Portugal

Kings knight knights, but who knights kings? Peter Linehan looks at how Alfonso XI got round the problem and in the process strengthened his hold on his kingdom.

Bartholomew Dias' voyage to the Cape of Good Hope in the late 15th century marked the apex of an extraordinary Portuguese expansion overseas and the start of a fateful European impact on South Africa. 

Helen Wallis charts the Portugal's astonishing success in voyages of exploration between 1415 and 1520

World wars, dictatorship and the tensions of empire tested, but not to breaking point, the alliance in the twentieth century. Tom Gallagher outlines how economic and strategic considerations made Portugal a focus for Allied concern in the Second World War.

John of Gaunt's dynastic ambitions coincided with the urgent need of the Portuguese Crown for foreign support to secure its sovereign independence - the catalyst for a royal marriage and England's oldest alliance.

Port wine and a queen for England from Braganza - commercial and cultural links strengthened the alliance steadily during the Age of Reason.

During the sixteen years of Portugal's first Republic there were forty-five governments. Douglas Wheeler shows how this turbulent period of parliamentary rule gave birth to the Estado Novo (the New State), Europe's longest surviving authoritarian system of the twentieth century.

The career of Colonel Fernando Santos Costa explodes the myth of Salazar's Portugal as a politically stable country with 'no history'. In charge of Portugal's army for twenty-two years, Santos Costa played a powerful and often unscrupulous role within this dictatorship.

Much less is known about the Portuguese conquistadores of eastern Africa, explains Malyn Newitt, than of their counterparts in America and the Indies.

In 1580, Portugal was joined with Spain in a sixty-year long and unpopular union.