This is a map of the world's shipping lanes, showcasing the intricate network of maritime routes that connect our modern world through global trade. Although some of these routes were established in more recent times, such as the Suez and Panama canals, most of these oceanic highways were chartered long ago, in an age where there was no reliable way of navigation other than local knowledge and some rudimentary maps. However...
Just over 500 years ago, at the beginning of the 16th century, these international trade routes did not even exist. Only due to the emergence of the small Iberian nation of Portugal as a maritime superpower were these connections to other parts of the world made possible. Through their daring voyages and navigational prowess, Portugal quickly established an empire for itself, stretching from Africa to Asia and South America.
These maritime exploits not only fueled Portugal's wealth, an astonishing rise to power, but also laid the foundation for the interconnected global economy that we benefit from today. But how did this relatively obscure nation, on the edge of Europe, emerge to forge an empire that would shape the course of history for centuries to come? This is the history of the Portuguese Empire.
All of our videos are now available to watch ad-free over on our Substack page. You can also read along to the original scripts, as well as listen to the audio narration as podcasts, by following the link in the video description below and subscribing with your email. Thank you.
The Kingdom of Portugal emerged out of the series of events known to history as the Reconquista, which was the gradual reconquest of Christian lands on the Iberian Peninsula from the Muslim Moors. who had invaded the territory far back in the 8th century. Having established itself as a sovereign kingdom by the middle of the 12th century, the Portuguese went on to push out the remaining Moors to the south, by capturing the territory of the Algarve in 1249, effectively setting out the borders of their kingdom along the same lines to which they exist today.
With their own territory secured from external threats, and the possibility of further expansion on the Iberian Peninsula ruled out, On account of their friendly relations with the neighboring Christian kingdom of Castile to the east, Portugal turned its attention towards the sea, and the possibility of exerting its own influence upon both it and the lands that lay beyond in North Africa. The year 1415 marked a pivotal moment in Portuguese expansion, for a decision was made to orchestrate an attack on the city of Suta, which was held by the Maronite Sultanate. Although many at the time considered than a continuation of the hostilities between Christians and Muslims, in reality, it paved the way for the Portuguese to expand their dominions and economic interests beyond the Iberian Peninsula and marked the beginning of the Portuguese Empire. Despite capturing the city, the Portuguese were not able to advance further into North Africa, as they had initially planned, owing to determined resistance by local Muslim forces.
Nevertheless, they continued to garrison Souta and used its harbour. as a base to explore the Atlantic coastline of Africa. This policy of maritime exploration was championed by a prominent figure in the early days of the Portuguese Empire, Prince Henry the Navigator. He was curious to know how far the Muslim territories in Africa extended southward, and whether it would be possible to reach Asia by an easterly sea route. Consequently, scores of Portuguese ships began to set off into the Atlantic Ocean and around the coast of North Africa.
probing further and further into what were at the time unchartered waters. The islands of Madeira and the Azores were first sighted in 1419 and 1427 respectively, and were subsequently incorporated as the latest additions to the expanding Portuguese empire. One of the first natural barriers the Portuguese encountered on the their explorations was Cape Bojador. The violent waters that surround it had claimed many vessels that had previously tried to pass through, and it was widely deemed to be a point of no return. That was until 1434, when Gili Arnez successfully found the navigable passage around the cape, and opened up further explorations south towards sub-Saharan Africa.
No sooner had this feat been achieved that the merchants of Lisbon began to search for newer and more exotic markets to which they could trade to. Gold, ivory, pepper, cotton and sugar, all from Africa, soon became more commonplace amongst the trading stalls of Lisbon, as did the practice of selling Africa to the people of Lisbon. and slaves, which began the long and dark history of the transatlantic slave trade that would continue for the next 400 years. Over the subsequent decades of the 15th century, the Portuguese ventured further and further south down the coast of Africa, reaching the Cape Verde Islands in 1456 and the Gulf of Guinea by the 1460s. As they explored, they left behind a series of padroes, stone crosses engraved with the Portuguese coat of arms, marking out their territorial claims which were followed up with the construction of forts and trading posts.
From these bases, they engaged profitably in the gold and slave trades, which they held a virtual monopoly on for well over a century. The real prize for the Portuguese merchants, however, was the supposed but as yet unconfirmed sea route to Asia. They hoped that the discovery of such a route would allow them direct access to the spice markets of the Indies, and bypass the expensive Arab and Venetian merchants, who controlled the overland trade routes through the Middle East and across the Mediterranean into Europe. Then, in 1488, news reached the ears of the Portuguese authorities that Bartolomeu Dias had rounded the southern tip of Africa and reached the Indian Ocean, proving that such an easterly passage did indeed exist. However, this revelation would soon be eclipsed in magnitude just four years later, when Christopher Columbus sailed westwards across the Atlantic Ocean in search of his own theoretical route to the Indies, and in the process, inadvertently discovered an entirely new world.
The discovery of the Americas, which Columbus claimed in the name of Spain, and initially believed to be part of Eastern Asia, quickly created a problem for the two Iberian nations. Not knowing where, one set of recently discovered lands ended, and another began. They consequently agreed to divide the world in two spheres of influence between themselves, marked by a north-south line of meridian roughly halfway between the Cape Verde Islands, controlled by Portugal, and the Caribbean islands of the Americas, which Columbus had recently discovered and claimed for Spain.
The Treaty of Tordesillas ratified this agreement in 1494 and effectively carved the world in two, with the lands to the east of this line to be claimed solely by Portugal and the lands to the west claimed solely by Spain. With the dispute settled, Portugal could finally begin to undertake its long-standing ambition of charting a sea route to Asia, and so on 8 July 1497, the explorer Vasco da Gama left Lisbon with a fleet of four ships, and a crew of 170 men, bound for the Indian Ocean in search of Asia. After a voyage of some 10 months, de Gama's expedition finally made landfall on the Malabar coast of India in May 1498, and subsequently met with the Zamorin, or King of Calicut, to establish the trade relations that they had longed hope for. Whilst the Portuguese's arrival was greeted with hospitality, The local Indian traders found little value in the trinkets and commodities the Europeans had brought with them to exchange, and so Degama's expedition largely left empty-handed. Their return journey back to Portugal took an agonizing amount of time, owing to the monsoon conditions they had to face out at sea, which took an immense toll on both the crew and the ships.
Nevertheless, the survivors arrived back in Lisbon during the summer of 1499, and were given a hero's welcome. despite the meager quantities of spices and other goods they had brought back. Although the expedition itself may not have been profitable, it demonstrated that maritime trade to Asia was possible and had huge potential.
The second expedition to India set sail in 1500, under the command of Pedro Alvarez Cabral, although while traversing across the Atlantic Ocean, sailed too far west, and unexpectedly reached the coast of what is now Brazil. Although this discovery may have been unintentional, some speculation suggests that the Portuguese may have already been aware of Brazil's existence and secretly knew that this part of South America fell within their designated territory, according to the Treaty of Tordesillas. Cabral recommended to the Portuguese king, Manuel I, that the land be settled, and two follow-up voyages were sent in 1501 and 1503. The land was found to be abundant in Brazil wood, from which it later inherited its name, but the failure to find gold or silver meant that for the time being, the Portuguese instead decided to concentrate their efforts on the invaluable trade out of India.
As the first decade of the 16th century progressed, the Portuguese ventured further into other parts of Asia, such as Sri Lanka and Indonesia, where they discovered the sources of cinnamon and nutmeg. So valuable were these commodities that Alfonso de Albuquerque, the first appointed viceroy Portuguese India ordered the construction of trading posts and fortifications along the 14,000 mile long route, stretching from Portugal to the East Indies. These served as bases of operations for conducting trade, and ensured the safeguarding of their valuable cargoes that were to be transported on the long, arduous journey back to the markets of Europe.
Shortly thereafter, the Portuguese trading network stretched to cover an area surrounding the coastlines of Africa, Arabia, India, Indonesia, and even as far as China and Japan. Although the Portuguese were primarily motivated to establish trade relations through peaceful means, their arrival into Asia was often met with a fair degree of suspicion from local merchants, who saw them as nothing more than foreign interlopers on their territory. Consequently, as tensions grew, the Portuguese took to enforcing their trading activity with the use of force.
Throughout the 16th century, numerous conflicts broke out across the wider Indo-Pacific region, as the Portuguese engaged in warfare against the numerous numerous sultanates and empires of Asia. Often possessing superior military technology over their adversaries, the Portuguese were largely successful at defending their commercial enterprises, as well as going on the offensive to capture strategic targets that they wished to take for themselves. However, it was not just trade and conquest that advanced the realms of the Portuguese Empire. Religion also had its part to play. Seeing the officials, merchants, mariners and soldiers on board the ships leaving Lisbon were small numbers of priests and missionaries.
Typically belonging to the Jesuit order, they had been ordered by the Portuguese monarchy to spread the Catholic faith amongst the native peoples of Asia and Africa, who they had come into contact with. This policy had mixed successes, for although their efforts helped towards establishing relations and new settlements, such as the port of Nagasaki in Japan in 1571, elsewhere the priests and missionaries spread the word of God through violence and coercion. coercion. In the case of the Goa Inquisition, for example, they heavily persecuted the Hindu population of Portuguese India in a bid to convert them to Christianity. The early period of the Portuguese Empire was concentrated on developing trade across Asia and Africa, which were much more lucrative and easily accessible compared to Brazil.
Attitudes towards this quickly changed however, when other European explorers, particularly the French, began to develop interests of their own in the territory, and established a trading post there in 1531. The Portuguese response, as as decreed by King Jo the Third on 28th September 1532, was to deter further French incursions to the region by initiating a large-scale colonization program that would see the land divided up and ruled by 15 separate captaincies. With instructions to build settlements, grant allotments, and administer justice, each captain was responsible for developing and absorbing the costs of colonization, although they were not allowed to own the land outright. Despite their best efforts, however, only two of the captaincies reached any stage of significant development, owing principally to their dedication in growing the highly profitable crop of sugarcane. This required an enormous amount of labor to produce, and over time it became exclusively reliant on enslavement. enslaved Africans to work in its fields.
Such was the scale and importance of the sugar industry, that of the estimated 4 million Africans who were sold into slavery in the Americas between the 16th and 19th centuries, up to 40% ended up in Brazil. The Portuguese presence in South America began to slowly develop as time passed, with the cities of Bahia, Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro all being founded in the mid-16th century. However, a significant change in the progress of the Portuguese Empire occurred in 1580, when a succession crisis, triggered by the untimely death of King Sebastian two years earlier, saw Philip II of Spain invade Portugal and take the throne for himself.
With that, the two crowns and overseas empires of Spain and Portugal were united under the Iberian Union, although they would continue to be ruled separately and distinctly from one another. During this time however, in the late 16th century, Spain was at war with England, France and the Netherlands, and as a result of the union with its Iberian neighbour, Portugal quickly found itself embroiled in the wider conflict with European rivals who were all competing to establish overseas empires of their own. The Dutch in particular posed the most comprehensive threat to Portugal at this time, for they had just gained their independence from the Spanish Habsburg monarchy in 1581. and being adept merchants and maritime explorers, were keen to participate in the lucrative trade to Asia for themselves.
These ambitions were also shared by the English, and both soon learned of the navigational routes established by the Portuguese that would take them to the spice markets of India and Indonesia. So much so, by the turn of the 17th century, Dutch and English mercantile interests had been established in Asian ports such as Surat, Madras, Bantam and Sri Lanka, much to the dislike of the Portuguese traders in the region. Not only did this pose a commercial threat to the Portuguese Empire, with other European merchants now competing for the same trade, but it also led to colonial conflict, as the Dutch began to attack Portuguese trading posts and colonies.
The Dutch-Portuguese War which was fought from 1598 to 1663, saw battles rage across the globe wherever the colonial interests of the two European powers came into contact. Although the Portuguese were able to successfully repel the Dutch in some areas, such as the Second Battle of Guararapes in northeastern Brazil, many of their territories in Asia, such as Malaysia, Sri Lanka and the Gold Coast of Africa, were lost. The wider fallout from this conflict also resulted in further losses for the Portuguese Empire around the Persian Gulf and in Japan, where local rulers sought to capitalize on the weakened position of the Portuguese and expel them from their respective regions. The loss of these colonial territories spurred the Portuguese to end the personal union with the Spanish monarchy, believing they had largely been abandoned by their Iberian neighbor, who had prioritized their own colonial interests at the expense of Portugal's. The resulting Portuguese Restoration War, which broke out in 1640, saw John IV proclaimed as king, and the establishment of the Overseas Council, which was to govern the country.
on all aspects of the Portuguese Empire from that point onward. However, as the second half of the 17th century progressed, Portugal's colonial might continued to decline, and other European nations began to fill the power vacuum which had at once once occupied, with the English becoming the most dominant power in India and the Dutch cementing their control over what is now Indonesia. This for the most part left only Brazil as the remaining territory of significance with the empire, and consequently became viewed with increasing importance. The interest in developing Brazil was quickly helped in 1693 by the discoveries of gold, and later diamonds, in the Minas Gerais region, which led to a gold rush and a large influx of money.
migrants to the territory. Within four decades, the population of Minas Gerais had reached somewhere between 200,000 and 250,000 people, as migrants from Portugal arrived as prospectors and African slaves were brought in to work in the mines. The gold rush considerably increased the revenue of the Portuguese crown, and by the middle of the 18th century, it constituted for some 46% of the exports from Brazil, although the sugar industry remained the primary source of wealth. Although the Portuguese Empire had regained some of its former prestige and wealth by this time, a devastating earthquake which struck the capital of Lisbon in 1755 marked what would ultimately become the beginning of the end for Portuguese colonial ambitions.
The natural disaster not only put a huge financial strain on the empire, but the loss of life, estimated to be somewhere in the region of 40 to 60,000 people, also significantly diminished the ability of the Portuguese to fully recover. As the 18th century progressed, a wave of revolution began to sweep across the wider Atlantic region, first starting in North America, with the 13 colonies declaring their independence from Britain. in 1775, which in turn inspired the French Revolution of 1789. The Portuguese Empire soon began to experience this phenomenon for itself, with the era of dissension finding its way to their largest colony of Brazil.
Despite being initially confined to localised slave revolts that were quickly suppressed, there was a growing sentiment within the South American territory that it should embark on its own journey towards self-determination outside of colonial rule. The year 1808 would mark a significant step in this direction, when the Portuguese royal family, led by the Prince Regent João VI, decided to flee Lisbon in response to Napoleon Bonaparte's invasion of Portugal and relocate the royal court to Brazil. Seven years later, in 1888, the royal court In 1815, Brazil itself was elevated to the status of a kingdom within the wider United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, and witnessed the unprecedented honour of having the capital moved from Lisbon to its own city of Rio de Janeiro.
This further emboldened sentiment within Brazil for independence, and within a year of the royal family returning to Portugal, the fourth son of João VI, Dom Pedro I, who had remained behind in Rio, saw the chance to capitalise upon the opportunity to declare himself the himself as Emperor of the newly independent Empire of Brazil in 1822. This left the Portuguese Empire a shadow of its former self, now comprising only of a few outposts in Asia and the territories of Angola and Mozambique in Africa. For the remainder of the 19th century, the efforts of the Portuguese to retain what little remained of their empire were focused on southern Africa, and a proposal was soon made to connect the two colonies on either side of the continent with one another by expanding across the hinterland. land. This project, known as the Pink Map, was highly unpalatable to the British, who had become the world's most powerful empire by this point, for it directly affronted their own policy for a connected system of colonies across Africa that was to stretch from Cairo to Cape Town. The British delivered an ultimatum to the Portuguese in 1890 to end the Pink Map policy, which subsequently brought any hint of reviving Portuguese colonial ambition to an end.
Having been humiliated on the world stage in such a manner, exposed the weakness of the Portuguese government and monarchy, which played into the hands of a growing republican movement within the country. Sensing an opportunity to further their cause, on the 1st of February 1908, King Carlos and Prince Louis-Philippe were assassinated in Lisbon by two revolutionary republican activists. Although King Manuel II immediately succeeded the throne, he too had to flee the country just two years later in 1910, when the monarchy and government were overthrown entirely and Portugal was declared a republic. The continuing weakening position of the Portuguese Empire was exploited further by the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. The German Empire planned to expand its own dominions and influence in Africa, at the expense of the neighbouring Portuguese colonies of Angola and Mozambique.
As there was only sporadic skirmishing in the region at first. Portugal did not formally declare war against Germany until 1916, but from that point on, much of the war effort was for since supplying the Allies fighting in France, and neglected to defend its African colonies from further German attacks. As the war came to an end in 1918 with the Treaty of Versailles, however, Portugal was able to regain control of all its lost territory. The interwar years bore witness to another coup in Portugal, this time replacing the unstable republican government with a more right-wing regime called the Estado Novo in 1933. The new administration chose to remain neutral during the Second World War, and instead preserve what remained of its overseas empire.
By the war's conclusion, however, There was a growing shift in attitudes towards European imperialism, and calls for decolonization began to grow louder around the world. The efforts of Britain and France, in granting independence to the colonies under their control, put great pressure on Portugal to do the same, although it remained reluctant to do so. The establishment of Indian independence from Britain in 1947 created a flashpoint on this issue, as the Portuguese enclaves of Goa, Daman and Diu were not permitted to join the newly independent state. The Indian Army was eventually ordered into the territories in 1961, but Portugal, under the dictatorship of Antonio de Oliveira Salazar, continually refused to acknowledge their incorporation into India.
Further reluctance to grant independence to their colonies in Africa resulted in the Portuguese Colonial War, which was fought from 1961 to 1974. Many African independence movements received support from the Soviet Union as part of the wider Cold War during the war. this time, and as a result, guerrilla warfare soon became widespread across Portugal's African colonies. The growing cost and unpopularity of the war at home, however, saw another military coup carried out against the Estado Nova regime in what became the known as the Carnation Revolution on the 25th of April 1974. The new government quickly ended the hostilities overseas and began withdrawing its troops to start the process of recognising the independence of its colonies.
Angola and Mozambique declared independence in 1975, as did East Timor, and the Portuguese government also finally recognised its former colonies in India as now being part of the Indian state. The final piece of the Portuguese overseas territory to undergo a transfer of sovereignty was that of Macau, which was handed over to the People's Republic of China on 20th December 1999, and officially marked the end of the Portuguese Empire. With that, one of the longest lived maritime and commercial empires in history came to an end.
Although the territories of the Azores and Madeira are now governed as autonomous regions of Portugal, the legacy of the Portuguese Empire lives on, with the Portuguese language continuing to be spoken by some 250 million people around the world, and perhaps most importantly, the sea routes that were established by those early maritime explorers continue to carry the world's trade over five centuries on.