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Tuesday, February 13, 2007

History




The early history of Portugal is shared with the rest of the Iberian peninsula. The region was visited by Phoenicians and Carthaginians, settled by Celts, incorporated in the Roman empire (as Lusitania in 138 BC), settled again by Suevi, Buri and Visigoths and conquered by Muslims. In 868, during the Reconquista, the County of Portugal was formed. A victory over the Muslims at Ourique in 1139 is traditionally taken as the occasion when Portugal is transformed from a county into an independent kingdom.
In fact, Portugal came into existence as an independent nation on June 24, 1128, when Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, defeated his mother, Countess Teresa, and her lover, Fernão Peres de Trava, in battle - thereby establishing himself as sole leader. Afonso Henriques proclaimed himself king of Portugal on July 25, 1139, after the Battle of Ourique and was recognized as such in 1143 by Alfonso VII, king of León and Castile, and in 1179 by Pope Alexander III.
Afonso and his successors, aided by military monastic orders, pushed southward to drive out the Moors, as the size of Portugal covered about half of its present area. In 1249, this Reconquista ended with the capture of the Algarve on the southern coast, giving Portugal its present day borders, with minor exceptions.




The Castle of Guimarães, known as the "Cradle of Portugal", Guimarães
In 1373, Portugal made an alliance with England, which is the longest-standing alliance in the world.
In 1383, the king of Castile, husband of the daughter of the Portuguese king who had died without a male heir, claimed his throne. An ensuing popular revolt led to the 1383-1385 Crisis. A faction of petty noblemen and commoners, led by John of Aviz (later John I), seconded by General Nuno Álvares Pereira, defeated the Castilians in the Battle of Aljubarrota. This celebrated battle is still a symbol of glory and the struggle for independence from neighboring Spain.
In the following decades, Portugal spearheaded the exploration of the world and undertook the Age of Discovery. Prince Henry the Navigator, son of King João I, became the main sponsor and patron of this endeavor.



Belém Tower by sunset, Belém, Lisbon
In 1415, the Portuguese empire arose when a fleet conquered Ceuta, a prosperous Islamic trade center in North Africa. There followed the first discoveries in the Atlantic: Madeira and the Azores, which led to the first colonization movements.


Padrão dos Descobrimentos, a monument to Prince Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese Age of Discovery, Lisbon
Throughout the 15th century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts as they looked for a route to India and its spices, which were coveted in Europe. In 1498, Vasco da Gama finally reached India and brought economic prosperity to Portugal and its then population of one million residents.
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Ten years later, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa, in India, Ormuz in the Persian Strait, and Malacca in what is now Malaysia. Thus, the Portuguese empire held dominion over commerce in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic.
Portugal's independence was interrupted between 1580 and 1640. Because the heirless King Sebastian died in battle in Morocco, Philip II of Spain claimed his throne and so became Philip I of Portugal. Although Portugal did not lose its formal independence, it was governed by the same monarch who governed Spain, briefly forming a union of kingdoms; in 1640, John IV spearheaded an uprising backed by disgruntled nobles and was proclaimed king. This was the beginning of the long-lived dynasty of Braganza.
By this time, however, the Portuguese empire was already under attack from other countries, specifically Britain and the Netherlands. Portugal began a slow but inexorable decline until the 20th century. This decline was hastened by the independence in 1822 of the country's largest colonial possession, Brazil.
In 1910, a revolution deposed the Portuguese monarchy, but chaos continued and considerable economic problems were aggravated by the military intervention in the First World War, which led to a military coup d'état in 1926. This in turn led to the establishment of a right-wing dictatorship by António de Oliveira Salazar.
In the early 1960s, independence movements in the colonies of Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea resulted in the Portuguese Colonial War. In 1974, a bloodless left-wing military coup known as the Carnation Revolution led the way for a modern democracy as well as the independence of the last colonies in Africa shortly after. Portugal joined the European Union in 1986, and ever since it has engaged in a process of convergence with its EU counterparts.

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