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Portugal, Ocean

Located in southwestern Europe, Portugal is the westernmost country of mainland Europe and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the west and south and by Spain to the north and east. The Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeira are also part of Portugal.

In 1498, Vasco da Gama finally reached India and brought economic prosperity to Portugal and its then population of one million residents. , a monument to Prince Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese Age of Discovery, Lisbon. In 1500, Pedro lvares Cabral, en route to India, discovered Brazil and claimed it for Portugal. The standard view of historians is that Cabral was blown off course as he was navigating the currents of the South Atlantic, sighted the coast of South America, thereby accidentally discovering Brazil. For an account of an alternative view of the discovery of Brazil, however, see Alternative theory of the European discovery of Brazil Ten years later, Afonso de Albuquerque conquered Goa, in India, Ormuz in the Persian Strait, and Malacca in what is now a state in Malaysia. Thus, the Portuguese empire held dominion over commerce in the Indian Ocean and South Atlantic. The Portuguese sailors set out to reach Eastern Asia by sailing eastward from Europe landing in such places like Taiwan, Japan, the island of Timor, and it may also have been Portuguese sailors that were the first Europeans to discover Australia.

Source: Wikipedia > Portugal