Portuguese Migration
Portugal has long been a nation whose people emigrated. Socially significant emigration first occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries during the great explorations. Although the Portuguese established trading posts at many places in Africa and Asia, Brazil was the main colony of settlement. Later, numbers of Portuguese settled in the African colonies of Angola and Mozambique.
Emigration on a massive scale began in the second half of the 19th century and continued into the 1980s. Between 1886 and 1966, Portugal lost an estimated 2.6 million people to emigration, more than any Western European country except Ireland. The main reason for emigration, at least in modern times, was economic. Portugal was long among the poorest countries in Europe. With the countryside able to support only a portion of farmers' offspring and few opportunities in the manufacturing sector, many Portuguese had to go abroad to find work.
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Life in the Old CountryPortugal has long been a land of assimilation as well as emigration. |
Portuguese EmigrationSocially significant emigration first occurred in the 15th and 16th centuries during the great explorations. Portugal established trading posts in Africa and Asia, but Brazil was its main colony of settlement. Later, large numbers of Portuguese settled in the African colonies of Angola and Mozambique. |
Portuguese U.S. ImmigrationFrom whalers, to forty-niners, to disaster refugees, to those searching for better opportunities, the U.S. experienced waves of Portuguese immigrants from the 1800s into this millennium. |
Timeline of World EventsThe Butterfly Effect: This effect grants the power to cause a hurricane in China to a butterfly flapping its wings in New Mexico. A more rigorous way to express this is that small changes in the initial conditions lead to drastic changes in the results. Our lives are an ongoing demonstration of this principle. |
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