The British and the Dutch succeeded more often to break the monopoly of the Spaniards and Portuguese in Asia.

In the 16th century, the Portuguese broke the monopoly of the Arabs and Italians of trade between Asia and Europe by the discovery of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope.

The Portuguese soon acquired a monopoly over trade in the Indian Ocean.

The Netherlands revolt against Spanish rule facilitated Dutch encroachment of the Portuguese monopoly over South and East Asian trade.

Their monopoly over the spice trade became complete after they drove the Portuguese from Malacca in 1641 and Ceylon in 1658.

This already lucrative trade became even more so when Chinese officials handed Macau's Portuguese traders a monopoly by banning direct trade with Japan in 1547, due to piracy by Chinese and Japanese nationals.

* In Amsterdam, the Compagnie van Verre is created, with the goal of breaking the Portuguese monopoly on spice trade.

In 1640, the VOC obtained the port of Galle, Ceylon, from the Portuguese and broke the latter's monopoly of the cinnamon trade.

By 1659, the Portuguese had been expelled from the coastal regions, which were then occupied by the VOC, securing for it the monopoly over cinnamon.

However, they enforced a monopoly in the Dutch Indies, and threatened to expand it to India, after having expelled the Portuguese from that region.

The resulting failures in administration brought on a gradual decline of the Portuguese trade monopoly.

By then, trade with Japan was a Portuguese monopoly under the rule of a Captain.

Its exorbitant price during the Middle Ages — and the monopoly on the trade held by Italy — was one of the inducements which led the Portuguese to seek a sea route to India.

However, the expectation of a Spanish commercial monopoly, fear of Castilian rule and the loss of Portuguese independence, reinforced by popular opposition to the regent and her allies, led to an uprising in Lisbon in late November and early December.

Cabral was originally successful in negotiating trading rights, but Arab merchants saw Portugal's venture as a threat to their monopoly and stirred up an attack by both Muslims and Hindus on the Portuguese entrepôt.

The Arabs also had no desire to allow the Portuguese to break their monopoly on access to spices.

In 1511, the Portuguese were the first Europeans to reach the city of Guangzhou by the sea, and they settled on its port for a commercial monopoly of trade with other nations.

They encouraged Spanish merchant ships to take advantage of the political disruption and considered making direct attacks on Portuguese vessels returning from Guinea, with the objective of seizing the monopoly.

In a few years, a hectic and very profitable operation for felling and shipping all the brazilwood logs they could get was established, as a crown-granted Portuguese monopoly.

For two hundred years, 1440 – 1640, Portuguese slavers had a near monopoly on the export of slaves from Africa.

Emboldened by these early successes and eyeing a lucrative monopoly on a possible sea route to the Indies the Portuguese first crossed the Cape of Good Hope in 1488 on an expedition led by Bartolomeu Dias.

According to his account the fortress was under siege by Muslims led by Suleiman the Magnificent, who was determined to overthrow the Portuguese rule in India and to maintain the Muslim monopoly on eastern trade.

Nonetheless, Portuguese forces tried to establish monopoly in spice trade using violent methods against the Arabs and other Muslim merchants from the Middle East, who had a longstanding loyal relation with the Zamorin.

Cadamosto's patron, Prince Henry the Navigator, died in November 1460, and the monopoly on African trade reverted to the Portuguese crown and its operations were gradually transferred from Lagos to Lisbon.

Dollfuss staged a parliamentary session with just his party members present in April 1934 to have his new constitution approved, effectively the second constitution in the world espousing corporatist ideas ( after that of the Portuguese Estado Novo ).

During this time, the Portuguese government effectively abandoned the territory, and did not resume the decolonisation process.

The founding of these various posts effectively shifted the slave trade in Malawi from the Portuguese in Mozambique to the Arabs of Zanzibar.

Not only were the Portuguese threatening to overrun the northern frontiers, but Argentina had also effectively closed the Río de la Plata to Paraguayan commerce by levying taxes and seizing ships.

The two papal bulls issued by Pope Nicholas V, Dum Diversas of 1452 and Romanus Pontifex of 1455, had effectively given the Portuguese the rights to acquire slaves along the African coast by force or trade.

With the 1975 – 76 independence of its colonies, other than Macau, the 560 year old Portuguese Empire effectively ended.

In 1492, John II dispatched Vasco da Gama on a mission to the port of Setúbal and to the Algarve to seize French ships in retaliation for peacetime depredations against Portuguese shipping-a task that da Gama rapidly and effectively performed.

The weakening of Spanish power at the end of the Thirty Years ' War in 1648 also meant that many colonial possessions of the Portuguese and some of the Spanish empire were effectively up for grabs.

Nevertheless the Portuguese, despite having to divide their forces among Europe, Brazil and Africa, managed to retake Luanda, in Portuguese Angola, from the Dutch in 1648 and, by 1654, had recovered most of Brazil, effectively ceasing to be a viable Dutch colony.

The decolonisation process instigated by the 1974 Portuguese revolution saw Portugal effectively abandon the colony of East Timor.

Both patriarchs sent bishops to India, but the Portuguese consistently managed to outmaneuver them, and effectively cut off the Saint Thomas Christians from their hierarchy in 1575, when the Padroado legislated that neither patriarch could send representatives to India without Portuguese approval.

Denis effectively founded the Portuguese navy under command of a Genoese admiral, Manuel Pessanha ( Portuguese form of the Italian " Pezagno "

These events effectively changed the Portuguese regime from an authoritarian dictatorship ( the Estado Novo, or " New State ") into a democracy, and produced enormous social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes in the country, after two years of a transitional period known as PREC ( Processo Revolucionário Em Curso, or On-Going Revolutionary Process ), characterized by social turmoil and power disputes between left-and right-wing political forces.

In fact as time passed they were used as a self funding occupation force by the Portuguese authorities in what was effectively a low level war of territorial conquest.

In 1914, this revolt, led by Alvaro Buta, was defeated by the Portuguese forces and the kingdom was effectively abolished and integrated into Angola.

Since the early 18th century, Portugal's government had made many efforts to expand the use of Portuguese in all the colony, particularly because its consolidation in Brazil would help guarantee to them the lands in dispute with Spain ( according to various treaties signed in the 18th century, those lands would be ceded to the people who effectively occupied them ).

By 1967, the PAIGC had carried out 147 attacks on Portuguese barracks and army encampments, and effectively controlled 2 / 3 of Portuguese Guinea.

By 1967 the PAIGC had carried out 147 attacks on Portuguese barracks and army encampments, and effectively controlled 2 / 3 of Portuguese Guinea.

These weapons effectively undermined Portuguese air superiority, preventing the destruction by air of PAIGC encampments in territory it controlled.