Portugal

This year marks the centenary of a forgotten effort to carve out a Jewish homeland in the vast Portuguese colony of Angola. Adam Rovner describes the little-known attempt to create a Zion in Africa.

Goa fell to Indian troops on December 19th 1961.

Richard Cavendish describes the Battle of Albuera, on May 16th, 1811.

As the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton approaches, Jenifer Roberts looks at the series of 18th-century weddings which led the Portuguese royal family into dynastic crisis.

In the late 18th century, a French invasion force marched into Portugal. Napoleon was insisting that Portugal must close its ports to British shipping. When it failed to comply, the invading army was given orders to march on Lisbon and seize the royal family. The Queen and her family fled to Brazil, and by this time, Maria I of Portugal had been insane for more than fifteen years. 

Richard Cavendish explains how a fleet led by Pedro Alvarez Cabral reached the Brazilian coast on April 21st, 1500.

Cherry Barnett recalls the history of Europe’s last colonial toehold in China, as the Portuguese colony of Macao returns to rule by Beijing.

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.

Edward Norman on the Eastern promise of Western sainthood to be encountered in the Church of the Bom Jesus in Goa.

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. 

Two hundred years before Captain Cook, Dieppe map makers placed the Portuguese flag on a large land-mass called Java-la-Grande approximately where Australia appears on today's atlas. Helen Wallis sifts through the cartographic evidence to examine the intriguing question.

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