This volume contains fifteen interdisciplinary essays spotlighting the political, social, commercial and artistic exchanges between Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries. The genesis of this book was an international colloquium held in Hamburg in 2009 in which specialists and researchers from Portugal, Germany and Austria participated. The thrust of this conference, organised by the Center for Overseas History in Lisbon (CHAM), the Instituto Camões of the University of Hamburg and the Deutschen Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG), was to focus on the exchange of the Hanseatic city of Hamburg with Portugal during the Age of Discoveries. The papers published here, in German or Portuguese, with resumés at the end of each essay in the other language, are distributed among four thematic sections: political relations, communication within the Portuguese empire, Portugal and Hamburg, and artistic ties. An introduction by the editors to inform readers of purpose, methodology and approach is sorely missing. A statement summarising current research on Luso-German relations from 1500 to 1800 would have been welcome. Also lacking is a discussion of the pioneering work of such outstanding historians as Josef Wicki, Hermann Fiedler, Hans Flascher and Hermann Kellenbenz, the latter two founding members of the research group, Portugiesische Forschungen der Görres-Gesellschaft (http://www.aschendorff-buchverlag.de/shop/_media/PORT_FOR.PDF). This group, founded in 1960 for the study of Portuguese history and cultural exchange with Germany, published a journal, Portugiesische Forschungen (Portuguese Studies) in twenty volumes, and seven monographs, in which groundbreaking essays in Portuguese, German and English appeared. This bibliography and German historiography is seldom cited by younger generations of Portuguese historians trained after 1974, with the exception of Wicki's monumental Documenta Indica (eighteen volumes), and even this publication rarely. The topics covered here are ambitious and diverse, some presenting new archival material. Section i (‘Political ties’) has five essays by Pietschmann, Rühl, Cardim and Miranda, the last by Martin Warnke on the repercussions of the 1755 Lisbon earthquake: the assistance that Hamburg and London extended to the marquis of Pombal in what was the first instance of catastrophe aid witnessed in Europe. Section ii (‘Communication’) has four essays: the aftermath of the 1578 Battle of Alcácar-Quibir in contemporary German leaflets (Ramalheira); the voyages to Brazil undertaken by the travelogues Hans Staden (Schäffauer) and Father Bettendorff to the Amazon (Michael), while travel literature on Portugal's overseas empires published in Hamburg, are reviewed (Santos Lopes). Section iii (‘Portugal and Hamburg’) takes a closer look at mercantile families (Christian and New Christian) with commercial ties in Portugal: the Milão-Dinis dynasty (Frade); Hamburg apprentices sent to Lisbon to learn their trade (Poettering); the question of Iberia in Sephardic publications printed in Hamburg (Studemund-Halévy). Section iv (‘Artistic relations’) concludes with three essays: the repercussions of the Portuguese discoveries in late sixteenth-century Germany and Holland (Curvelo); the importing of Portuguese faïence to Germany in the seventeenth century (Pais); and the presence of German soldiers and merchants in Cochim (India) and Lisbon after 1500 (Alferes Pinto).