Tiago Viúla de Faria
St John's College
Supervisors: Dr John Watts (Corpus Christi)
and Dr Malcolm Vale (St John's)Thesis title: After Windsor: the politics of Anglo-Portuguese relations and their protagonists in the later middle ages
Research Interests
My thesis considers how Anglo-Portuguese relations developed in the period around and after the signing of the treaty of Windsor in 1386. I am especially interested in understanding what an agreement of this kind had to offer generations after, when political realities had noticeably changed. The Anglo-Portuguese league of perpetual collaboration and friendship endured, notwithstanding the backdrop of the changing balance of European powers in the fifteenth century. It was an agreement which might at times serve as a limitation in the diplomatic outreach of the two countries, but which could still function to England's and Portugal’s advantage, in establishing and consolidating their respective places in the wider political networks of Europe.
I am also looking at the profiles (both discrete and collective) of the most relevant political agents in Anglo-Portuguese relations, observed against their own milieu, and considering their own intrinsic modalities. My perception is that the assessment of these variables can provide as much insight into political relations and their national and international frameworks as that provided by grand political events such as treaties, declarations of war and peace, or royal marriages.
Publications
- ‘“Por proll e serviço do reino”? O desempenho dos negociantes portugueses do Tratado de Windsor e suas consequências nas relações com Inglaterra’ (forthcoming)
This paper is a reassessment of Anglo-Portuguese relations between 1384 and 1412 in the light of the lengthy and financially burdensome assignment to England of ambassadors Lourenço Eanes Fogaça and Fernando Afonso de Albuquerque (1384–7). - ‘Pela "Santa Garrotea": Ofício cavaleiresco nas vésperas de Alfarrobeira’, in XIV Colóquio de História Militar: Portugal e os conflitos militares internacionais. Actas (Proceedings from the 14th Congress on Military History): Lisbon, 2006, vol. 2, pp. 61–86
References to Portuguese membership of the Order of the Garter in the works of chronicler Rui de Pina are examined here. It is argued that these references are selective and at times polysemic, and play a significant role in the ‘historical’ portrayal of some characters.