Portugal established one of the earliest global empires through its naval explorations along the coast of Africa beginning in 1419 and reaching India by 1498, establishing trading posts and colonies. At its height, the Portuguese Empire spanned territories in South America, Africa, India, and Southeast Asia. However, Portugal's empire declined after being dragged into conflicts by its Iberian Union with Spain from 1580 to 1668, and it gradually lost its overseas territories over subsequent centuries.

1. Portugal

2. Geographic Characteristics
• The Portuguese, with imperial ambitions focused originally on reaching the
East Indies.
• The first Portuguese explorers began exploring the coast of Africa in 1419.
• In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral found and led to the establishment of the
colony of Brazil.
• Over the following decades, Portuguese sailors continued exploring the
coasts and islands of East Asia, establishing forts and trading posts as they
went.
• The Empire reached to
have territories in South
America, Africa, India
and South East Asia, all
subject to the
sovereignty of Portugal.

3. Political Structure
• In 1580, King Philip II of Spain invaded Portugal after a crisis
of succession.
• A year after, Philip was crowned Philip I of Portugal, uniting
the Spanish and Portuguese crowns and overseas empires
under Spanish Habsburg rule in a dynastic Iberian Union.
– Spanish imperial trade networks were opened to Portuguese
merchants, which was very lucrative.
– Spain dragged Portugal into its conflicts with England, France
and the Dutch Republic.
• There were attacks to Spanish and Portuguese colonies and
shipping, but the Portuguese Empire, consisting primarily of
exposed coastal vulnerable settlements, proved to be an easy
target.
• In 1668 came the end to the union with Spain, and from
then on was a gradual Imperial decline.

4. Economic System
• In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and
in 1498, Vasco da Gama reached India.
– These voyages projected their power abroad, but they were more
commercial in scope, emphasizing attempts to find a route to the Far
East that bypassed a Mediterranean Sea dominated by hostile powers.
• Portuguese goal of finding a sea route
to Asia was finally achieved in a
ground-breaking voyage commanded
by Vasco da Gama reaching Calicut in
western India in 1498.
• The Portuguese empire expanded
from the Indian Ocean into the
Persian Gulf as Portugal contested
control of the spice trade.

5. Social Relations
• Portuguese mission in their colonies was to convert the Indians, to find
silver and gold, and to capture Indians as slaves.
– Mission stations set up by the Jesuits were places where Indians live as part of
a Christian community and were defended against exploitation.
• The use of the Portuguese language gradually gives the central region
of south America an identity.
• Africa: Portuguese presence in started in 1415 with the conquest of
Ceuta and as ending in 1975, with the independence of its later
colonies.
• Central and South America: Brazil was explored and claimed in 1500,
and become independent in 1822.
• North Atlantic and North America: Was rached by the Portuguese in
1498 by Vasco da Gama. Macau was the last possession in Asia that
was handed over to of China in 1999.
• Asia and Oceania: The Azores were discovered soon in 1427. The
Portuguese later explored and claimed Greenland and eastern modern
Canada from 1499 to 1502.