Before the creation of the modern Portuguese state, Portugal was ruled by the Phoenicians (from 1104 BCE), Carthaginians (from 258 BCE), Romans (from 218 BCE), Lusitanians (native insurrection from 194 BCE), Suevi (from 409), Visigoths (from 416), Moors (from 711), and Asturians and Leonese (from 739).

Throughout the centuries which witnessed the conquest of Lusitania and destruction of Carthaginian power by Rome, the establishment and decline of Latin civilization, the invasion by Alani, Suevi and other barbarian races, the resettlement under Visigothic rule and the overthrow of the Visigoths by Arab and Berber tribes from Africa, without sign of national consciousness.

Naming of Portugal

Portugal's name derives from the Roman name Portus Cale (Latin for "Warm Port.") Cale was the name of an early settlement located at the mouth of the Douro River, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean in the north of what is now Portugal. Around 200 BCE, the Romans took the Iberian Peninsula from the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War, and in the process conquered Cale and renamed it Portus Cale. During the Middle ages, the region around Cale became known by the Visigoths as Portucale. Portucale evolved into Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, and by the 9th century, the term "Portugale" was used extensively to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and Minho, the Minho flowing along what would become the northern border between Portugal and Spain.

Some historians believe that the "Cale" part of Portucale derived from the Greek word Kalles ("beautiful"), referring to the beauty of the Douro Valley where ancient Greek pioneers chose to settle. Other historians claim that the earliest settlers in the region were Phoenician and that the name Cale was derived from the Phoenician languages of those who settled along the Portuguese coast in the pre-Roman period.

In any case, the Portu part of the name Portucale would become Porto, the modern name for the city located on the site of the ancient city of Cale at the mouth of the Douro River. And port would become the name of the wine from the Douro Valley region around Porto. Today, Cale became Gaia (Vila Nova de Gaia), a city on the other side of the river. Many think that both cities should merge into one, due to their closeness and historical relation.

Early history

Portugal has been inhabited for at least 500,000 years, first by Neanderthals and then by modern humans coming from Africa less than 100,000 years ago. [1] Early Greek explorers named the region "Ophiussa" (Greek for "land of serpents") because the natives worshipped serpents. In the early first millennium BCE, several waves of Celts invaded Portugal from central Europe and intermarried with the local Iberian people, forming the Celt-Iberian ethnic group. Two of the new tribes formed by the intermarrying were the Lusitanians, who lived between the Douro and Tagus rivers, and the Calaicians , who lived north of the Douro river with several other tribes. A Phoenician colony was established in southern Portugal, the Conii. The Celtics, a later wave of Celts, settled in Alentejo. In 238 BCE, the Carthaginians occupied the Iberian coasts.

Lusitania Romana

Main articles: Lusitania, Gallaecia.

In 219 BCE, the first Roman troops invaded the Iberian Peninsula. Within 200 years, almost the entire Peninsula was dominated, becoming part of the Roman Empire. The Carthaginians, Rome's adversary in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their colonies.

In Portuguese territory, the conquest started from the south, where the Romans found friendly natives, the Conii. Within several decades, the Romans had conquered the entire territory. In 194 BCE, a rebellion began in the north. The Lusitanians and other native tribes, under the leadership of Viriathus, successfully wrested control of all entire Portugal from the Romans. Rome sent numerous legions and its best generals to Lusitania to quell the rebellion, but to no avail — the Lusitanians gained more and more territory. The Roman leaders decided to change their strategy. They bribed an ambassador sent by Viriathus, convincing him to kill his own leader. Viriathus was assassinated, and the resistance was soon over.

Rome installed a colonial regime. During this period, Lusitania grew in prosperity and many Portuguese cities and towns were founded. In 27 BCE, Lusitania gained status of Roman Province. Later, a northern province of Lusitania was formed, known as Galecia, with capital in Bracara (Today's Braga).

Germanic kingdoms

In the 5th century, Germanic tribes, known as the barbarians, invaded the peninsula. One of these, the Suevi, stopped fighting and founded a kingdom whose domains were, approximately, in today's Portugal. They fixed their capital in Bracara. Later, the Visigoths conquered this kingdom, unifying the Peninsula.

Moorish rule and the Reconquista

An Islamic invasion took place in 711, destroying the Visigothic Kingdom. Many of the ousted nobles took refuge in the unconquered north Asturian highlands. From there they aimed to reconquer their lands from the Moors: this war of reconquest is known as the Reconquista.

After the Moors were, for the most part, driven out of power, most of the Iberian peninsula was briefly united under Christian rule. However, it quickly split apart after the death of Ferdinand the Great of Leon and Castile, whose domains were divided by his children.

Main article The Establishment of the Monarchy in Portugal.

Portugal gained its first independence (as Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal) in 1065 under the rule of Garcia . Because Garcia was a tyrant and the others wanted the lands of their brothers, Portuguese and Galician nobles rebelled and the country rejoined Leon and Castile.

Affirmation of Portugal

In 1095 Portugal seperated almost definitly from the Kingdom of Galicia, Both under the rule of the kingdom of Leon, just like Castille (Burgos). Its territories consisting largely of mountain, moorland and forest, were bounded on the north by the Minho, on the south by the Mondego.

At the end of the 11th century, a knight from Burgundy named Henry became count of Portugal. Henry was a strong supporter of independence. Under his leadership, the County of Portucale and the County of Coimbra merged. Henry declared independence for Portugal while a civil war raged between Leon and Castile.

Castle of Guimarães , prime symbol of Nationality. The Battle of São Mamede took place nearby in 1128.

Henry died without reaching his aims. His son, Afonso Henriques, took control of the county. The city of Braga, the unofficial Catholic centre of the Iberian peninsula, faced new competition from other regions. The lords of the cities of Coimbra and Porto (then Portucale) with the Braga's clergy demanded the independence of the renewed county.

Portugal traces its national origin to 24 June 1128 with the Battle of São Mamede . Afonso proclaimed himself first as Prince of Portugal and in 1139 as the first King of Portugal. By 1143, with the assistance of a representant of the Holy See at the conference of Zamora, Portugal was formally recognized as independent, with the prince recognized as Dux Portucalensis. In 1179, Afonso I was declared, by the pope, as King. After the Battle of São Mamede, the first capital of Portugal was Guimarães, from which the first King ruled. Later, when Portugal was already officially independent, he ruled from Coimbra.

Main article The Consolidation of the Monarchy in Portugal (1279-1415)

From 1249 to 1250, the Algarve was finally reconquered by Portugal from the Moors. In 1255, the capital shifted to Lisbon. Rio de Janeiro (a city in Brazil), was the Portuguese capital between 1808 and 1821. When Brazil declared its independence from Portugal, Lisbon regained its status as the capital of Portugal.

Portugal has always been turned towards the sea; its land-based treaties are notably stable. The border with Spain has remained almost unchanged since the 13th century. A 1373 treaty of alliance between England and Portugal has never been broken to this day. Since early times, fishing and overseas commerce have been the main economic activities. Henry the Navigator's interest in exploration together with some technological developments in navigation made Portugal's expansion possible and led to great advances in geographic knowledge.

Discoveries Odyssey: Glory of the Empire

Main article Portugal in the period of discoveries

During the 15th and 16th centuries, Portugal eclipsed most other nations in terms of economic, political, and cultural influence and it had an extensive empire throughout the world.

July 25 1415, marked the beginning of the Portuguese Empire, when the Portuguese Armada along with King John I and his sons Prince Duarte (future king), Prince Pedro, Prince Henry the Navigator and Prince Afonso, also with the mythical Portuguese hero Nuno Alvares Pereira departed to Ceuta in North Africa, a rich trade Islamic centre. On August 21, the city was conquered by Portugal, and the long-lived Portuguese Empire was founded. Further steps were taken which expanded the Empire even more.

In 1418 two of the captains of Prince Henry the Navigator, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira , were driven by a storm to an island which they called Porto Santo, or Holy Port, in gratitude for their rescue from the shipwreck. In 1419, João Gonçalves Zarco disembarked on Madeira Island. Between 1427 and 1431 most of the Azorean islands were discovered.

In 1434, Gil Eanes turned the Cape Bojador South of Morocco. The trip marked the beginning of the Portuguese exploration of Africa. Before the turn, very little information was known in Europe about what lay around the cape. At the end of the 13th century and the beginning of the 14th, those who tried to venture there became lost, which gave birth to legends of sea monsters. Some setbacks occurred: in 1436 the Canaries were recognized as Castilian by the Pope, earlier they were recognized as Portuguese. Also, in 1438 in a military expedition to Tangier, the Portuguese were defeated.

Bartolomeu Dias turning the Tormentas Cape, renamed Cabo da Boa Esperança (Cape of Good-Hope), representing Portugal's hope of becoming a powerful and rich empire by reaching India.

However, the Portuguese did not give up their exploratory efforts. In 1448, on a small island known as Arguim off the coast of Mauritania an important castle was built, working as a feitoria (a tradepost ) for commerce with inland Africa, some years before the first African gold was brought to Portugal, circumeventing the Arabic caravans that crossed the Sahara. Some time later, the caravels explored the Gulf of Guinea which lead to the discovery of several uninhabited islands: Cape Verde, Fernão Poo, São Tomé, Príncipe and Annobón. Finally, in 1471, the Portuguese captured Tangier, after years of trying. Eleven years later, the fortress of São Jorge da Mina in the Gulf was built. In 1483, Diogo Cão reached the Congo River.

In 1484, Portugal officially rejected Christopher Columbus' idea of reaching India from the west, because it was seen as unreasonable, and this began a long-lasting dispute which eventually resulted in the signing of the Treaty of Tordesillas (in 1494) with Spain, which divided the (largely undiscovered) world equally between the Spanish and the Portuguese, along a north-south meridian line 370 leagues (1770 km/1100 miles) west of the Cape Verde islands, with all lands to the east belonging to Portugal and all lands to the west to Spain.

A remarkable achievement was the turning of the Cape of Good Hope by Bartholomew Diaz (Bartolomeu Dias) in 1487 and the richness of India was now nearby, hence the name of the cape. In 1489, the King of Bemobi gave his realms to the Portuguese King and became Christian. Between 1491 and 1494, Pêro de Barcelos and João Fernandes Lavrador explored North America. At the same time, Pêro da Covilhã reached Ethiopia. Vasco da Gama sailed for India, and arrived at Calecut on May 20 1498, returning in glory to Portugal the next year. The Monastery of Jerónimos was built, and dedicated to the discovery of the route to India. In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral sighted the Brazilian coast; ten years later, Afonso de Alburquerque conquered Goa, in India.

João da Nova discovered Ascension in 1501 and Saint Helena 1502; Tristão da Cunha was the first to sight the archipelago still known by his name 1506. In East Africa small Islamic states along the coast of Mozambique, Kilwa, Brava and Mombasa were destroyed or became subjects or allies of Portugal.

The two million Portuguese people ruled a vast empire with hundreds of millions of inhabitants in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. From 1514, the Portuguese had reached China and Japan. In the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, one of Cabral's ships discovered Madagascar (1501), which was partly explored by Tristão da Cunha (1507); Mauritius was discovered in 1507, Socotra occupied in 1506, and in the same year D. Lourenco d'Almeida visited Ceylon.

In the Red Sea Massawa was the most northerly point frequented by the Portuguese until 1541, when a fleet under Estevão da Gama penetrated as far as Suez. Hormuz, in the Persian Gulf, was seized by Alfonso d'Albuquerque (1515), who also entered into diplomatic relations with Persia.

On the Asiatic mainland the first trading-stations were established by Cabral at Cochin and Calicut (1501); more important, however, were the conquest of Goa (1510) and Malacca (1511) by Albuquerque, and the acquisition of Diu (1535) by Martim Afonso de Sousa . East of Malacca, Albuquerque sent Duarte Fernandes as envoy to Thailand (1511), and dispatched to the Moluccas two expeditions (1512, 1514), which founded the Portuguese dominion in the Malay Archipelago. Fernão Pires de Andrade visited Canton in 1517 and opened up trade with China, where in 1557 the Portuguese were permitted to occupy Macao. Japan, accidentally reached by three Portuguese traders in 1542, soon attracted large numbers of merchants and missionaries. In 1522 one of the ships in the expedition that Ferdinand Magellan organized in the Spanish service completed the first voyage around the world.

By the end of the 15th century, Portugal expelled some local Jews, along with those refugees that came from Castile and Aragon after 1492. However, lots of Jews were forcibly converted to Catholicism and remained as Conversos. Many remained as hiddenly Jewish and were persecuted by the Portuguese Inquisition. Those who fled reached such prominence in commerce that for centuries a "Portuguese" abroad was presumed a Jew of Portuguese descent.

In 1578, a very young king Sebastian died in battle without an heir (the body was not found), leading to a dynastic crisis. The Cardinal Henry became ruler, but died two years after. Portugal was worried about the maintenance of its independence and sought help to find a new king. Because Philip II of Spain was the son of a Portuguese princess, Spain invaded Portugal and the Spanish ruler became Philip I of Portugal in 1580; the Spanish and Portuguese Empires were under a single rule. Imposters claimed to be King Sebastian in 1584, 1585, 1595 and 1598. "Sebastianism", the myth that the young king will return to Portugal on a foggy day has prevailed until modern times, and most people even at the end of the 19th century believed in it.

Decline of the Empire

From the 16th century, Portugal gradually saw its wealth decreasing. Even if Portugal was officially an autonomous state, the country was a Spanish puppet and Portuguese colonies were attacked by Spain's opponents, especially the Dutch and English.

At home, life was calm and serene with the first two Spanish kings; they maintained Portugal's status, gave excellent positions to Portuguese nobles in the Spanish courts and Portugal maintained an independent law, currency and government. It was even proposed to move the Spanish capital to Lisbon. But Philip III tried to make Portugal a Spanish province, and Portuguese nobles lost power. Because of this, on December 1 1640, the native king, John IV, was acclaimed, and a Restoration war against Spain was made. Ceuta governors didn't accept the new king and maintained their allegiance to Spain.

In the 17th century the Portuguese emigrated in large numbers to Brazil. In 1709, John V prohibited emigration, since Portugal had lost a sizable fraction of its population. Brazil was elevated to a vice-kingdom and Amerindians gained total freedom.

Lisbon was destroyed in 1755 by an earthquake.

In 1807 Portugal refused Napoleon's demand to accede to the Continental System of embargo against Great Britain; a French invasion under Marshal Junot followed, and Lisbon was captured on 1 December 1807. British intervention in the Peninsular War restored Portuguese independence, the last French troops being expelled in 1812. The war cost Portugal the province of Olivença, now governed by Spain.

The Kingdom of Brazil proclaimed its independence in 1822.

The death of John VI in 1826 led to a crisis of royal succession. His eldest son, Peter I of Brazil briefly became Peter IV of Portugal, but neither the Portuguese nor the Brazilians wanted a unified monarchy; consequently, Pedro abdicated the Portuguese crown in favor of his seven-year-old daughter, Maria da Glória, on the condition that when of age she marry his brother, Miguel. Dissatisfaction at Pedro's constitutional reforms led the "absolutist" faction of landowners and the church to proclaim Miguel as king in February 1828. This led to the Liberal Wars in which Pedro, with British assistance, eventually forced Miguel to abdicate and go into exile in 1834, and placed his daughter on throne as Queen Maria II.

The First and Second Republics

The Portuguese monarchy was deposed by the revolution of 1910, starting the First Republic. It was marked by chaos and Portuguese participation in the World War I; it came to an end in 1926 when a nationalist military coup d'etat gave birth to the Second Republic, a period of almost fifty years of repressive rule. For most of this period, Prime Minister António de Oliveira Salazar ruled as a dictator, from 1932 to 1968. Although a stable period financially and economically, it saw the beginning of the end of the Portuguese Empire. India annexed Portuguese India, including Goa, in 1961. Independence movements also became active in Angola, Mozambique, and Portuguese Guinea, and an increasingly costly series of colonial wars failed to defeat the guerrillas. Despite the Salazar's incapacitation in 1968 and his death in 1970), and Marcelo Caetano's marcelist spring, discontent about the wars was one of the factors leading to the 1974 Revolution.

The Third Republic

The Carnation Revolution of 1974, an effectively bloodless left-wing military coup, installed the Third Republic. Broad democratic reforms were implemented. In 1975, Portugal granted independence to its Overseas Provinces (Províncias Ultramarinas in Portuguese) in Africa (Mozambique, Angola, Guinea-Bissau, Cape Verde and São Tomé and Príncipe). In that same year, Indonesia invaded and annexed the Portuguese province of Portuguese Timor (East Timor) in Asia before independence could be granted. The Asian dependency of Macau, after an agreement in 1986, was returned to Chinese sovereignty in 1999. Portugal applied international pressure to secure East Timor's independence from Indonesia, as East Timor was still legally a Portuguese dependency, and recognized as such by the United Nations. After a referendum in 1999, East Timor voted for independence and Portugal recognized its independence in 2002.

With the 1975-76 independence of its colonies (except Macau, because it hadn't any independentist movement), the 560 year old Portuguese Empire had already effectively ended. With it, 15 years of war effort also came to an end. Also many Portuguese returned from the colonies, coming to comprise a sizeable sector of the population and starting an economic recovery, thus opening new paths for the country's future just as others closed. In 1986, Portugal entered the European Economic Community.

Timeline

The history of the nation comprises eleven periods.

868 establishment of the 1st County of Portugal, by count Vímara Peres, after the reconquest from the Moors of the region North of the Douro River.

1065 Independence of the Kingdom of Galicia and Portugal under the rule of Garcia

1072 Lost of independence

1095 Establishment of the 2nd County of Portugal, by Count Henry.

1095–1279 A Portuguese kingdom was established independent from Leon and extended southwards until it reached its present continental limits.

1128 "Independence" of Portugal

1143 Recognition of the "independence" of Portugal

1279–1415 The monarchy was gradually consolidated in spite of resistance from the Church, the nobles and the rival kingdom of Castile.

1415–1499 A period of crusades and discoveries, culminating in the discovery of an ocean-route to India (1497—1499).

1499–1580 Portugal acquired an empire stretching from Brazil eastward to the Moluccas, reached the zenith of its prosperity and entered upon a period of swift decline.

1581–1640 Spanish kings ruled over Portugal

1640–1755 The chief event of these years was the restoration of the Portuguese monarchy.

1755–1826 The reforms of the Marquis of Pombal and the Peninsular War prepared the country for a change from absolutism to constitutional monarchy.

1826–1910 Portugal was a constitutional Monarchy, and Brazil becomes independent.

1910–1926 The Republic was established.

1916–1918 Portugal contributes to the Great War on the Allies' side.

1926–1974 Portugal was under a dictatorial regime.

1974 A democratic regime was established.

1986 Portugal joins the European Communities (EEC later EU).

See also: Portuguese monarchs, Kings of Portugal family tree, List of Prime Ministers of Portugal, Presidents of Portugal, Timeline of Portuguese history, Monuments of Portugal, History of Europe.