Portugal

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.