ABSTRACT
In an avowedly estimative manner – the only one possible – Armando Castro made a quantitative assessment of the fundamental items of the Gross National Product of Portuguese society toward the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century. The Crown financed the overseas expansion and exploited it through a direct state monopoly or through well-paid concessions. In the Americas, the modes of colonization were conditioned by the geographical possibilities of each area and, to a certain extent, the characteristics of the native populations. Like the terms mercantilism and capitalism, the term feudalism was created by the adversaries of the social fact designated by that category. One historic peculiarity of Portugal, considering the process of early consolidation of centralized monarchy, was nobility’s weaker position relative to other feudal countries. With an unquestionable predominance of a natural economy in its classical form, the feudal regime entailed more intense commercial relations than ancient slavery.
