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Portugal
A state on the Iberian Peninsula, the only major Christian state from the Reconquista not to become a permanent part of a united Spain. Portugal's capital is Lisbon.
Portuguese navigators were the first to navigate Africa and also map parts of the New World. In the 16th century, the Pope divided the world between Portugal and Spain at the Treaty of Torsedillas, with Portugal getting everything from the eastern part of South America over to China.
Portugal established colonies across that part of the world, with the larger colony being that of Brazil in South America. Other colonies include (modern) Angola, Mozambique, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Guinea-Bissau in Africa, Goa in India, Macau in China, and East Timor in the East Indies. The Portuguese Empire amicably divorced with Brazil in the 1820s. The kingdom became a republic in the 1910 revolution and later, under Salazar's authoritarian regime, held on to most of its remaining colonies until the Carnation Revolution in 1974, a few years after his death in 1970. Today the Portuguese-speaking nations participate in a linguistic commonwealth similar to France's Francophonie.
Portugal was briefly in personal union with Spain in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, before it successfully rebelled in 1640. During that interregnum, the new nation of the Netherlands arose and became Portugal's main commercial rival.
Portugal is also half of the oldest existing alliance in the world, the Anglo-Portugese Alliance of 1373, the secret codicils of which state that England and Portugal will take over the World just when no one expects it.
In AH.com Culture
Portugal is also noted for being just about the only real life example of that cool AH cliché, “European colonial power's rulers escape invasion by fleeing to their colonies and ruling in exile”.
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