Portugal
Portugal is one of the oldest states in Europe. It traces its modern
history to A.D. 1140 when, following a nine-year rebellion against
the King of Leon-Castile, Afonso Henriques, the Count of Portugal,
became the country's first king, Afonso I. Afonso and his successors
expanded their territory southward, capturing Lisbon from the Moors
in 1147. The approximate present-day boundaries were secured in 1249
by Afonso III. |
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By 1337, Portuguese explorers had reached the Canary Islands.
Inspired by Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460), explorers such
as Vasco da Gama, Bartolomeu Dias, and Pedro Alvares Cabral made
explorations from Brazil to India and Japan. Portugal eventually
became a massive colonial empire with vast territories in Africa
(Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome) and Latin
America (Brazil), and outposts in the Far East (East Timor, Macau,
Goa).
Dynastic disputes led in 1580 to the succession of Philip II of
Spain to the Portuguese throne. A revolt ended Spanish hegemony in
1640, and the House of Braganca was established as Portugal's ruling
family, lasting until the establishment of the Portuguese Republic
in 1910.
During the next 16 years, intense political rivalries and economic
instability undermined newly established democratic institutions.
Responding to pressing economic problems, a military government,
which had taken power in 1926, named a prominent university
economist, Dr. Antonio Salazar, as finance minister in 1928 and
prime minister in 1932. For the next 42 years, Salazar and his
successor, Marcelo Caetano (appointed prime minister in 1968), ruled
Portugal as an authoritarian "corporate" state. Unlike most other
European countries, Portugal remained neutral in World War II. It
was a charter member of NATO, joining in 1949.
In the early 1960s, wars against independence movements in
Portugal's African territories began to drain labor and wealth from
Portugal. Professional dissatisfaction within the military, coupled
with a growing sense of the futility of the African conflicts, led
to the formation of the clandestine "Armed Forces Movement" in 1973.
The downfall of the Portuguese corporate state came on April 25,
1974, when the Armed Forces Movement seized power in a nearly
bloodless coup and established a provisional military government. |
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