The Emmy Awards nominations caused a stir last month, July 2024, when Shōgun (将軍) topped the list with 25 nominations including best...

There are many famous naval battles in history: the Battle of Midway in World War II, the Battle of Trafalgar during the Napoleonic Wars,...

In a post a few years ago, I wrote about the fact that when the Portuguese first arrived in India , they were surprised to encounter...

Portugal celebrated 50 years of democracy a few weeks ago on the 25th of April. On that day in 1974, a military coup ended 48 years of...

文明堂's beautiful wrapping paper showing a Portuguese man with a servant. A few months ago I wrote a post about how the Portuguese...

To be Eurasian is to be between two worlds, with ancestors from both Europe and Asia. From the perspective of ethnicity there is much...

I just returned with my family from a year-end vacation in Cebu, in the central part of the Philippines. While we spent most of the time...

It is Christmas Eve today and Christmas tea has made its annual appearance. Typically flavoured with cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg and orange...

Luís Vaz de Camões, the 16th century poet, is such a towering figure in Portuguese literature that the Portuguese language itself is...

It was Halloween recently and pumpkins were suddenly all over the place. My son's friend Kenji, whose father is Japanese, came for a...

I'm on a family vacation this week in Java, Indonesia, and have been looking for more signs of Portuguese influence to build on my...

With the G20 wrapping up today in New Delhi, the world's eyes are on India. While the Portuguese history of Goa, India's smallest and...

The Catholic Church's World Youth Day that just ended on August 6 saw thousands of pilgrims from all across Asia travel to Portugal. One...

My family and I are back in Toronto for a home visit to see friends and family, and folks here are still talking about the recent mayoral...

Mystical Bali is often called the Island of the Gods, apparently because of the abundance of temples there. As I was reminded on a recent...

The mango is considered the 'king of fruits' in India and features prominently in its ancient culture, from religion to art to poetry....

Sri Lanka, formerly called Ceylon, has been known to much of the rest of the Old World for over 2000 years, from the Greeks, Romans,...

My last post on the 15th century Portuguese merchant-spy Pêro da Covilhã prompted quite a bit of debate among some readers around how the history of the Portuguese Discoveries should be interpreted: celebrated as a glorious chapter of the proud history of Portugal, or dismissed as a shameful period of imperial rapaciousness and religious bigotry? I understand both points of view, but for me personally it's... just history. History that's hundreds of years old, but with echo

In the history of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries, the focus has been on the maritime exploits of the day, with Bartolomeu Dias sailing...

When the Portuguese took control of Malacca in 1511, the Sultan of Malacca escaped south and founded the Johor Sultanate, which included...