The Portuguese as System-builders in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries: A Case Study on the Role of Technology in the Evolution of the World System

Abstract

World system evolution may be viewed as a cascade of multilevel, nested, self-similar and Darwinian-type processes poised on the boundary between order and chaos that allows for innovation. A framework developed by Devezas-Modelski opens the door to conceptualizing globalization as part of that evolutionary cascade, and as a process of system-building of which the Portuguese enterprises of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries provide an illuminating case. Analysis is focused on two components of that cascade: the Portuguese long cycle, and the two (economic) K-waves and their related innovations. In this period preceding the Industrial Revolution, innovations focused on navigation and shipbuilding and formed the technical support for such activities. Quantitative analysis of empirical evidence on Portuguese expeditions and naval-military campaigns, the global network of bases, and of scarce data on the gold and pepper trades in this period supports the notion of long cycles and K-waves as system-building, and the more general conception of globalization as an evolutionary learning process.

Acknowledgements

Tessaleno Devezas wishes to thank Arnulf Grübler and Nebojsa Nakicenovic of the TNT (Transition to New Technologies) Program of the International Institute for Applied System Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria, for the kind invitation and opportunity to stay with the TNT staff during his sabbatical absence from the University of Beira Interior, the period during which this article was written. Tessaleno Devezas also thanks Peter Kolp of the IIASA's TNT staff for his help in using IIASA's Logistic Substitution Model 2 program to fit logistic curves. Tessaleno Devezas is also indebted to the Fundação de Ciência e Tecnologia (Portugal) for funding his sabbatical during this period. We thank the anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions.

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Notes on contributors

Tessaleno Devezas

George Modelski is Professor of Political Science Emeritus in the University of Washington. His most recent book is World Cities: —3000 to 2000 (2003). His current project is ‘Globalization as Evolutionary Process’.

George Modelski

Tessaleno Devezas is Associate Professor with Habilitation in the Department of Electromechanical Engineering, University of Beira Interior, since 1992, and Head of the Technological Forecasting and Innovation Group (TFIT-WG), with research interests in Futures Studies, Technological Evolution, Innovation Dynamics, and New Materials. He is an Advisory Board member of Technological Forecasting and Social Change, and on the Editorial Board of the Journal of Sociocybernetics. He is editor of the book Kondratieff Waves, Warfare, and World Security (IOS Press, 2006).