Episode 70 with Cacey Farnsworth

In this episode, Cacey Bowen Farnsworth, author of Atlantic Crossroads in Lisbon’s New Golden Age, 1668-1750, gives us a tour of Lisbon’s streets during Portugal’s second golden age in the late 17th and early 18th centuries, when the city was flush with gold and other wealth from Brazil. From black brotherhoods to English merchants to the Inquisition, Farnsworth provides a portrait of the city as an Atlantic entrepôt before the Great Earthquake of 1755.

The Episode

The Guest

Cacey Farnsworth is an assistant professor of history and genealogy at Brigham Young University. He received a PhD from the University of Florida in 2019 where he studied under Ida Altman. Past publications include work on indigenous allies in the conquest of Puerto Rico in Ida Altman and David Wheat, eds., The Spanish Caribbean & the Atlantic World in the Long Sixteenth Century (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2019), as well as an article in the Journal of Ethnohistory regarding indigenous allies in the conquest of Maranhão. His monograph was recently published in 2024 with Penn State University Press and is entitled Atlantic Crossroads in Lisbon’s New Golden Age, 1668-1750. The book traces the effects in Lisbon of Portugal’s imperial shift toward Brazil after the loss of holdings in Africa and Asia. His research has been supported by both the Fulbright and Instituto Camões programs. Most recently he received a professional accreditation as a specialist in Portuguese genealogy.

Suggested Readings

• Afonso, Simonetta, Luísa Arruda, Leonor Ferrão, and José Fernandes Pereira. Lisbon in the Age of Dom João V (1689–1750). Lisbon: Instituto Português.
• Buono Calainho, Daneila. Metrópole das mandingas: Religiosidade negra e Inquisição Portuguesa no antigo regime. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond, 2008.
• Levenson, Jay, ed. The Age of the Baroque in Portugal. Washington, DC: National Gallery of Art, 1993.
• Manuel Caldeira, Arlindo. Escravos em Portugal, das origens ao século XIX. Lisbon: A Esfera dos Livros, 2017.
• Magalhães Godinho, Vitorino. “Portugal and Her Empire, 1680–1720.” In The New Cambridge Modern History, vol. 6, The Rise of Great Britain and Russia, 1668–1715/25, edited by John Selwyn Bromley, 509–39. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.