Portugal

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.

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

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. 

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

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

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.