“As the King spoke, he asked about the King’s health”

Diplomatic ritualization and political modernity between Asia, Africa and Portugal (c.1482-1502)

Abstract

This article, which is part of a broader enquiry into the diplomatic dynamics that underpinned the first wave of globalisation, is focused on the diplomatic culture that formed the basis for the establishment of lasting relations between the Portuguese and the elites of societies in West Africa and the Indian Ocean world in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. It analyses the motivations that, in Africa, Asia, and the kingdom of Portugal itself, led kings and little kings to invest in diplomatic mechanisms with a strong ceremonial component in order to consolidate their power. Based on this analysis, it formulates some broader questions about the significance of diplomacy and political rituals for the history of late medieval and modern state formation. It puts forward the hypothesis that a transnational history of diplomatic practices, attentive both to the dynamics of connection and convergence and to those of disconnection and divergence between cultures, can help us understand the dynamic nature of royal power in Portugal itself – including the widely debated problem of regal centralisation – at the turn of the sixteenth century.