The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes


Book Description

Volume V of the first complete English translation of the chronicles of Fernão Lopes, containing the general bibliography and a comprehensive index containing all people and place names mentioned in the chronicles Until now, the chronicles of Fernão Lopes (c.1380-c.1460) have only been available in critical editions or in partial translations. Comparable to the works of Froissart in France or López de Ayala in Spain, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages.




The Chronicles of Fernão Lopes


Book Description

This 5 volume set represents the first complete English translation of one of the major chronicles of medieval Europe, by 'the father of Portuguese historiography' Covering the reigns of Pedro I, Fernando I and João I up to the signing of the 1411 treaty with Castile which confirmed the survival of the Portuguese kingdom, the chronicles provide a wealth of detail on late fourteenth-century politics, diplomacy, warfare and economic matters, courtly society, queenship and noble women, as well as more mundane concerns such as food, health and the purchasing power of a fluctuating currency. Lopes had a keen eye for detail and a perspective especially attuned to the common people, and his chronicles provide an invaluable source for the history of Western Europe in the later Middle Ages. The first four volumes are accompanied by introductions and bibliographies setting the translations in context, and the fifth volume contains a general bibliography and a comprehensive general index encompassing all of the chronicles.




A Social and Religious History of the Jews: Late Middle Ages and the era of European expansion, 1200-1650


Book Description

Why do smokers claim that the first cigarette of the day is the best? What is the biological basis behind some heavy drinkers' belief that the "hair-of-the-dog" method alleviates the effects of a hangover? Why does marijuana seem to affect ones problem-solving capacity? Intoxicating Minds is, in the author's words, "a grand excavation of drug myth." Neither extolling nor condemning drug use, it is a story of scientific and artistic achievement, war and greed, empires and religions, and lessons for the future. Ciaran Regan looks at each class of drugs, describing the historical evolution of their use, explaining how they work within the brain's neurophysiology, and outlining the basic pharmacology of those substances. From a consideration of the effect of stimulants, such as caffeine and nicotine, and the reasons and consequences of their sudden popularity in the seventeenth century, the book moves to a discussion of more modern stimulants, such as cocaine and ecstasy. In addition, Regan explains how we process memory, the nature of thought disorders, and therapies for treating depression and schizophrenia. Regan then considers psychedelic drugs and their perceived mystical properties and traces the history of placebos to ancient civilizations. Finally, Intoxicating Minds considers the physical consequences of our co-evolution with drugs -- how they have altered our very being -- and offers a glimpse of the brave new world of drug therapies.




Empire's Crossroads


Book Description

A “wide-ranging, vivid” narrative history of one of the most coveted and complex regions of the world: the Caribbean (The Observer). Ever since Christopher Columbus stepped off the Santa Maria and announced that he had arrived in the Orient, the Caribbean has been a stage for projected fantasies and competition between world powers. In Empire’s Crossroads, British American historian Carrie Gibson offers a panoramic view of the region from the northern rim of South America up to Cuba and its rich, important history. After that fateful landing in 1492, the British, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Danish, and even the Swedes, Scots, and Germans sought their fortunes in the islands for the next two centuries. These fraught years gave way to a booming age of sugar, horrendous slavery, and extravagant wealth, as well as the Haitian Revolution and the long struggles for independence that ushered in the modern era. Gibson tells not only of imperial expansion—European and American—but also of life as it is lived in the islands, from before Columbus through the tumultuous twentieth century. Told “in fluid, colorful prose peppered with telling anecdotes,” Empire’s Crossroads provides an essential account of five centuries of history (Foreign Affairs). “Judicious, readable and extremely well-informed . . . Too many people know the Caribbean only as a tourist destination; [Gibson] takes us, instead, into its fascinating, complex and often tragic past. No vacation there will ever feel quite the same again.” —Adam Hochschild, author of To End All Wars and King Leopold’s Ghost




The Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea (Vol. 1&2)


Book Description

The Chronicle of Discovery and Conquest of Guinea in two volumes is a historical source which is considered the main authority for the early Portuguese voyages of discovery down the African coast and in the ocean, more especially for those undertaken under the auspices of Prince Henry the Navigator. The work is written by Portuguese chronicler Zurara and is serves as the principal historical source for modern conception of Prince Henry the Navigator and the Henrican age of Portuguese discoveries (although Zurara only covers part of it, the period 1434-1448). Zurara's chronicle is openly hagiographic of the prince and reliant on his recollections. It contains some account of the life work of that prince, and has a biographical as a geographical interest.




Sovereignty and Society in Colonial Brazil


Book Description

While the Spanish enterprise in America is relatively well known to the English-reading public, the Portuguese tropical empire in Brazil has remained until recently an unknown world. In Sovereignty and Society, Stuart B. Schwartz contributes to our understanding of the Brazilian past by providing for the first time a detailed study of the judicial bureaucracy that formed the framework on the colonial regime. This volume describes the process by which royal administrators maintained control and the techniques used by the whole Brazilian elite to guard its interest. At the core of the book is the previously unstudied Relação or High Court of Bahia, the supreme tribunal in colonial Brazil and an institution with broad administrative and political powers. Presided over by the governor-general or viceroy, the High Court stood at the apex of the colonial administrative structure and symbolized royal sovereignty. The author examines the origins, functions, conflicts, and history of the Relação, relying on little-used manuscript sources in over twenty-five archives and libraries in Brazil, Portugal, Spain, and England as well as the whole range of secondary literature. Of particular interest is the departure from traditional administrative history by emphasis on the people rather than the office of the Portuguese imperial bureaucracy. The bureaucrat-judges of the High Court are at the center of the study, and by a careful analysis of the personal and professional careers of these magistrates, the author demonstrates the utility of a human relations approach to the study of historical polities. He shows how the goals of the crown, the aspirations of the magistrates, and the interests of the Brazilian sugar planter elite were expressed and reconciled and how royal officials and the planters became linked by kinship and interest in a union of wealth and power. Finally, he argues that the penetration of such primary relations in the formal structure of a bureaucratic empire helps to explain the resiliency and the longevity of Portuguese rule in Brazil. The approach and findings of this book will interest not only those seeking a deeper understanding of the Brazilian past, but also historians, sociologists, and political scientists concerned with colonial regimes and bureaucratic polities in general. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1973.




Women in the Lusophone World in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Period


Book Description

The present collection echoes and contributes to a number of the issues defined by both the traditional and revisionist historiography. The intent of this special issue of the Portuguese Studies Review was to highlight some of the new research on late medieval and early modern Portuguese women, subjects typically situated outside of the academic mainstream, and to complement the four major collections on the history of Portuguese women published since 1986, as well as the larger literature dealing with Spain. The essays are organized into six general themes: “Female Characters in Late Medieval Chronicles,” “Women and Power in the Late Middle Ages,” “Habsburg Queens and Portugal,” “Women and the Economy,” “Attitudes Toward Women,” and “Women and Religion.” The volume presents essays by Amélia P. Hutchinson, José Valente, Jutta Sperling, Ivana Elbl, Susannah C. Humble Ferreira, Félix Labrador Arroyo, Annemarie Jordan, Almudena Pérez de Tudela, Amélia Polónia, Amândio Jorge Morais Barros, Darlene Abreu-Ferreira, Pedor Miguel Reboredo Marques, Marcia Eliane Alves de Souza e Mello, Jessiva V. Roitman, Inês Amorim, Elisbete de Jesus and Célia Rego, and Haruko Nawata Ward, with an Introduction by Darlene Abreu-Ferreira and Ivana Elbl. The volume also contains an Addendum on the Portuguese Estado Novo, with studies by Sonny B. Davis and Antonio Muñoz Sánchez.




The English in Portugal, 1367-87


Book Description

It is astonishing that this is the first English translation of these Chronicles, as they are undoubtably amongst the finest produced in the Middle Ages and treat an important episode in the Hundred Years War.




Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662)


Book Description

Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662) is a fundamental new contribution to the history of Tangier, a dynamically expanding Moroccan port on the south shore of the Strait of Gibraltar. The book offers a “virtual archaeology” of the Portuguese urban fabric heritage--both vanished and preserved--in Tangier's médina, the walled Old Town. Solidly grounded in archival sources and profoundly revisionist, Portuguese Tangier alters our image of the médina to an unexpected extent. Yet it makes no claim to being "definitive" in any sense -- on the contrary, it is no more than a starting point. The volume stands at a critical intersection of well-known documents, recently located sources, and those that have been heavily underused (military engineering plans -- Portuguese as well as English, Portuguese building estimates and construction proposals). It plays a critical searchlight over discrepancies that become evident once spatio-temporal GIS modelling is deployed to re-examine the sources and the existing literature. The book challenges a rainbow of standard interpretations and entrenched Tangerois urban legends. It ranges widely, from recent hypotheses to newly confirmed toponyms, contentious architectural details, and the design and construction of the fortifications. The scope extends to historic environmental factors affecting the Old Port (studied through a new 3D bathymetric model of the historic anchorage -- the only such model available for now). The well-known "Tangier" series of drawings and etchings by the Bohemian artist Wenceslas (Václav) Hollar (1607-1677) comes into its own here, in a fresh, analytical, modelling-oriented context that interlinks Portuguese and English data tightly. The Portuguese period (1471-1662) is set in a frame that encompasses both the pre-1471 Muslim port and various 1662-1684 English components of the urban fabric—genuine as well as spurious. The book targets mainly a specialist audience (historians, conservationists, heritage planners, urban archaeologists, itinerary and exhibit designers dealing with Tangier), but will also reward the patient casual reader genuinely interested in the fortified médina and its history. In stock. Purchase direct from Baywolf Press / Éditions Baywolf & Portuguese Studies Review. Portuguese Tangier (1471-1662) est une nouvelle contribution à l'histoire du port de Tanger, la cheville maritime du nord marocain saisie à présent dans un tourbillon de développement. Le livre offre une "virtual archaeology" du patrimoine portugais dans la vieille médina de Tanger - d'une part un patrimoine disparu (et par conséquent "virtuel") mais aussi, d'autre part, étrangement préservé, bien que souvent inconnu, méconnu, ou ignoré. Solidement ancré dans les fonds d'archives et profondément révisionniste sans aucune prétention d'être "definitif", Portuguese Tangier change notre compréhension de la médina. L'ouvrage se situe au carrefour critique des sources -- documents classiques ainsi que des pièces nouvellement découvertes ou redécouvertes (plans de génie militaire -- portugais aussi bien qu'anglais, des devis estimatifs portugais et des travaux d'étude). L'auteur met en évidence les disjonctions fondamentales qui surgissent du moment que les ouvrages de recherche disponibles à présent s'affrontent aux documents dans un cadre de modélisation SIG spatio-temporel. Le livre met en question une panoplie d'interprétations et de "légendes urbaines" Tangéroises bien établies. Portuguese Tangier fournit une fusion d'hypothèses récentes, de toponymes nouvellement confirmés, de détails architecturaux à débat, et d'une exploration en détail des fortifications. L'enquête s'étend aux facteurs environnementaux dans le Vieux Port (étudiés au moyen d'un nouveau modèle bathymétrique de l'ancrage -- le seul modèle du fond de l'ancrage historique, en trame 3D, disponible pour le moment). La série "Tanger" de Wenceslas (Václav) Hollar (1607-1677) (dessins et gravures) se situe ici dans un contexte d'analyse et de modélisation qui fusionne les sources portugaises et anglaises. La discussion de l'architecture portugaise (1471-1662) s'encadre entre des vignettes du port marocain d'avant-1471 et d'éléments anglais du tissu urbain -- éléments véridiques aussi bien qu'imaginaires. L'ouvrage s'adresse principalement aux spécialistes (historiens, professionnels du patrimoine, archéologues, et concepteurs d'itinéraires et d'expositions) mais offre néanmoins de quoi bien contenter tous les amateurs de la médina et de son histoire.