Portuguese Empire information

Portuguese Empire Império Português
1415–1999
Coat of arms
Areas of the world that were once part of the Portuguese Empire
Capital	Lisbon (1415–1808) (1808–1999) Rio de Janeiro (1808–1821)
Common languages	Portuguese
Religion	Catholicism (state)
Government	Monarchy (1415–1910) Republic (1910–1999)
Monarchs
• 1415–1433 (first)	João I
• 1908–1910 (last)	Manuel II
Presidents
• 1911–1915 (first)	Manuel de Arriaga
• 1996–1999 (last)	Jorge Sampaio
Prime Ministers
• 1834–1835 (first)	Pedro de Sousa Holstein
• 1995–1998 (last)	António Guterres
History
• Conquest of Ceuta	1415
• Sea route to India	1498
• Colonial Brazil	1500
• Iberian Union	1580–1640
• Dutch-Portuguese War	1588–1654
• Portuguese Restoration War	1640–1668
• End of Moroccan territories	1769
• Independence of Brazil	1822
• Loss of Indian provinces	1961
• Portuguese Colonial War	1961–1974
• Carnation Revolution	1974–1975
• Handover of Macau	1999
Preceded by Succeeded by Kingdom of Portugal Indigenous people of the Americas Kingdom of Kongo Kingdom of Mutapa Sultanate of Kilwa Kingdom of Maravi Kaabu Pre-colonial Timor Ming Dynasty Gujarat Sultanate Kingdom of Kotte Jaffna Kingdom Malacca Sultanate Sultanate of Bijapur Parts of the Viceroyalty of the Rio de la Plata Maratha Confederacy Ahmednagar Sultanate Marinid Sultanate Wattasid Dynasty Portuguese Republic Brazil Angola Mozambique Guinea-Bissau Cape Verde São Tomé and Príncipe East Timor (1975–1976) Macau Free Dadra and Nagar Haveli India Dutch Ceylon Dutch East Indies Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá Spanish Guinea Dutch Malacca

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The Portuguese Empire (Portuguese: Império Português, European Portuguese: [ĩˈpɛ.ɾju puɾ.tuˈɣeʃ]), also known as the Portuguese Overseas (Ultramar Português) or the Portuguese Colonial Empire (Império Colonial Português), was composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and later overseas territories, governed by the Kingdom of Portugal. It was one of the longest-lived colonial empires in European history, lasting almost six centuries from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa in 1415, to the transfer of sovereignty over Macau to China in 1999. The empire began in the 15th century, and from the early 16th century it stretched across the globe, with bases in Africa, North America, South America, and various regions of Asia and Oceania.^[1][2][3]

The Portuguese Empire originated at the beginning of the Age of Discovery, and the power and influence of the Kingdom of Portugal would eventually expand across the globe. In the wake of the Reconquista, Portuguese sailors began exploring the coast of Africa and the Atlantic archipelagos in 1418–1419, using recent developments in navigation, cartography, and maritime technology such as the caravel, with the aim of finding a sea route to the source of the lucrative spice trade. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and in 1498 Vasco da Gama reached India. In 1500, either by an accidental landfall or by the crown's secret design, Pedro Álvares Cabral reached what would be Brazil.

Over the following decades, Portuguese sailors continued to explore the coasts and islands of East Asia, establishing forts and factories as they went. By 1571, a string of naval outposts connected Lisbon to Nagasaki along the coasts of Africa, the Middle East, India, and South Asia. This commercial network and the colonial trade had a substantial positive impact on Portuguese economic growth (1500–1800) when it accounted for about a fifth of Portugal's per-capita income.

When King Philip II of Spain (Philip I of Portugal) seized the Portuguese crown in 1580, there began a 60-year union between Spain and Portugal known to subsequent historiography as the Iberian Union, although the realms continued to have separate administrations. As the King of Spain was also King of Portugal, Portuguese colonies became the subject of attacks by three rival European powers hostile to Spain: the Dutch Republic, England, and France. With its smaller population, Portugal found itself unable to effectively defend its overstretched network of trading posts, and the empire began a long and gradual decline. Eventually, Brazil became the most valuable colony of the second era of empire (1663–1825), until, as part of the wave of independence movements that swept the Americas during the early 19th century, it broke away in 1822.

The third era of empire covers the final stage of Portuguese colonialism after the independence of Brazil in the 1820s. By then, the colonial possessions had been reduced to forts and plantations along the African coastline (expanded inland during the Scramble for Africa in the late 19th century), Portuguese Timor, and enclaves in India (Portuguese India) and China (Portuguese Macau). The 1890 British Ultimatum led to the contraction of Portuguese ambitions in Africa.

Under António Salazar (in office 1932–1968), the Estado Novo dictatorship made some ill-fated attempts to cling on to its last remaining colonies. Under the ideology of pluricontinentalism, the regime renamed its colonies "overseas provinces" while retaining the system of forced labour, from which only a small indigenous élite was normally exempt. In August 1961, the Dahomey annexed the Fort of São João Baptista de Ajudá, and in December that year India annexed Goa, Daman, and Diu. The Portuguese Colonial War in Africa lasted from 1961 until the final overthrow of the Estado Novo regime in 1974. The Carnation Revolution of April 1974 in Lisbon led to the hasty decolonization of Portuguese Africa and to the 1975 annexation of Portuguese Timor by Indonesia. Decolonization prompted the exodus of nearly all the Portuguese colonial settlers and of many mixed-race people from the colonies. Portugal returned Macau to China in 1999. The only overseas possessions to remain under Portuguese rule, the Azores and Madeira, both had overwhelmingly Portuguese populations, and Lisbon subsequently changed their constitutional status from "overseas provinces" to "autonomous regions". The Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries (CPLP) is the cultural successor of the Empire, analogous to the Commonwealth of Nations for countries formerly part of the British Empire.