What were the Templars doing in Portugal? Why were the Templars so focused on Portugal? What Jerusalem has got to do with Portugal? How & why did the Templars after 1307 continued in Portugal as the Order of Christ? How Portugal became the 1st Templar nation.

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“The territorial expansion of Europe hence was theoretically a key prerequisite to a solution for the ‘crisis of feudalism.’

Without it, the European situation could well have collapsed into relative constant anarchy & further contraction.

How was it then that Europe seized upon the alternative that was to save it?

The answer is that it was not Europe that did so but Portugal, or at least it was Portugal that took the lead.

Let us look now at what it was in the social situation of Portugal that can account for the thrust toward overseas exploration which Portugal began right in the midst of the ‘crisis’.

[...] The great explorations, the Atlantic expansion, was thus not the 1st but the 2nd thrust of Europe, one that succeeded because the momentum was greater, the social & technological base more solid, the motivation more intense.

Why however a thrust whose initial center was Portugal?

In 1250 or even 1350, few would have thought Portugal a likely candidate for this role.
And retrospectively from the 20th century, it clashes with our sense of probability [...].

[...] What were the explorers looking for?
Precious metals & spices, the schoolboy textbooks tell us.

And this was true, to be sure, up to a point”

— Immanuel Wallerstein, 1974.