cádiz. The Açores and Madeira were lost, but there were the Canaries to secure the route to America. Brazil and the Afro-Asian trading posts were lost, but there were the other American colonies that were 100 times more valuable. Macao was lost, but you don't need it to trade with China when you own the Philippines. Portugal was less valuable than the resources neccessary to retake it, especially now that the Portugese weren't so "docile", so it's not surprising that in the end the Madrid bureaucrats accepted the independence of Portugal and let it to retain all their colonies except one: Ceuta, which was the guardian of the Gibraltar Straits.
 
In fact Ceuta's garrison decided that they should keep their loyalty to their true king, the king of Spain.

-----


One funny story, several years ago I was working in Lisbon and some local organization started to require support to claim the town of Olivenza for Portugal. When this was known in Spain, some people in Olivenza started to require support to claim the rebelious provinces of Portugal!!
 
The commonality of languages for various areas of natio-states in Europe during the17th century is not a factor in determining which areas remain in that nation-state. There were large foreign speaking areas of most European nations at least thru the end of WWII. Today there are large numbers of immigrants in many European nations who speak a foreign tongue. I don't think language had much to do with Portuguese independence in the 17th century.

What would have been the outcome of Portugal remaining part of Spain? First of all, the continued union would not make "greater Iberia" into a first rate power. I see more problems for Nelson at Trafalgar when he fights a combined French-Iberian fleet as the Portuguese are good sailors and the fleet is larger. Wellington has a smaller Anglo-Iberian army (and more difficult to control guerrilas). Finally, Iberia is forced into the Axis camp because the Alies feel it neccessary to take the Azores (and the Canaries - may as well grab them both) to contol the U-boats in the Atlantic.
 

Thande

Donor
Another consequence is that Bombay doesn't pass to England as part of Catherine's dowry.

Well, in OTL England really wanted Bombay and tried to get it twice by war before acquiring it through the dowry. I think it was more or less a way for the Portuguese to give it up without losing face, as otherwise the EIC would have conquered Bombay sooner or later.

Of course, defeating the Spanish navy as well is another kettle of fish...
 
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