Portugal
Portugal, officially the Portuguese Republic, is a country on the Iberian Peninsula in Southwestern Europe. It is an unitary republic made up by mainland Portugal and two autonomous regions, with Lisbon as both its capital and largest city. The mainland is bordered by Spain to the north and east, with Madeira and the Azores in the Atlantic Ocean. It features the westernmost point in continental Europe.
The western Iberian Peninsula has been inhabited since prehistory, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Muslims invaded the Iberia Peninsula in the 8th century, but were gradually expelled during the Reconquista. Portugal was established during this period, initially as a county of the Kingdom of León in, and formally as a kingdom in. It later became one of the main participants of the Age of Discovery, made several seminal advancements in nautical science and was among the first European countries to explore and discover new territories and sea routes, establishing settlements, colonies, and trading posts. After it became a republic in, Portugal lived under dictatorship from 1926 until its overthrow in enabling the full establishment of democracy in.
Portugal is a semi-presidential constitutional unitary republic and multi-party representative democracy with four separate : president, government, parliament, and judiciary. It has an unicameral national legislature known as the Assembly of the Republic. Portugal has developed a complex system to manage its territory, even though the mainland continues to remain highly centralized. It is a developed country with an advanced economy relying chiefly upon services, industry, and tourism. Shaped by the various civilisations that have crossed its territory, it has developed a specific culture with a vast influence that made Portuguese to become the world's fith-most spoken native language with more than 250 million native speakers. Portugal is a member of the United Nations, European Union, Schengen Area, and Council of Europe, and one of the founding members of NATO, the eurozone, the OECD, and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.
Etymology
The word Portugal derives from the combined Roman-Celtic place name Portus Cale. Porto stems from the Latin for port, portus; Cales meaning and origin is unclear. The mainstream explanation is an ethnonym derived from the Callaeci, also known as the Gallaeci peoples, who occupied the north-west of the Iberian Peninsula. One theory proposes Cale is a derivation of the Celtic word for 'port'. Another is that Cala was a Celtic goddess. Some French scholars believe it may have come from Portus Gallus, the port of the Gauls.Around 200 BC, the Romans took Iberia from the Carthaginians during the Second Punic War. In the process they conquered Cale, renaming it Portus Cale and incorporating it into the province of Gallaecia. During the Middle Ages, the region around Portus Cale became known by the Suebi and Visigoths as Portucale. The name Portucale changed into Portugale during the 7th and 8th centuries, and by the 9th century, it was used to refer to the region between the rivers Douro and Minho. By the 11th and 12th centuries, Portugale, Portugallia, Portvgallo or Portvgalliae were already referred to as Portugal.
History
Prehistory
The region has been inhabited by humans since circa 400,000 years ago, demonstrated by the finding of a 400,000-year-old Aroeira 3 ''H. Heidelbergensis'' skull discovered in the Cave of Aroeira in 2014. Later Neanderthals roamed the northern Iberian peninsula and a tooth has been found at Nova da Columbeira cave in Estremadura. Homo sapiens sapiens arrived in Portugal around 35,000 years ago and spread rapidly, with the earliest signs of settlement dating to 5500 BC. Pre-Celtic tribes inhabited Portugal. The Cynetes developed a written language, leaving stelae, which are mainly found in the south.Historical overview of Portugal
Romans first invaded the Iberian Peninsula in 219 BC. The Carthaginians, Rome's opponent in the Punic Wars, were expelled from their coastal colonies. During Julius Caesar's rule, almost the entire peninsula was annexed to Rome.In 409, with the decline of the Roman Empire, the Iberian Peninsula was occupied by Germanic tribes.
Most of the Iberian Peninsula was invaded from the south and became part of al-Andalus between 726 and 1249, following the Umayyad Caliphate conquest of the Iberian Peninsula. Muslim rule in Iberia concluded in 1492.
After defeating the Visigoths in a few months, the Umayyad Caliphate started expanding rapidly in the peninsula. Beginning in 726, the land that is now Portugal became part of the Umayyad Caliphate until its collapse in 750. That year the west of the empire gained its independence under Abd-ar-Rahman I with the establishment of the Emirate of Córdoba, becoming the Caliphate of Córdoba in 929, lasting until its dissolution in 1031, into 23 small kingdoms.
The emirs of those kingdoms established diplomatic relations with the northern Christian kingdoms. Most of present-day Portugal fell into the hands of the Taifa of Badajoz, and in 1022 the Taifa of Seville. Those petty kingdoms were conquered by the Almoravids in 1086, then by the Almohads in 1147.
Invasions from the North also occurred in this period, with Viking incursions raiding the coast between the 9th and 11th centuries, including Lisbon. This resulted in the establishment of small Norse settlements in the coastline between Douro and Minho.
''Reconquista''
The Reconquista was a period when Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula from Moorish domination. An Asturian Visigothic noble named Pelagius of Asturias was elected leader in 718 by many of the ousted Visigoth nobles. After defeating the Moors in the Battle of Covadonga in 722, Pelagius was proclaimed king, thus founding the Christian Kingdom of Asturias and starting the war of Christian reconquest.At the end of the 9th century, the region of Portugal between the rivers Minho and Douro was reconquered from the Moors by nobleman and knight Vímara Peres on the orders of King Alfonso III of Asturias. Finding many towns deserted, he decided to repopulate and rebuild them.
After annexing the County of Portugal into one of the counties that made up the Kingdom of Asturias, King Alfonso III of Asturias knighted Vímara Peres, in 868, as the First Count of Portus Cale. The region became known as Portucale, Portugale, and simultaneously Portugália. With the forced abdication of Alfonso III in 910, the Kingdom of Asturias split into three separate kingdoms; they were reunited in 924 under the crown of León.
Independence
At the Battle of São Mamede, in the outskirts of Guimarães, in 1128, Afonso Henriques, Count of Portugal, defeated his mother Countess Teresa and her lover Fernão Peres de Trava, establishing himself as sole leader of the county. His campaigns were successful and in 1139, he obtained a victory in the Battle of Ourique, so was proclaimed King of Portugal by his soldiers. This is traditionally taken as the occasion when the County of Portugal became the independent Kingdom of Portugal and, in 1129, the capital city was transferred from Guimarães to Coimbra. Afonso was recognised as the first king of Portugal in 1143 by King Alfonso VII of León, and in 1179 by Pope Alexander III as Afonso I of Portugal, with the papal bull Manifestis Probatum.Afonso Henriques and his successors, aided by military monastic orders, continued pushing southwards against the Moors. In 1249, the Reconquista ended with the capture of the Algarve, in the aftermath of the Siege of Faro, and the last Moorish settlements were expelled. With minor readjustments, Portugal's territorial borders have remained the same, making it one of the oldest established countries in Europe.
In 1348-49 Portugal, as with the rest of Europe, was devastated by the Black Death. In 1373, Portugal, during the reign of Ferdinand I, made an alliance with England, the oldest standing alliance in the world. This alliance was signed during the Fernandine Wars, a series of conflicts between Portugal and Castile over the right to the throne of Castile. This alliance would be reinforced with the signing of the Treaty of Windsor in 1386.
Age of Discoveries
In 1383 John I of Castile and Beatrice of Portugal, the only surviving legitimate child of Ferdinand I of Portugal, claimed the throne of Portugal. John of Aviz, later John I of Portugal, led a revolt against this claim and defeated the Castilians in the Battle of Aljubarrota, with the House of Aviz becoming the ruling house. The new ruling dynasty led Portugal to the limelight of European politics and culture.Portugal spearheaded European exploration of the world and the Age of Discovery under the sponsorship of Prince Henry the Navigator, and made several seminal advancements in nautical science. The Portuguese explored the Indian Ocean, established trade routes in most of southern Asia, and sent the first direct European maritime trade and diplomatic missions to China and Japan. In 1415, Portugal acquired its first colonies by conquering Ceuta, in North Africa. Throughout the 15th century, Portuguese explorers sailed the coast of Africa, establishing trading posts for commodities, ranging from gold to slavery.
The Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 was intended to resolve a dispute created following the return of Christopher Columbus and divided the newly located lands outside Europe between Portugal and Spain along a line west of the Cape Verde islands, off the west coast of Africa. In 1500, the Portuguese explorer Gaspar Corte-Real reached what is now Canada and founded the town of Portugal Cove-St. Philip's, one of many Portuguese colonies of the Americas.
In 1500, Pedro Álvares Cabral landed on Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. Portuguese sailors set out to reach Eastern Asia, landing in Taiwan, Japan, Timor, Flores, and the Moluccas. Although it was believed the Dutch were the first Europeans to arrive in Australia, there is evidence the Portuguese may have discovered it in 1521.
Between 1519 and 1522 Ferdinand Magellan organised a Spanish expedition to the East Indies which resulted in the first circumnavigation of the globe. The Treaty of Zaragoza, signed in 1529 between Portugal and Spain, divided the Pacific Ocean between Spain and Portugal.