his kingdom southward. Lisbon was reconquered after a 4-month siege in 1147. Fighting ebbed and flowed, but Afonso Henriques’ great-grandson, Afonso III, completed the Portuguese reconquista in 1249, driving the Muslims out of their last stronghold in Faro.
The danger now came from the east in the shape of the powerful Spanish kingdom of Castile. In 1385, Spanish king Juan I sent an invasion force of 30,000 to back his claim to the Portuguese throne. They were defeated at the Battle of Aljubarrota by much-outnumbered Portuguese forces in a struggle that preserved Portuguese independence and helped forge a national identity. Legend has it a woman baker joined the fray at a decisive moment, whacking several Castilian knights with heavy wooded bread trays. French cavalry backed the Spanish while English archers joined the defenders under the Anglo-Portuguese treaty of 1373—the world’s oldest surviving diplomatic alliance. Victorious King João I built the magnificent Gothic monastery at Batalha, now a UNESCO World Heritage Site, to celebrate his win.
The Age of DisCovery With its frontiers secured, Portugal started looking overseas. In 1415, João I opened the era of maritime expansion when he captured the city of Ceuta on the coast of North Africa. João’s son, Henry, fought at the battle to win Ceuta from the Moroccans. He never voyaged farther, but would change the face of world history and be forever known as Henry the Navigator.
Henry gathered sailors and scholars on the windswept southwestern tip of Europe at Sagres to brainstorm on what may lay beyond. Using new navigational technology and more maneuverable boats, the Portuguese sent out probing voyages that reached Madeira Island off the coast of Africa around 1420 and the mid-Atlantic Azores 8 years later.
A breakthrough came in 1434, when captain Gil Eanes sailed around Cape Bojador, a remote Saharan promontory that had marked the limits of European knowledge of the African coast. Eanes showed the sea beyond was not boiling and monster-filled, as was believed. The way was opened to Africa and beyond.
In the years that followed, Portuguese navigators pushed down the West African coast looking for gold, ivory, spices, and slaves. By 1482, Diogo Cão reached the mouth of the Congo River. In 1488, Bartolomeu Dias sailed past Africa’s southern tip: He called it the Cape of Storms, but the name was quickly changed to Cape of Good Hope to encourage further voyages. That worked. Vasco da Gama traded and raided up the coast of east Africa before reaching India in 1498. World trade would never be the same. Over the next 4 decades, Portuguese explorers moved into southeast Asia, up the coast of China, and eventually into Japan. Along the way they set up trading posts and colonies. Portugal grew rich by dominating East-West exchanges and forging the first global empire. But the Portuguese also destroyed cities reluctant to submit to their power and frequently massacred civilians.
There were setbacks. In the 1480s, King João II rejected repeated requests to finance the westward exploration plans of a Genovese seafarer named Christopher Columbus, who eventually claimed the New World for his Spanish sponsors. And King Manuel I took a dislike to veteran Portuguese sea dog Fernão de Magalhães. Piqued, he crossed the border with his plans to reach Asia by sailing west and ended up leading the Spanish fleet that became the first to sail around the world. Later historians called him Ferdinand Magellan.
The Portuguese also moved west. Six years after Spain and Portugal agreed to divide up the world with the 1492 Treaty of Tordesillas, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed in Brazil, which conveniently lies on the eastern Portuguese side of the dividing line.
A small arched building in the Algarve coastal town of Lagos has a grim past. It is reputed to be the site of Europe’s oldest African slave market, first used in the early 15th century. Early Portuguese settlers in Brazil began using captured natives as slaves, but as demands of sugar plantations and gold mines grew in the 17th and 18th centuries, more and more slaves were shipped from Africa. Slavery was abolished in Portugal itself in 1761, but it continued in its African colonies until 1869 and in Brazil until 1888, 66 years after the South American country’s independence. Historians estimate Portuguese vessels carried almost 6 million Africans into slavery.
Independence lost & restored In 1578, Portugal overreached. King Sebastião I, an impetuous 24-year-old, invaded Morocco. He was last seen charging into enemy lines at the disastrous Battle of Alcácer Quibir, where a large slice of the Portuguese nobility was wiped out. Sebastião had neglected to father an heir before he set off. An elderly great-uncle briefly took over, but he was a cardinal known as Henry the Chaste, so when he died in 1580, Portugal was left without a monarch. King Philip II of Spain decided he could do the job. His army marched in, crushed local resistance, seized a fortune in Lisbon, and extinguished Portuguese independence for the next 60 years.
The Iberian union made Philip ruler of the greatest empire the world had ever seen, controlling much of the Americas, a network of colonies in Asia and Africa, and European territories that included the Netherlands and half of Italy. Spanish rule strained Portugal’s old alliance with England: The Spanish Armada sailed from Lisbon, and Sir Francis Drake raided the Portuguese coast.
By 1640, the Portuguese had had enough. While Spain was distracted fighting France in the 30 Years War, a group of nobles revolted and declared the Duke of Bragança to be King João IV. It took 28 years, but the Portuguese eventually won the War of Restoration. An obelisk in one of Lisbon’s main plazas commemorates the victory.
Meanwhile a new enemy, the Dutch, had seized some of Portugal’s overseas territories. Malacca and Ceylon (today’s Sri Lanka) were lost. Faced with such threats, João IV strengthened Portugal’s British alliance by marrying his daughter Catherine of Bragança to King Charles II. Her dowry included Tangiers and Mumbai. Perhaps more significantly for the British, she introduced them to marmalade and the habit of drinking hot water flavored with a new-fangled Asian herb they called tea. In return, the British named one of their North American settlements in her honor: Queens.
Fortunately for the Portuguese, they managed to hang on to Brazil through these turbulent times. At the end of the 17th century, huge gold deposits were found inland from São Paulo. The gold rush made King João V the richest monarch in Europe. He used it to build the vast palace at Mafra and to line baroque churches up and down the country with glimmering gilt carvings.
Dateline
| 22000–10000 b.c. | Paleolithic people create some of the world’s earliest art with rock carvings of animals in the valley of the Côa River. |
| 210 b.c. | Romans begin takeover of the Iberian Peninsula. |
| 139 b.c. | Local Lusitanian tribes and their leader Viriato defeated by the Romans after 15 years of resistance. |
| 27 b.c. | Emperor Augustus creates the province of Hispania Ulterior Lusitania, comprising much of Portugal and western Spain. |
| a.d. 409 | Germanic tribes begin invasion of Roman Iberia. The Visigoths gain control of Portugal. |
| 711 | Muslim warriors arrive in Iberia, conquering Portugal within 7 years. |
| 868 | County of Portugal created in today’s Minho region by the Spanish kingdom of Asturias on land reconquered from the Muslims. |
| 1018 | Arab rulers in the Algarve declare their emirate independent of the Muslim Caliphate in southern Spain. |
| 1139 | Afonso Henriques is proclaimed the first king of Portugal after leading a rebellion against his mother and her allies in the Spanish kingdom of Leon. |
| 1147 | After a 4-month siege, Afonso I captures Lisbon from the Arabs with the aid of northern European crusaders. |
| 1249 | Afonso III completes the Reconquista, taking the Algarve from the Muslims. |
| 1290 | Portugal’s first university formed in Coimbra. |
| 1373 | Portugal signs treaty with England, forming the world’s oldest surviving diplomatic alliance. |
| 1383 | King João I defeats Castilian invaders at the Battle of Aljubarrota, securing Portugal’s independence. |
| 1415 | Henry the Navigator sets up a navigation school in Sagres. Portugal conquers Ceuta in North Africa, triggers era of overseas expansion. Madeira is discovered in 1419; the Azores in 1427. |
| 1434 | Sea captain Gil Eanes rounds Cape Bojador, opening up the coast of West Africa. |
| 1444 | Portugal initiates Atlantic slave trade when 235 African captives are landed in the Algarve. |
| 1484 | Diogo Cão explores the Congo River. |
| 1488 | Bartolomeu Dias passes the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean. |
| 1494 | Portugal
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