=213. Weakness in resources; bad effects of Spanish rule, 1580-1640.=—Portugal was not only small but industrially undeveloped, and from the very first depended on other countries for the wares which she exported to the East. Her explorations and her distant commerce were due to the energy of the dynasty rather than that of the people, and it was the misfortune of the country, in the critical period 1580 to 1640, to fall under the rule of Spanish kings whose influence on her commercial interests was entirely for the bad. Of the 806 vessels which Portugal sent to India, 1497-1612, only 186 sailed after 1580, and not only the number but the quality declined in a period which should have been marked by growth. Countries like England and Holland, which were far stronger economically than Portugal, refused longer to allow her the profits of trade while they did the work of production, and the English broke the power of the Portuguese in India, while the Dutch drove them from the eastern islands. =214. Failure of Portugal to recover her position by commerce with Brazil.=—After the recovery of her independence in 1640, Portugal could look only to her American possession, Brazil, for the means of developing her commerce. The Dutch were expelled from that possession, and the discovery of gold there stimulated the growth of trade. Comparing the latter part of the eighteenth century with the earlier part of the seventeenth, the commerce between Portugal and Brazil is said to have increased twenty-fold. In place of a dozen ships a hundred sailed every year for America, returning with sugar, tobacco, hides, brazil-wood, gold, and diamonds. The profits of this commerce, however, went for the most part to foreigners. Conditions at home had gone from bad to worse. The slight advance which the country had achieved in agriculture and manufactures before the discoveries had been lost by the attraction of all energetic spirits into commerce and navigation. African slaves took the place of free men in the fields. Portugal staked everything in the sixteenth century on the chance of commercial greatness, and when she lost, lost all.