Portuguese Empire

The Portuguese Empire was one of the earliest and longest-lasting of the European colonial empires, built through Portuguese maritime exploration and conquest beginning in the Age of Discovery around 1415. At its greatest extent, in 1820, it covered roughly 5.5 million square kilometers across the Americas, Africa, Asia, and Oceania, with a chain of naval outposts linking Lisbon to Nagasaki by 1571. Its trade networks accounted for roughly a fifth of Portugal's per-capita income between 1500 and 1800, but the empire declined steadily after the Iberian Union of 1580 to 1640 as rival powers seized its territories, and it lost Brazil, its largest colony, to independence in 1822. It came to a formal end in 1999 with the handover of Macau to China, the last Portuguese overseas possession, while the Azores and Madeira remained with Portugal as autonomous regions rather than colonies.