What Was the Portuguese Empire and Where Did It Colonize?

The Portuguese Empire was, geographically, the most broadly distributed of the early modern European empires. At its height in the 1560s, it stretched from Brazil in the west to Macau in the east, with fortified posts in West Africa, the Gulf of Guinea, the East African coast, the Persian Gulf, the Indian subcontinent, the Malay Peninsula, the Indonesian archipelago, and the south China coast. By Boxer and Subrahmanyam’s count, the Portuguese had, by 1600, more than fifty fortified bases around the world — a fact that is, on its face, remarkable for a small kingdom on the western edge of Iberia with a metropolitan population of perhaps a million and a half.

The empire worked, when it worked, by concentrating scarce resources at strategic chokepoints and by striking deals with local powers. It did not work, when it did not work, because the chokepoints were not numerous enough and the deals were not stable enough to survive competition from larger and better-capitalized rivals. The Atlantic and Brazilian side of the empire survived; the Asian side shrank; the African side persisted in a thin chain of posts until the twentieth century. This page inventories the major territories, in the order in which the Portuguese acquired them, and explains why each mattered.

The Atlantic Islands (1415–1480s)

The Portuguese colonization of the Atlantic islands — Madeira, the Azores, Cape Verde, São Tomé and Príncipe — was the laboratory in which the empire was built. Madeira, colonized from 1420, became the first major sugar-producing island in the European Atlantic. São Tomé, colonized in the 1480s, became the first major slave-based sugar economy in the tropics, and the model for the later Brazilian and Caribbean plantation systems. The Cape Verde Islands, settled from the 1460s, became an important way station for the Atlantic slave trade.

The Atlantic islands also developed distinctive creole societies. Cape Verdean Creole, the language of the islands, was the first of the Portuguese-based creoles and became the lingua franca of the West African slave trade. The Lançados and Tangomaos — Portuguese and Afro-Portuguese traders who established commercial communities along the Upper Guinea coast — were the first agents of European commerce in sub-Saharan Africa.

West Africa (1440s–1800s)

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to establish a sustained presence in sub-Saharan Africa. Beginning with the capture of Ceuta in 1415 and continuing through the 15th and 16th centuries, the Portuguese built a chain of trading posts and forts along the West African coast. São Jorge da Mina (Elmina Castle), built in 1482 on the Gold Coast, served both as a trading post and as a base for the Atlantic slave trade. Luanda, on the coast of Angola, was established in 1575 as a base for the slave trade to Brazil. The Portuguese also established trading relations with the Kingdom of Kongo, which was Christianized in the late 15th century and remained a Portuguese ally (with periodic ruptures) into the 19th century.

The Portuguese share of the Atlantic slave trade was, by any measure, the largest of any European nation. Eltis’s Atlantic Slave Trade: A Census (2007) puts the total at around 12.5 million Africans transported across the Atlantic over four centuries, of whom roughly 6 million were carried in Portuguese or Brazilian ships. The West African trading posts and the Brazilian plantation economy were the two ends of the South Atlantic system, and they remained so for nearly 400 years.

Brazil (1500–1822)

The Portuguese presence in Brazil began almost by accident. Pedro Álvares Cabral’s fleet, bound for India, made landfall on the Brazilian coast in April 1500, and the territory was claimed for the Portuguese Crown. For the first thirty years, Brazil was a sparsely settled periphery, with a few coastal trading posts exporting brazilwood, a red dye, to Europe. The introduction of sugarcane cultivation in the 1530s and 1540s, combined with the systematic importation of enslaved Africans, transformed the colony. The development of large sugar plantations, worked by enslaved Africans, made Brazil the world’s leading sugar producer in the 17th century.

The discovery of gold in the Minas Gerais region in the 1690s and of diamonds in the 1720s triggered a second cycle of expansion. The bandeirantes — mixed-race frontiersmen from São Paulo — pushed deep into the interior, destroyed the Jesuit missions of the Guaraní, and built a continental Portuguese-speaking state. Brazil was the only Portuguese colony in the Americas, and it became the most populous and longest-lasting. Brazil became independent in 1822 under Pedro I, the son of the Portuguese king João VI, and it remains, today, the largest Portuguese-speaking country in the world.

The Estado da Índia (1500–1961)

The Portuguese Indian Ocean empire, called the Estado da Índia, was the commercial heart of the empire. Goa, captured by Afonso de Albuquerque in 1510, served as the administrative capital of the eastern empire, and Portuguese Goa remained a Portuguese territory until 1961, when it was annexed by India. Hormuz, captured in 1507 and lost to the English in 1622, controlled the entrance to the Persian Gulf. The Portuguese established forts and trading posts along the Malabar Coast of India, in East Africa (including Mozambique Island and Mombasa), and on the islands of the Indian Ocean, including the Maldives (briefly).

The Estado da Índia was not a territorial empire in the usual sense. It consisted of a chain of fortified trading posts, feitorias and fortalezas, connected by regular shipping routes and protected by heavily armed carracks and galleons. The most famous ship was the Flor de la Mar, lost off the coast of Sumatra in 1511 with the captured treasures of Malacca. The Portuguese used naval power, diplomatic alliances, and a near-monopoly on the heavy guns mounted on oceangoing ships to control the spice trade at its source, redirecting the flow of pepper, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg from Arab and Venetian merchants to Lisbon.

The Spice Islands and Southeast Asia (1511–1975)

The capture of Malacca in 1511 gave the Portuguese control of the narrow strait between the Malay Peninsula and the Indonesian island of Sumatra, one of the most important trading routes in the world. From Malacca, Portuguese ships pushed further east to the Moluccas, the original Spice Islands, and to the islands of Timor, Solor, and Flores. The Dutch East India Company gradually displaced the Portuguese from most of the East Indies during the 17th century, but the Portuguese retained control of East Timor until 1975, when it declared independence and was immediately invaded and occupied by Indonesia. East Timor became fully independent only in 2002.

Macau, Japan, and China (1513–1999)

The Portuguese arrived in China in 1513, and in 1557 they obtained permission from the Ming dynasty to settle Macau, which they held until 1999. Macau was the principal point of contact between the Portuguese empire and China, and it became a major center of the trade in Chinese silk, porcelain, and tea, much of which was re-exported to Europe. The Portuguese also visited Japan, and the small island of Dejima in Nagasaki harbor was a center of Dutch and Portuguese trade with Japan during the period of Japanese seclusion (1641–1853).