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Balance Sheets for the Acquisition, Retention and Loss of European Empires Overseas*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2011

Patrick Karl O'Brien  and
Leandro Prados de la Escosura
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Extract

Our essay will critically survey and attempt to offer an overall interpretation of a growing volume of publications by historians who have attempted to evaluate the costs and benefits for Europe's domestic economies flowing from some five centuries of involvement with empires overseas. That involvement began with the conquest of Ceuta by the Portuguese in 1417 and passed through two epochs: 1417-1825 and 1825-1974. After a first conjuncture marked by the French Revolution, a quarter of a century of global warfare and movements for independence in Southern America, Britain emerged as the hegemonic imperial power in Europe. Its major rivals for commerce and dominion in Africa, Asia and the Americas (Portugal, Spain, France and Holland) ceded control over parts of their possessions overseas to Britain or (in the cases of Spain and Portugal), lost sovereignty over their colonies in Latin America.

Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 23 , Issue 3-4 , November 1999 , pp. 25 - 52
Copyright
Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1999

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References

Notes

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