The Portuguese Empire
The Portuguese Overseas Empire was the 1st empire in history that was global. By this term, global empire, is meant an empire that has conquered land beyond its borders and with the conquered land not being neighboring to the empire’s borders, but they have other countries or foreign territories between them. The Portuguese Empire was also the longest to live, to maintain the colonies, counting almost 600 years, of the modern European empires that had similar empires (like Spain, France, The United Kingdom, The Netherlands)
Portuguese navigators and explorers started from the coastal area of the neighboring Africa their expeditions in 1419. The first cape that the Portuguese annexed into the empire was the Cape of Good Hope, by Bartolomeu Diaz in 1488. Ten years after that, the freat navigator Vasco da Gama landed in India. Two years later, Pedro Alvares Cabral accidentally discovered Brazil. By year 1571, Lisbon, the Empire’s mother city and capital, was connected to Nagasaki in Japan, through a network that covered areas from the coasts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia. Due to this huge network, Portugal became very rich as it was exploiting these areas’ valuale resources.
In 1580, Spain invaded Portugal taking advantage of the sudden death of king Sebastian. Anarchy and panic were not prevented by crowning fast the successor Portuguese king, so Philip II of Spain intrusion was successful and he had been crowned Philip I of Portugal, unifying the two global overseas empires into an Iberian Union.
If you wish to visit Portugal and you need to hire a car, the car rental companies in Portugal are Avis, Budget, Easycar, Sixt, Alamo, Thrifty and Hertz.