This is true. Tordesillas meant that trans-Pacific trade was not realistic for Portugal.

I think the comparison with the Netherlands is generally appropriate, but we must recognize that what they did in Brazil was exceptional (meaning not comparable to their former possessions in Asia and Africa, a difference from the mere trading nodes) and the NL never did achieve anything like it.

The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.

The Portuguese Empire did exist but AFAIK never did aspire to world hegemony like the U.K. Their idea of empire was best represented by something they briefly had which was the combined union with Brazil after its promotion from colony in 1815.

So, not an empire like the U.K. and never wanting to be an empire like the U.K. but also not a total failure to achieve some version of it, however short lived that was.

> the NL never did achieve anything like it.

> The Portuguese managed to maintain territorial integrity and make their religion and language dominate it entirely, in what's today the 5th largest nation state by area. They also had to defend the longest coastline.

Conquering multiple ethnic Malay kingdoms - a number of whom were armed and backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans and had access to gunpowders, naval yards, literacy, and proto-industrialization - and unifying them into Indonesia is a Herculean task that I'd argue is much more complex than the Portuguese project in Brazil.

do 99.9% of the people born there speak Dutch? When they became independent, were they 80%+ Reformed Dutch protestants?

I don't reject the notion that NL vastly influenced Indonesia but the impact is not even remotely similar to PT and Brazil.

Was Brazil inhabited by countries with access to gunpowder, naval yards, proto-industrialization, and allies with transcontinental empires? No.

It was largely Amerindians who were exterminated and genocided with ease.

Conquering empires that were near-peers technologically is different from settling a continent which was at the losing end of the Colombian exchange.

You may want to look into the genetic composition of modern-day Brazilians to consider whether "Amerindians were exterminated" is a coherent way to represent it.

edit: we are just comparing 2 completely different models here. You're not wrong about some things, you are just talking about a different thing than I :)

edit 2: you are lacking information if you think that Brazilian Amerindians did not also partner with European powers (France and the NL itself comes to mind) against the Portuguese and it's somewhat amusing that you think that Portugal was never challenged on that vast territory by other powers.

My point still stands. Their culture was completely decimated and they were largely replaced by European and African migrants, indentured servants, and slaves.

Subjugating a native people that lacked metalworking, gunpowder, and literacy is different from conquering multiple nations that had all of those and was backed by the Ottomans, Mughals, and Americans.

You are imprinting your worldview on someting that differs from historical facts, maybe influenced by anglophone chronicles of what the spanish did in the americas. Spanish were no angels, however, much of what is published tends to be biased and differ quite a bit from what happened on the ground.

Despite neighbour to Spain: Portugal built a different culture altogether since its inception as an iberian kingdom. For example, instead of wiping out the muslim populations, the first king established a policy nowadays known as "don't ask, don't tell" in regards to religion. Which clashed with the Spanish/Italian approaches but at the same time permitted rapid expansion of territory since the population was absorved rather than decimated.

The Brazilian land has dense vegetation and native populations that never generated large settlements nor advanced cultures as you'd see in other parts of America, existing in a continuous state of tribal warring against each other.

The crown/church forbid portuguese women from travelling overseas and the number of sailors travelling was low (the kingdom was small population-wise). Portuguese technology and culture were very, very, very attractive to the native populations who came in contact with these sailor crews. They quickly mixed with the locals to create blood-related families on those locations with local leaders (same as done in India). The portuguese doctrine remained the same as during foundation times of the kingdom, aimed to mix as much as possible with local populations to thrive. This resulted in centuries of family ties across the atlantic that still last until today. Looking on my own example, I keep family ties on three different continents that all speak the same language.

All of this to say that integration was very fast from the native population point of view to join the empire because of mutual benefits for either parties, to the point that the portuguese army in the Americas was composed and lead in majority by natives themselves which went to subjugate rival tribes with better equipment than the counterparts.

and just how did they got the gunpowder? ;)

This is one resentful individual. Likes to imply how this or that people is inferior to the other (I thought we were discussing differences in forms of settlement, colonization and maritime expansion) then pivots to modern day economic statistics to again imply that some people are superior to others then finally succumbs to racism but is careful enough to change the language!!

...and yet you speak portuguese while trying to dismiss (and rewrite) a post about 15th century events with data from the 17th century

The Dutch had more in common with British East India company phase of the British expansion.

Yes and no. it's not like they ever extracted taxes from most of the natives living in the amazon jungle. Saying that you rule over people that have literally never heard of you is, IMO, stretching the definition of "rule" quite a bit :-)

Since when is taxing all subjects a necessity? Britain didn't tax people in the 13 colonies so could we conclude that before the American Revolution they were not part of the British Empire?

Didn’t the Dutch basically take over the Portuguese trading empire from them?

Yes! The losses were due to independence loss to Spain. In a sense the loss of sovereignty to Spain destroyed the Portuguese empire.

Spain joined the Portuguese and Spanish armada and went on to fight the English (and Dutch to some extent), with catastrophic results for both Spain and Portugal fleets. When Portugal regained independence 1640 it needed to get back sovereignty of overseas territories, including from the Dutch.

The Dutch controlled a big part of north Brazil when Portugal and Spain were the Iberian Union, but the Dutch and were driven back afterwards at great cost. The damage was done, and 1755 earthquake was the final nail.

There were also terrible mistake in terms of state management up to the XX century where the natives, were not seen as full citizens, and naturally rebelled.

As a post colonial portuguese citizen, it seems like an incredible fantasy that our society descends from such a grandiose history. Even in this thread i see the name Henry the Navigator and am incredulous people know who he was.

A less known both inside and outside Portugal bad ass dude was Afonso de Albuquerque. This is from his English wikipedia page about Hormuz in the middle east:

> At the same time, Albuquerque decided to conclude the effective conquest of Hormuz. He had learned that after the Portuguese retreat in 1507, a young king was reigning under the influence of a powerful Persian vizier, Reis Hamed, whom the king greatly feared. At Ormuz in March 1515, Afonso met the king and asked the vizier to be present. He then had him immediately stabbed and killed by his entourage, thus "freeing" the terrified king, so the island in the Persian Gulf yielded to him without resistance and remained a vassal state of the Portuguese Empire.

Here came a dude that does both diplomacy and war in person, and moved on. Vasco da Gama was a bit similar. Portuguese were quite out of their minds and for me shows shows the pedigree of bloodlust[1] that Europeans must have gained after endless continental strife. That is why I am really afraid of the rearming of Europe, I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.

[1] https://www.thepsmiths.com/p/review-storia-do-mogor-by-nicco...

>I believe Europeans have a genetic disposition for destruction, and history shows that.

I don't think that is the case, but more so they were better at war then everyone else.

Yes, to a significant but not total degree. Some of those losses were later recouped by Portugal (current Northeastern Brazil and Angola).

I think that the losses in Asia were more lasting, or permanent.

The Portuguese sometimes describe themselves as the "povo de brandos costumes" (people of mild customs).

True. Most of them were just trying to live better and enjoy life outside.

In the country where I grew up, physicians have immense clout and are notorious for writing unintelligibly. I once pointed this out as a kid and was told by the secretary something like: the doctor is too busy to write legible prescriptions.

Does it matter? Based upon the poster I responded to, it appears to be only the belief that's important, not the being.

If such being does exist, then how could it possibly not matter? If there's an architect and we are the architect's creation, then how could our belief alone be the important thing?

That's immaterial to the discussion. The comment I replied to simply stated: "Displacing God as the center of life." They aren't arguing that god matters, it's our displacement of them.

So, on the existence of god, we have two possiblities: God does exist, god doesn't exist.

1. If god doesn't exist, then we're unhappy because we're displacing a false god as the center of life.

2. If god does exist, then we're unhappy because we're displacing a real god as the center of life.

In that discussion, god's existence in fact doesn't matter, it leads to the same outcome.

But that framing only really works if we assume a Abrahamic world view.

Other cultures don't and didn't relate to their deities in the same way. Do we then have to assume they all suffered lower life satisfaction than a 11th century German peasant because of their detachment from a singular god the creator? Why didn't they strive for the relationship you're describing?

Trying to put God with a capital G at the center of our lives as some innate need doesn't make sense from a historical context.

That’s not what we’d have to assume.

I don’t know about religions in the general sense, and you’re right to point out that I very much have the “Abrahamic world view”, though my case is much much more specific than that but that’s not relevant here.

What we might more safely assume is that the Creator is revealed through history and a group to whom it he’s not revealed might pursue him more ignorantly (I appreciate the language might sound offensive or condescending but that’s not the intention) but in that pursuit they’re still better off than someone who willfully rejects him.

This I believe is relevant to the post, as these societies have not gone from one god to another, but to none.

That's a lot of assumptions, and really only make sense if you're trying to put your own beliefs as the "correct" choice. Somehow, all these other cultures got it wrong, but the ones who believe one single god, they got it right.

> This I believe is relevant to the post, as these societies have not gone from one god to another, but to none.

I don't know what you mean by this. Particular God's importance rose and fell out of fashion in ancient societies.

Will someone please explain 14 on Gregory of Nyssa?

Slavery is a sin, don’t sin, that’s the gist of it.

He lived around the year 400, so pretty progressive for his time.

How did you reach the conclusion that the author specifically meant this part of Gregory of Nyssa's religious thinking? It could just as likely be that the author has come to realise that Gregory of Nyssa was correct in his arguments for the Christian Trinity...? I am just wondering. The author's statements are very entertaining, but they do not seem to be articulated as objects for detailed scrutiny...

Read the Wikipedia entry, it was the other notable thing besides theology, and something I think everyone, no matter the creed, agrees with today

I’ll bite. I’ve been reading about the first two hundred years of christianity for the past couple of years. Here’s my canned take that I got tired of retyping:

Jesus is an ahistorical figure who was originally crucified in the firmament above the earth. Notice no mention of an earthly ministry in the Pailine epistles; Paul is arguing for salvation from a heavenly figure. In his letters, Jesus is still to be revealed, rather than returning. Only decades later did the stories about a human man get written.

The Didache was most likely part of the letter written by the "pillars in Jerusalem" (James the Just, Peter, and John) after their meeting with Paul. This was the meeting to discuss the matter of preaching to gentiles and whether circumcision ought to be required for christian converts. It contains many of the tenets later ascribed to Jesus, but doesn't associate him with teaching them.

The reason the earthly story was embraced by the church was to stop people like Paul from having visions of Christ that the church couldn’t control. By pointing to a real guy on earth, they could control the message. Otherwise, any yokel on the street could teach that Jesus revealed new teachings and the church risked being undermined.

Marcion was probably the first to create a collection of writings associated with christianity: he collected some of Paul's letters and had his own gospel. It was thought that he had a shortened version of Luke (as testified by Eusebius and Tertullian). Marcion, however, claimed that his gospel had been "judaized"; this suggests that his shorter version was the original gospel before others modified it.

Acts was written as a direct response to Marcion’s scripture. It was written to harmonize Paul’s high-jacking of the religion by making he and Peter appear to be in alignment when actually he was at odds with the leaders in Jerusalem.

The Jerusalem pillars (James, Peter, John), were strict adherents of Judaism, whereas Paul taught that Jesus made the Law / Torah unnecessary. They were almost certainly Essenes, one of the three flavors of Judaism at the time (the other two were the Pharisees and Sadducees mentioned in the new testament). John the Baptist was clearly also an Essene. He's said to wear camel's hair with a leather belt around his waist and ate locusts and honey. His practice of baptism also aligns with daily ritual water immersion believed to be a core practice of the Essenes.

This is a very long way of saying that Jesus first appeared in visions and spoke to the early leaders without walking on earth. It's a fringe belief about which I was quite skeptical, but damn if the evidence doesn't line up. See Robert Price, Earl Doherty, and Elbe Spurling for more info. Elbe's online book is free and contains a huge amount of historical information about the region at the.

——

So, I’ll ask you this: which of us has spent more time earnestly trying to understand the faith? I know I read more actual research (as opposed to dogma) than most USA christians, especially evangelicals.

This is fascinating.

But how did the Church's claim that it was a real guy on Earth stop anyone from claiming visions of Christ?

edit: I'm not sure we're talking about the same things here. Your claims are all from a history/historicity point of view, but you ask me about faith, and claim to reject dogma.

edit 2: The OP was criticizing the claim that Jesus loves you (Claim 1) and criticizing Reconciliation. You took a historicity approach that included disputing Jesus's existence, that's one way to address Claim 1, but other than that I'm still not sure we're talking about the same thing.

There's an old heresy, Docetism, that would agree with your take on Jesus not having lived, but even they wouldn't reject the claim that "Jesus loves you".

Docetism says he didn’t suffer on the cross. There’s a bit about him laughing at the crucifiers. I don’t remember the whole text, but it doesn’t say “love” to me. It doesn’t say he didn’t live. It says he wasn’t human. You can find this searching about Gnosticism.

Many churches were in construction for over a century. Very typical and, although obviously people were elated when one was finished, getting there fast was not a source of anxiety.

The Church has all the time in the world.

Many churches were in construction for over a century, yes. Today? I’m not familiar with any examples other than Sagrada Familia, and even that one is almost finished. These multi-generation building projects seem to be a thing of the past.

Imagine trying to get funding today for a building project that is scheduled to be completed long after everyone alive today would be dead. I can’t imagine that being possible. It’s a pity: I wonder what wonders we could have built using modern technology over such a long timescale.

The Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York is also unfinished, with construction in fits & starts since 1892: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathedral_of_St._John_the_Divi...

Hram Svetog Save (Church of Saint Sava) in Belgrade/Serbia started construction in 1935 and the exterior was finished in 2017. I haven’t been there in several years, but my understanding is that the interior is still being worked on and will continue for some years to come…

So not quite “over a century” but getting close. :)

tech bros think not only that that system is good, but that they'd be the winners

I think the more optimistic interpretation would be that companies eliminating bullshit jobs would provide signal on which jobs aren’t bullshit, and then individuals and the job prep/education systems could align to this.

That’s very optimistic! I don’t fully agree with it, but I certainly know some very intelligent people that I wish were contributing more to the world than they do as a pawn in a game of corporate chess.

isn't the scapegoat he or she who gets sacrificed? I think engineers are that

It's simply the old Capital vs Labor struggle. CEOs and VCs all sing in the same choir, and for the past 3 years the tune is "be leaner".

p.s.: I'm a big fan of yours on Twitter.

Except Labor in Tech is unique in that it has zero class consciousness and often actively roots for their exploiters.

If we were to unionize, we could force this machine to a halt and shift the balance of power back in our favor.

But we don't, because many of us have been brainwashed to believe we're on the same side as the ones trying to squeeze us.

>If we were to unionize

Last time it was tried the union coerced everyone to root for their exploiters. People that unionize aren't magically different.

What “last time” are you referring to specifically?

I am also curious.

I think the issue at play here is the quickly changing job descriptions, RSU's and the higher paid bunch benefiting from very unequal pay across a job category.

  > the tune is "be leaner".

Seems like they're happy to start cutting limbs to lose weight. It's hard to keep cutting fat if you've been aggressively cutting fat for so long. If the last CEO did their job there shouldn't be much fat left

> If the last CEO did their job there shouldn't be much fat left

funny how that fat analogy works...because the head (brain) has a lot more fat content than muscles/limbs.

I never thought to extend the analogy like that, but I like it. It's showing. I mean look how people think my comments imply I don't know what triage is. Not knowing that would be counter to everything I'm saying, which is that a lot of these value numbers are poor guestimates at best. Happens every time I bring this up. It's absurd to think we could measure everything in terms of money. Even economists will tell you that's silly

yet this will continue until it grounds to a halt.

It's amazing and cringy the level of parroting performed by executives. Independent thought is very rare amongst business "leaders".

Let's make the laptops thinner. This way we can clean the oil off of the keyboard, putting it on the screen.

At this point I'm not sure it's lack of independent thought so much as lack of thought. I'm even beginning to question if people even use the products they work on. Shouldn't there be more pressure from engineers at this point? Is it yes men from top to bottom? Even CEOs seem to be yes men in response to share holders but that's like being a yes man to the wind.

When I bring this stuff up I'm called negative, a perfectionist, or told I'm out of touch with customers and or understand "value". Idk, maybe they're right. But I'm an engineer. My job is to find problems and fix them. I'm not negative, I'm trying to make the product better. And they're right, I don't understand value. I'm an engineer, it's not my job to make up a number about how valuable some bug fix is or isn't. What is this, "Whose Line Is It Anyways?" If you want made up dollar values go ask the business monkeys, I'm a code monkey

> I'm an engineer, it's not my job to make up a number about how valuable some bug fix is or isn't.

So you think all bugs are equally important to fix?

No, of course not. That would be laughably absurd. So do you think I'm trolling or you're misunderstanding? Because who isn't familiar with triage?

Do you think every bug's monetary value is perfectly aligned with user impact? Certainly that isn't true. If it were we'd be much better at security and would be more concerned with data privacy. There's no perfect metric for anything, and it would similarly be naïve to think you could place a dollar value on everything, let alone accurately. That's what I'm talking about.

My main concern as an engineer is making the best product I can.

The main concern of the manager is to make the best business.

Don't get confused and think those are the same things. Hopefully they align, but they don't always.