These volumes offer very different approaches to the urban history of geographical expansion. Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern World, a collection of essays by historians of European expansion edited by Liam Matthew Brockey, embodies the global turn of history. It heeds Charles Boxer's call nearly 50 years ago to investigate the emergence of the Portuguese empire from the vantage points of local colonial contexts, rather than from the imperial centre of Lisbon. The ten essays, introduced by Brockey, seek to understand the complex, varied and changing relationships between colonial cities or ‘nodes of empire’ and the Portuguese empire. The emphasis is on explaining events, attitudes and historical change, often through the close study of specific groups, administrators and missionaries. Thus it combines extensive archival research and critical engagement with broad historical questions. Its vibrant, engaging prose and stimulating conclusions are a testament to their authors’ erudition and explanatory skill, Brockey's fine editing and (in some essays) the translating skills of Brockey and Mónica Leal da Silva. Patrick O'Flanagan's Port Cities of Atlantic Iberia, c. 1500–1900, the work of a historical geographer, is a longue durée account of the economic, political and urban conditions in the Atlantic Iberian ports. While the story is ostensibly one of the consequences of long-distant oceanic trade on Europe, this is a Europe-centred narrative. O'Flanagan's protagonists – if he has any – are rarely individuals; they are official institutions and the cities themselves. Description and the analysis of numerical data are the foci. O'Flanagan sometimes raises ‘why’ questions, only to back away. For example, the reasons why Spain and Portugal adhered to a monopoly system are not considered in this work because ‘its remit does not extend to a consideration of the rationales behind its formulation’ (p. 43).

Portuguese Colonial Cities is the outcome of a 2004 conference, ‘Nodes of Empire: Portuguese Colonial Cities in the Early Modern Period’, held at the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies at Princeton University. The essays are arranged in three thematic sections in order to foster a more global approach to studying the Portuguese empire. These sections consider in turn religious, commercial and political dimensions of urban life. Further themes running through the volume include the rhetoric of urban demonstrations, tensions between imperial and local administration and between religious and civic power-bases; urban decay and regeneration; the impact of missionaries and civic institutions; intercultural exchanges; and cultural miscegenation. In Part I, José Alberto Tavim's chapter demonstrates the importance of comparative approaches to urban history. By analysing Jewish communities that settled in Portuguese cities in Africa and Asia, he shows that their treatment varied with the policies of the reigning monarch and with the availability (or lack thereof) of other local communities who could offer the Portuguese useful services. Castelnau-L'Estoile considers processions and riots as important aspects of political language in the conflicts between Jesuits, local government and colonists in early seventeenth-century Bahia. J.S.A. Elisonas’ essay on Nagasaki shows that religion led to the foundation of certain institutions that might be described as Portuguese, although Nagasaki was not a colonial city. Part II opens with Malyn Newitt's investigation of the contraction and decline of Mozambique Island as a port city. Newitt argues that the decline was caused by local monopolies on trade and the reluctance of the crown and of Mozambique's captains to improve facilities for long-distance trading vessels. Glen Ames’ essay on the Indian cities in the Province of the North shows how they recovered from a period of decline in the late seventeenth century, largely because the Portuguese government responded to new threats and instigated reforms to their imperial administration methods. Izabel dos Guimarães Sá's essay reveals that the surprisingly Portuguese character of Macau, a city surrounded by Chinese influence, was the consequence of the charitable and commercial activities of the religious confraternities known as the Misericórdias. In Part III, Stuart B. Schwartz explores the multiple purposes of public ceremonies. Sacred and secular pageants could at once demonstrate and reaffirm a colonial community's loyalty to the crown, and emphasize local power. Diogo Ramada Curto analyses the recommendations of one bureaucrat for reforming the governance, religious practices and urban environment of early eighteenth-century Goa. Although his recommendations were not implemented, close reading reveals that they counter two modern interpretations of Goa: its hybrid nature, thought to lead to integration, and the acculturation of ‘forces of modernity’ into local traditions (p. 216). Kirsten Schultz analyses writings of the members of newly founded Brazilian learned academies in the same period. She shows how these figures shifted their praise of colonial authority from military achievements to the support of cultural and intellectual endeavours. The chapter by Catarina Madeira Santos investigates the city of Luanda in multiple contexts. By examining the ways in which the social elite justified their position in the late eighteenth century, when the Portuguese crown sought to introduce new colonists, she argues that the city was informed not only by colonial activities, but also by African and Atlantic contexts.

In Port Cities of Atlantic Iberia, O'Flanagan distinguishes two tiers among Atlantic Iberian ports. The first comprises the ‘metropoles’ of Seville, Lisbon and (later) Cádiz. These ports enjoyed state monopolies on long-distance oceanic trade for nearly three centuries. The ‘second-tier’ ports of Oporto, Corunna, Santander and Bilbao were officially prevented from trading with Iberian colonies until the late eighteenth century. The wide regional net cast by O'Flanagan allows him to posit some explanations for the divergent fates of the cities. Lisbon, both a metropole and the empire's royal and administrative seat, survived the termination of the monopolistic period without sinking into decline in the manner of Seville and Cádiz. The book has eleven chapters arranged in three parts. Part I introduces the Iberian urban contexts and European trans-oceanic economies in the early modern period. Part II discusses the three monopoly ports, the Atlantic archipelagos that functioned as staging posts, and Castile, the centre of a wool trade monopoly, which formed something of a model for the Atlantic monopoly system. Part III comprises chapters devoted to individual ‘second-tier’ ports. The chapters are divided rather mechanically into sub-sections on, for example, institutions, trade, port evolution, populations, urban expansion, forelands and hinterlands, imports and exports. The primary aim is to examine ‘the evolution of metropole port settlements, the relationships between their forms, their changing functions and their shifting social configurations’. O'Flanagan's main argument is that the monopoly policies which gave certain ports exclusive trading rights ‘made and undid them’ (p. 4). While the metropoles made financial gains during the monopoly period, they failed to develop a diverse economic base, and became overly dependent on colonial trade. Port Cities draws on an impressive array of statistics and local historical literature. What is dizappointing is the lack of attention to human agency and historical contingencies. This is very much a structural economic history; the parts played by individual policy-makers and their decisions are not accounted for. Given the large number of centres being considered, some division by region rather than historical theme is necessary. Nevertheless, I would have preferred a substantial portion besides the conclusion to foreground critical questions, thus making fuller use of the great mass of evidence that O'Flanagan clearly has at his disposal. Why, for instance, did the Spanish metropoles fail to develop efficient financial systems? Can the study of port cities shed light on economic decline, a concept that has traditionally been hitched to Spain, particularly in anglophone historiography? Had such questions been addressed, this book would have the potential to attract wider scholarly audiences. Nevertheless, it will be of interest to urban, Iberian and economic historians, and offers valuable material for Atlantic historians.