Free Spain: A Unique History by Stanley G. Payne

was the case in the independence conflict of the 1380s, in 1580, and also in 1640, as in all these crises sectors of the Portuguese elites supported the Spanish crown. In general, however, a Spain in decline was no longer a useful associate. Instead of offering support to Portugal, the embattled Spanish monarchy was itself requesting assistance. Instead of providing protection to the Portuguese possessions overseas, Spanish policy exposed the Portuguese thalassocracy to endless conflict with the Dutch republic, at that moment becoming the most efficient sea power in the world.
    Portugal was able to cut free partly because of its geography, which made reconquest less of an absolute priority for the Spanish crown than was regaining Catalonia. Extrapeninsular factors helped as well. English assistance was important in the decisive phase of the 1660s, when Spain had ended the war with France and could concentrate dwindling resources against Portugal. And in the long run, the "second empire" (meaning Brazil, not the original Afro-Asian thalassocracy) would prove a significant source of economic strength.
A Change of "National Character"?
    In the twenty-first century, many of the Portuguese look back with some amazement at the worldwide accomplishments of their ancestors. This in turn raises the question as to exactly how much of a break the seventeenth century meant in Portuguese affairs, which is just as important as in the case of Spain, although the answers may be somewhat different. Broad generalizations about "national character" are dangerous, but the general impression is that the modern Portuguese have been a prudent, relatively subdued, and unambitious people, often characterized by the sadness associated with saudade , melancholic nostalgia. Any such generalization is doubtless exaggerated, but has been advanced by many observers and offers a portrait at considerable odds with what we know of the Portuguese elite during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
    Portuguese society and institutions, like those of any country, eventually came to have its own distinctive characteristics, medieval Portugal being even more agricultural than Castile, which featured greater cattle production. Yet in general, Portuguese institutions and culture paralleled those of Castile and León. The development of the kingdom largely resembled that of its eastern neighbors, so that the expansion of Portugal in the fifteenth century did not necessarily reflect any unique "Atlantic" or "mercantile" society any more than it did a somewhat archaic, typically Iberian crusade-and-reconquest mentality. The Portuguese did indeed introduce some new interests and techniques, the subsequent thalassocracy developing maritime and commercial concerns of a new kind, but throughout this period the Portuguese elite continued to be dominated by the most traditional of religious, aristocratic, and traditional values, honored and emphasized to the point of self-destruction in 1578.
    The Portuguese of the expansion revealed an extraordinary degree of self-confidence, an almost infinite daring and courage very similar to that of Spanish conquistadores, and a profound sense that they were the most warlike and proficient of all the Latin Christians. They scoffed at any notion of military dependency, but this had changed by the seventeenth century. The Portuguese mentality altered from the offensive to the defensive, from the audacious to the prudent. Whereas they had fought off the crown of Castile all by themselves in the fourteenth century, by the seventeenth century they looked to outside assistance to a degree unknown before, and by the eighteenth century would, when in trouble, sometimes call upon the English to send a general to organize their forces. Portugal would not again expand overseas until the nineteenth century.
    When one talks of "national character" in this regard, the reference is primarily to the psycho-emotional ethos of the elite sectors. The