| THE TWO OLDEST MATRICES OF WORLD DISCOVERIES: PORTUGUESE AND CHINESE HISTORICAL LINKAGE Jorge Nascimento Rodrigues & Tessaleno Devezas Issue 34 (Vol. 17, No. 2), December 2007, pp. 177-185. Portuguese and Chinese histories have a profound historical linkage - the globalization path in its birth period. During the 14th and 15th centuries the Portuguese and Chinese navigators and explorers shared a common portfolio of world vision: strategic intent, out-of-the box thinking, scientific commitment and power projection. Both revealed strategic intelligence, the most important ingredient of great power politics. The Chinese stopped their oceanic projection just at the moment the Portuguese became the new maritime challenger. It was an opportunity window for the Portuguese to complete what the Chinese left unfinished. They filled the vacuum left by the Chinese. And accomplishing that mission, the Portuguese gave birth to globalization, as a new long historical step of the evolution of the world system. Ironically, the Chinese came from the South China Sea to the Indian Ocean. The Portuguese did the reverse route - from the Atlantic to the ��locked�� Indian Ocean and afterwards to some regions of the Pacific. Here we intend to formulate the hypothesis of the two Discoveries' Matrices, their similarities and differences. Research on these Matrices is very recent. More investigations are necessary. The Portuguese Discoveries Matrix was presented in our book, Portugal, Pioneer of Globalization, and the Chinese Matrix has been described in different papers and books of Chinese and foreign origins. Now we put the pieces together in a comprehensive manner. |