Dr. Bret Devereaux

Thank you.

It's great to be here.

That was a very long introduction.

And as I found out at the last moot, I'm apparently the guest with the most guest appearances.

Spit across so many episodes.

Yeah.

I mean, so this is reading through this again is really striking that he has a series of voyages.

Right.

He'll go out and he'll come back and he'll go out again.

And because he's a Numenorean, these voyages are often decades apart because he's at it for quite some time.

Yeah.

But what it put me most in mind of thinking historically is something like the pattern of Portuguese expansion and exploration down the coast of Africa and into the Indian Ocean.

And I think folks, maybe perhaps some listeners less familiar with this.

I know in the United States, we tend to focus on the exploration of the Americas, but European exploration down the coast was a major undertaking, mostly led by the Portuguese with the Dutch and later the British following after them.

And one of the patterns here is what we sometimes call ports and forts imperialism.

So you send out an expedition.

In the case of Portugal, these are going to be a mix of trading and raiding.

So you have some boats.

You put some trade goods on the boats.

The boats are also filled with armed men.