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Composed of the overseas colonies, factories, and later overseas territories, governed by the Kingdom of Portugal, and later the Republic of Portugal, it was one of the longest-lived colonial empires in European history, lasting 584 years from the conquest of Ceuta in North Africa in 1415 to the transfer of sovereignty over Macau to China in 1999.
- Portuguese-speaking African countries
The Portuguese-speaking African countries (Portuguese:...
- Portuguese-speaking African countries
As late as the 1870s, Europeans controlled approximately 10% of the African continent, with all their territories located near the coasts. The most important holdings were Angola and Mozambique, held by Portugal; the Cape Colony, held by the United Kingdom; and Algeria, held by France.
The Portuguese-speaking African countries (Portuguese: Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa; PALOP), also known as Lusophone Africa, consist of six African countries in which the Portuguese language is an official language: Angola, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, São Tomé and Príncipe and, since 2011, Equatorial Guinea. [1]
14 cze 2023 · Portugal, known for its maritime prowess during the Age of Discovery, played a significant role in the colonization of Africa. As one of the earliest European powers to venture into the continent, Portugal established colonies that left a lasting impact on the countries they occupied.
In the fifteenth century, Portuguese sailors took the lead in developing the sea route around the largely unexplored African continent and across the Indian Ocean to the ports of Asia and to the spice-rich islands of the East Indies (now Indonesia).
Taking advantage of its Cold War alliances (as well as secret pacts with Rhodesia and South Africa), Portugal was long able to accommodate the armed insurgencies that erupted in three of its colonies, thereby containing external pressures to decolonize.
Portugal is noted as the first modern European country to have large numbers of black slaves. As one of the major sea powers of the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries, Portugal also shipped and sold large numbers of African slaves to other parts of the world.
