Maritime Pride and Arrogance? The French-Portuguese Clashes and the Emergence of Notions of “National” Pride

The French-Portuguese maritime and overseas rivalry experienced several significant episodes during the 16th century. Prior to the major dispute between the French and the Portuguese in Brazil, known as France Antarctique (1555-1560), an earlier episode demonstrates the emerging feelings of nationhood alongside overseas voyages. In 1528-29, the Parmentier brothers, sponsored by the French ship owner and corsair Jean Ango (1480-1551), embarked on a French expedition to Asia. Their objective was to reach the Gold Islands, believed to be located in modern Indonesia. The voyage ended in disaster, with the two brothers dying and several Frenchmen being captured and imprisoned by the Portuguese. However, the French traveller and cosmographer Pierre Crignon (?-1540) survived and returned to Dieppe, where he attempted to persuade the French Crown to continue supporting overseas voyages in opposition to the Portuguese. In 1539, Crignon wrote in his famous work the Discours de la Navigation de Jean et Raoul Parmentier [see both illustrations], later reprinted in Italian by Giovanni Baptista Ramussio’s famous account, the following statement about the Portuguese:

Even though they [the Portuguese] are the smallest people in the world, it does not seem big enough to satisfy their greed. I think they must have drunk of the dust of King Alexander’s heart to be stirred by such inordinate ambition. They believe they hold in their clenched fist what they could not embrace with both hands. And I believe that they are convinced that God made the sea and the land for them alone and that the other nations are not worthy of sailing. Certainly, if it were in their power to close the seas from Cape Finisterre to Ireland, they would have done so long ago.

Crignon viewed the traditional Portuguese Mare Clausum rhetoric—particularly evident in the speeches of Portuguese diplomats in France, Spain, England, and Rome—as necessitating a clear public rebuttal. He found it absurd that “tiny” Portugal aspired to control all the seas, given the power of “larger” and “mighty” France. In making this claim, he acknowledged that Portugal was failing in this endeavor, a statement he believed to be accurate. Nonetheless, he also recognized that the Portuguese behaved in this manner because they perceived themselves as superior to the French, relying on their “superior” nautical science to build and sustain a global maritime empire that spanned the Americas, Africa, and Asia, thus encompassing the globe. Crignon regarded this Portuguese pride as excessive and their behavior as arrogantly overbearing.

The sense of “national” pride that Crignon identified in Portuguese behavior was something he explicitly sought to challenge. By writing in this manner, Crignon aimed to contribute to the development of French maritime pride. He was not alone in this endeavor in 16th century France. Similar processes of “national identity” formation, as a reaction to maritime and overseas rivalries with the Portuguese, also unfolded in Spain, England, and the Dutch Republic during the 16th century. These examples illuminate how overseas rivalries contributed to the gradual emergence of notions of the “nation-state” throughout the early modern period. [Nuno Vila-Santa]