The Portuguese Empire: An Introduction

The editors of Media and the Portuguese Empire offer in this introduction an overview of the historical circumstances and communication processes which marked the Portuguese expansion into Asia, Brazil and Africa. They provide a concise report on the dynamic processes which allowed a small country on the edge of Western Europe to govern the first of the European world empires to be established and the last to be dismantled, in the aftermath of a long colonial war. This was an empire that extended, by the end of the nineteenth century, from Macau, on the coast of China, to the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores, Madeira, Cape Verde and S. Tome, including Timor and several enclaves on the Indian coast, as well as coastal territory covering lands which today are part of Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau.