"Unlike the fleeting visits paid by Cheng Ho, the actions of the Portuguese and Spanish explorers symbolized a commitment to alter the world's economic and political balances. With their shipborne cannon and musket-bearing soldier, they did precisely that. In retrospect it sometimes seems difficult to grasp that a country with the limited population and resources of Portugal could reach so far and acquire so much. In the special circumstances of European military and naval superiority described above, this was by no means impossible. Once it was done, the evident profits of empire, and the desire for more, simply accelerated the process of aggrandizement."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987), p. 27
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Portugal
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Portugal
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