Portugal

VI

History

Up to the Middle Ages, the history of Portugal is inseparable from that of Spain. Present-day Portugal became a part of the Roman province of Lusitania in the 2nd century bc. In the 5th century ad control of the region passed to the Visigoths, and in the 8th century it was included in the area of Moorish Muslim conquest. In 997 the territory between the Douro and Minho rivers (now northern Portugal) was retaken from the Moors by Bermudo II, King of León, and in 1064 the reconquest was completed as far south as present-day Coimbra by Ferdinand I, King of Castile and León. The reconquered districts were then organized into a feudal county, composed of Spanish fiefs. Portugal later derived its name from the northernmost fief, the Comitatus Portaculenis, which extended around the old Roman seaport of Portus Cale (present-day Porto).

In 1093 Henry of Burgundy (died 1112) came to the assistance of Castile when it was invaded by the Moors. In gratitude, Alfonso I of Castile made Henry Count of Portugal. On the death of Alfonso in 1109, Count Henry, and later his widow, Teresa, refused to continue feudal allegiance to León. He invaded León and began a series of peninsular wars, but with little success. In 1128 his son, Alfonso Henriques, later Alfonso I, King of Portugal, rebelled against his mother. The Portuguese knights accepted Alfonso as king in 1143, and in 1179 the pope recognized the independence of Portugal.

A

The Medieval Kingdom of Portugal

Alfonso I, aided by the Templars and other military orders sworn to fight the Moors, extended the border of the new kingdom as far south as the River Tagus. His son Sancho I (reigned 1185-1211) encouraged Christians to settle in the reconquered area by establishing self-governing municipalities there. The Cistercian monks occupied the land and promoted efficient agricultural methods. In the late 12th century, the Almohads, a Muslim dynasty from North Africa, temporarily halted the Christians’ southward movement, but after their defeat at Las Navas de Tolosa in Castile (1212) the reconquest continued.

King Alfonso III, who reigned from 1248 to 1279, completed the expulsion of the Moors from the Algarve and moved the capital of Portugal from Coimbra to Lisbon. He also began the practice of governing with the aid of a Cortes (representative assembly), which included members of the nobility, the clergy, and the citizens, and he increased the power of the monarchy at the expense of the Church. His son Diniz, called the Farmer King because of his encouragement of agriculture, founded the nation’s first university at Coimbra and was responsible for the development of the Portuguese navy. In 1294 he signed a commercial treaty with England, beginning a sequence of alliances between the two countries. Diniz’s successor, Alfonso IV, joined with Alfonso XI of Castile to win a major victory over the Moors at the Battle of the Salado River in 1340. In this period the royal houses of Castile and Portugal frequently intermarried, repeatedly raising the possibility that one of the kingdoms might be absorbed by the other.

After the death of Ferdinand I, the last of the legitimate descendants of Henry of Burgundy, his illegitimate half-brother John I secured the Portuguese throne in 1385, after two years of civil war. His branch of the Burgundian line became known as the House of Aviz. John’s reign was one of the most notable in Portuguese history. He successfully defended the kingdom against Castilian attack and in 1385 defeated Castile decisively in the Battle of Aljubarrota. In 1386 England and Portugal allied themselves permanently by the Treaty of Windsor.

The greatest achievement of John’s reign, however, rests on the work done under the direction of his son Henry the Navigator, Prince of Portugal, in exploring the African coast for an eastward route to the Indies. A century of exploration and conquest began, which laid the foundations of the Portuguese Empire and made Portugal one of the greatest colonial powers in the world. In 1418-1419 Portuguese navigators explored Madeira and in 1427 discovered the Azores. A successful Portuguese military campaign in Morocco resulted in the capture of Ceuta in 1415.

B

The Era of Portuguese Expansion

Madeira and the Azores rapidly became important centres of sugar production, and the capture of Ceuta gave Portugal a foothold in Africa, a base for further exploration of the African coast. Using the caravel, a new type of light sailing vessel especially adapted for Atlantic voyages, Portuguese mariners sailed round Cape Vert (in Senegal) in 1444, and by 1460 they had reached Sierra Leone. Meanwhile, John I’s successors, King Duarte (reigned 1433-38) and Alfonso V, sent further expeditions to Morocco, capturing the cities of Tangier and Arzila (Asilah).

B

1

The Reign of John II

King John II restored the prestige the monarchy had lost at home during the reigns of his two predecessors, subjecting the turbulent nobles to his authority. Abroad, he founded (1482) a Portuguese stronghold at Elmina, in present-day Ghana, and established relations with the Kingdom of the Kongo (in present-day Angola). In 1487-1488, Bartolomeu Dias became the first to sail around the southern end of Africa, opening the sea route to the Orient. After Christopher Columbus’s voyage to America in 1492, Portugal and Spain concluded the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), which established the Line of Demarcation allocating to Portugal all undiscovered lands east of a line 370 leagues west of the Cape Verde Islands.

B

2

Emanuel and His Successors

Under King Emanuel, Portuguese power reached its height. In 1497-1499 Vasco da Gama made the first voyage to India following the route discovered by Dias, and inaugurated a lucrative trade in spices and other luxuries between Europe and South Asia. Led by Afonso de Albuquerque, the Portuguese occupied Goa, India, in 1510, Malacca (now Melaka, Malaysia) in 1511, the Moluccas (in present-day Indonesia) in 1512-1514, and Hormuz Island in the Persian Gulf in 1515. During the same period they opened up trade with China and established relations with Ethiopia.

As other Portuguese kings had done, Emanuel dreamed of uniting Portugal and Spain under his rule and successively married two daughters of King Ferdinand V and Queen Isabella I. Under pressure from his Spanish relations, he followed their example by expelling Jews and Muslims from his domains in 1497, thus depriving Portugal of much of its middle class. His son, John III, promoted the settlement of Brazil and (again influenced by the example of Spain) introduced (1536) the Inquisition into Portugal to enforce religious obedience.

By the time he died in 1557, Portugal had begun to decline as a political and commercial power. This trend continued under King Sebastian, who was killed during another expedition against Morocco in 1578. On the death of his successor, King Henry, in 1580, the Aviz dynasty came to an end.