Dr Anthony Disney [ 18/June/12 ]
Post date: Jun 17, 2012 12:12:59 AM
Jerry Guirguis interview Dr Anthony Disney from our Studio of 96.5FM – Egyptian radio show [ Monday 18th June 2012 ].
6:15pm – Our 1st special guests tonight is;
Dr Anthony Disney
Honorary Research Associate
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences
School of Historical and European Studies
Melbourne [ Bundoora ]
03 9437 2381
On Friday 25th May 2012, a lunch at the government house in Canberra hosted by Governor-General Ms Quentin Bryce, included not only The Honourable Julia Gillard
[ Prime Minister of Australia ] but Mrs Jenny Disney & Dr Anthony Disney [ who is our guest tonight on 96.5FM – Egyptian radio show ]. The invitation was part of
a program that included the welcoming of the President of the Portuguese Republic and National Indigenous Youth Parliament.
Dr Anthony, what was it like meeting President of the Portuguese Republic : His Excellency Professor Antonio Cavaco Silva and the First Lady – Dr Maria ?
Author of two volume book entitled, A History of Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. From Beginnings to 1807, published by Cambridge University Press.
Anthony between the ages of 7 and 18 lived on a farm in Kenya. Visiting the Kenya coast as a boy, he became fascinated by the old harbor of Mombasa, with its traditional dhows [ sailing vessels with one or more masts with lateen sails ] and the nearby great fortress – Fort Jesus – built from coral rock by the Portuguese in the late sixteenth century.
During the past 40 years Dr Disney visited Portugal and many parts of the world connected with Portugal, outside Europe: in Asia, Africa, South America and the Atlantic islands. Studied aspects of the Portuguese empire when he was a student at Oxford University, eventually wrote a PhD thesis at Harvard about Portugal and its involvement in the pepper trade with India in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
What’s the connection ?;
Christian Visigothic Portugal (along with Spain) was conquered by Muslim forces that crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in 711.
70 Years after the death of Mohammed in 632, an Arab general Tariq defeated the Visgoth King Roderic in 712, after which the Moors, as the Arab-led Burbers, overran the rest of the peninsula by 720.
The conquest was very rapid, completed within only two or three years. But it took over 500 years for the Christians to re-conquer Portugal, the process being completed only in 1249. The ‘Reconquest’ is therefore a major theme in Portuguese history. Islam was long perceived as the traditional enemy, well after the Reconquest had been completed.
In the fifteenth/sixteenth centuries the Portuguese attempted to extend the Reconquest into North Africa itself, occupying various centres on the Moroccan coast. But eventually they withdrew.
In about 1500 the Portuguese achieved a major breakthrough when they discovered the sea-route from the Atlantic to the Indian Ocean, round the Cape of Good Hope. In the decades that followed Portugal diverted much of the traditional trade between maritime Asia and Europe, that had previously flowed overland through Egypt, to the new Cape route. This alarmed the Mamluk rulers of Egypt who tried, unsuccessfully, to drive the Portuguese out of the Indian Ocean. Later, after the Ottomans displaced the Mamluks as rulers of Egypt in 1516-17, they also, from their base at Suez, tried to eject the Portuguese. A long, intermittent struggle between the Portuguese and Ottoman forces in the Indian Ocean followed. It eventually petered out in the 1570s/80s, when the Ottomans, in effect, lost interest.
Jerry Guirguis
Presenter
96.5FM – Egyptian radio show
0400 718 817
hard CD copy of this interview can be requested by email to: [ JerryGuirguis@bigpond.com ]