ABSTRACT
Portugal’s most important colony was Brazil, the territory of which was gradually pushed west, at the expense of Spain, across the Tordesillas line (see Figure 2.1) into Amazonia, the interior of South America. The various Portuguese settlements in Brazil stayed together as a single political unit to form a new independent state early in the nineteenth century. Portugal also controlled stretches of coast in Africa, territories behind which the colonies of Angola and Portuguese East Africa (now Mozambique) expanded inland late in the nineteenth century.
