Atlántico

O presente livro – O Mar no Futuro de Portugal: Ciência e Visão Estratégica – é um
dos resultados do projecto de investigação “A Extensão da Plataforma Continental
Portuguesa: Implicações Estratégicas para a Tomada de Decisão”, realizado no quadro do
Centro de Administração e Políticas Públicas do Instituto Superior de Ciências Sociais e
Políticas da Universidade de Lisboa, em parceria com a Marinha Portuguesa e a Esri-
Portugal, Sistemas de Informação Geográfica, S.A., financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência
e Tecnologia.

O Mar configurou Portugal. Na nossa História manteve presença constante como factor
de desenvolvimento nacional, como via de acesso a novas terras, novas gentes, novos produtos, novos negócios. Há quarenta anos, o 25 de Abril causou uma mudança estrutural na
posição geopolítica de Portugal e consequentemente no nosso conceito estratégico nacional.
Este conceito, desestruturado e indefinido durante cerca de uma geração, tem vindo a reconfigurar-se desde os anos 90 do século passado no sentido de uma reorientação nacional para o Mar, tendo a Expo 98 sido um marco desse movimento.

Hoje há ainda muito mais discurso que acção, mais palavras que realizações. Mas
estamos a ser convocados, desafiados para uma resposta digna da nossa História de nove
séculos e do nosso extraordinário feito dos Descobrimentos.

O processo de extensão da plataforma continental portuguesa, submetido formalmente
em 11 de Maio de 2009 à Comissão de Limites da Plataforma Continental das Nações
Unidas, veio de certo modo agitar a consciência marítima dos portugueses, e a Universidade
não deixou de ser alvo dessa agitação na interacção quotidiana que congrega professores e
estudantes preocupados com o presente e futuro de Portugal.

O Mar no Futuro de Portugal: Ciência e Visão Estratégica é pois um trabalho multidisciplinar
em que se cruzam história, economia, geografia, ecologia, biologia, gestão, relações internacionais, intelligence, prospectiva, sistemas de informação geográfica, cibersegurança, estudos estratégicos e robótica subaquática, numa composição de tempo tríbio: o
futuro de Portugal vislumbrado e projectado no presente em função do passado e da conjuntura.

En la presente monografía, diversos especialistas de varias universidades
españolas, europeas y americanas reflexionan sobre la relación entre la normativa y la autoridad, entre el centro y la periferia, en las ciudades del arco atlántico y del Báltico desde una perspectiva transnacional y comparativa del derecho urbano y las prácticas legales en el periodo comprendido entre el 1150 y 1550, cuando se produjeron cambios muy profundos y duraderos para la historia jurídica y política de las comunidades urbanas que, debido a los desafíos específicos de la vida en las “periferias” marítimas, vieron surgir soluciones singulares que dieron lugar a sociedades igualmente únicas, que forman parte de los antecedentes históricos de muchas identidades cívicas —y aun nacionales— de la Europa de nuestros días.

From the beginning of the European overseas expansion into the Atlantic in the 15th-century onward, Europeans had to figure how to govern the newly conquered lands and peoples across Africa and the Americas. Western European polities transplanted to their Atlantic territories forms of governance already tested within the European context, but institutions of colonial governance were built in fits and starts and constantly adapted to local demands and characteristics. American elites sought and sometimes achieved a relationship with the imperial center that could be similar to the one experienced by European local elites. However, Old World models of government were deeply transformed by distance, by environmental conditions, and, above all, by the variety of peoples that were under European rule. Atlantic governance involved the (often violent) seizure of substantial portions of the American and (in a much lesser scale) African lands, along with the transfer of people of European descent to settle the conquered lands. Local populations were often forced to labor for their new overlords and were gradually dispossessed of their lands and institutions, while sub-Saharan Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic to work as slaves. As a result of racial prejudice and power relations, they were assigned a subaltern status that deprived them from many civic and political rights, becoming a subaltern majority. This posed new problems that transformed templates brought by European colonizers, such as the patterns of government developed in the Iberian Reconquista and in the English domination of Ireland. All empires dealt with similar problems in the Atlantic: the need to establish its own authority, to defend the settlements, and to produce enough revenue to pay for it all. A high level of flexibility was needed at first because European authorities had little knowledge of Atlantic realities. Afterward, the slowness of communication and the need to obtain local cooperation to achieve any goal, from the conquest itself to defense and taxing local production, required collaboration, not only from colonists of European descent but also from Native Americans, sub-Saharan Africans, and the multiethnic populations that grew throughout the Early Modern era. Colonial governance should not be understood, therefore, as a top-down imposition from Europe to Africa and the Americas, but as a contested struggle between many opposing groups and factions. Recent historiography has been increasingly cognizant of temporal and spatial differences, but there is still need for a deeper engagement between different linguistic traditions. Atlantic expansion was a multinational endeavor, and so should be its study.

As a feature of the Fish Revolution (1400–1700), the early modern “invention” of the Grand Banks in literary and cartographical documents facilitated a massive and unprecedented extraction of cod from the waters of the north Atlantic and created the Cod/Sack trade Triangle. This overlapped with the southern Atlantic Slave, Sugar, and Tobacco Triangle to capitalise modern European and North American societies. In 1719, Pierre de Charlevoix claimed that the Grand Banks was “properly a mountain, hid under water,” and noted its cod population “seem to equal that of the grains of sand which cover this bank.” However, two centuries later in 1992, in the face of the collapse of the fishery, and fearing its extinction, a moratorium was placed on five centuries of harvesting Grand Banks cod. The invention and mining of its waters serves as a bellwether for the massive resource extractions of modernity that drive the current leviathan and “wicked problem” of global warming. The digital environmental humanities narrative of this study is parsed together from 83 pieces of Grand Banks charting from 1504 to 1833, which are juxtaposed through Humanities GIS applications with English and French cod‐catch records kept between 1675 and 1831, letters regarding Cabot's 1497 voyage, Shakespeare's 'The Tempest' (1611) and scientific essays by De Brahms (1772) and Franklin (1786).

Les sources écrites, la cartographie historique, la stratigraphie et le matériel archéologique associé semblent con%rmer que les dépôts les plus superfciels du site de Fûm Assaka (Maroc) peuvent être identifés, de façon sûre, avec les restes du fort hispano-canarien de Saint Michel d’Assaka, construit en 1500.
Les sondages qui y ont été e7ectués en 2011 ont permis la récupération d’un mobilier céramique intéressant parmi lequel on dénombre des productions de Séville et du Levant espagnol dont la présence est à mettre en relation avec les tentatives castillanes et portugaises de pénétration dans la région. Ces
poteries arrivent ici par l’intermédiaire des Canaries et coexistent avec des céramiques autochtones identiques à celles attestées dans d’autres sites localisés dans l’arrière pays. Leur étude est d’un grand intérêt pour connaître la portée réelle des contacts canariens avec la ville caravanière de Tagawst. Ces rapports, dont témoignent les sources écrites, coïncident dans le temps avec la fin de la colonisation européenne de l’archipel et leur intégration dans la Couronne de Castille.

Las fuentes escritas, la cartografía histórica, la estratigrafía y los materiales arqueológicos asociados parecen con%rmar que los depósitos más superficiales del yacimiento de Fum Asaca (Marruecos) se corresponden, con los restos del fuerte hispano-canario de San Miguel de Asaca, construido en 1500.
Los sondeos realizados en 2011 han hecho posible la recuperación de un interesante ajuar cerámico en el que se incluyen producciones sevillanas y levantinas que, relacionadas con los intentos de penetración castellana y portuguesa en la región, llegan a través de Canarias conviviendo con cerámicas autóctonas idénticas a las documentadas en otros yacimientos situados en el interior. Su estudio resulta de gran interés para conocer el alcance de los contactos canarios con la ciudad caravanera de Tagaos que, atestiguados por las fuentes escritas, coinciden en el tiempo con el final de la colonización europea del Archipiélago y su integración en la Corona de Castilla.