| Chapter 1: | Cherished Myths |
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Chapter 1
Cherished Myths
The Greatest and Most Portuguese Overseas Possession
Portugal has been the most long-lived European colonial power: more than five hundred years elapsed between the seizure of Ceuta, Morocco, in 1415, and the independence of its African colonies in 1974–1975. The centre of gravity of this empire shifted—mostly as a result of external circumstances—but it never ceased to be an empire whose mainland had, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, no more than a million inhabitants.
The country’s reduced size is probably one of the reasons why the history of Portuguese colonisation is marked by an evident gap separating real and imaginary, practice and discourse. Imperial aspirations did not lack grandiosity, but for a country such as Portugal, matching the echoes of those ambitions with concrete and realistic achievements was impossible; in the end, dreams of lost glories and incoherent mythologies tended to take precedence, and Portugal developed a self-complacent attitude towards the colonies and a twisted vision of its own empire.