| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.1 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Comparative/World

Ernst van Veen. Decay or Defeat? An Inquiry into the Portuguese Decline in Asia 1580–1645. (CNWS Publications, number 96; Studies in Overseas History, number 1.) Leiden: Research School of Asian, African, and Amerindian Studies, Leiden University. 2000. Pp. iv, 306.

For better or worse, the historiography of Portuguese Asia has been dominated by scholarly works examining two starkly contrasting periods. A plethora of studies has detailed the development of Portugal's seaborne empire under Vasco da Gama, Afonso de Albuquerque, and others, while just as many trees and ink have been sacrificed to describe the seventeenth-century decline of the Estado da India. A dominant trend has sought to link this decline to the "Spanish Captivity" that began with Philip II's conquest of Portugal in 1580 and ended only in 1640 with the restoration of an "indigenous" dynasty under Dom João IV. As its title suggests, Ernst van Veen's study contributes to our knowledge of this second period. His obvious challenge is to provide new answers for some very old and frequently answered questions. Van Veen's self-professed twist is to gauge the degree to which Portugal's reversal of fortune in Asia was the result of internal decay, as opposed to the more traditional view of defeat by the superior power of the Dutch East India Company (VOC). . . .

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