Timeline of Portuguese history

This is a timeline of Portuguese history, comprising important legal and territorial changes and political events in Portugal and its predecessor states. To read about the background to these events, see History of Portugal.

Throughout recorded history, the lands that belong to modern-day mainland Portugal were part of three main lines of political authority (sometimes simultaneously):

• the Roman Republic (3rd century BC to 1st century BC), the Roman Empire (1st century BC to 5th century), and the Byzantine Empire (6th to 7th centuries);
• the Suebi Kingdom (5th to 6th centuries), the Visigothic Kingdom (5th to 8th centuries), the Kingdom of Asturias (8th century to 10th century), the Kingdom of Galicia (9th to 12th century), and the Kingdom of Léon (10th to 12th century);
• the Umayaad Caliphate (8th century), the Emirate and later Caliphate of Córdoba (8th to 10th centuries), various taifas during the Taifa Period (11th century), and the Abbasid Caliphate (through the Almoravids, 11th to 13th century).

Portugal became independent from the Kingdom of Léon as the Kingdom of Portugal (12th to 20th centuries) as a result of the Portuguese Reconquista (8th to 12th centuries), expanded outside mainland Portugal in the Portuguese Discoveries (15th and 16th centuries), was united with the Kingdom of Spain due to a succession crisis (16th to 17th centuries), split from Spain in the aftermath of the Portuguese Restoration War (17th century) and lost Brazil when the Portuguese Prince declared its independence from Portugal (19th century). Portugal then became a constitutional monarchy alternating between three different constitutions: the 1822 Constitution, the Constitutional Charter of 1826 , and the Portuguese Constitution of 1838 (19th century), until it finally became a Republic (20th century to modern-day) under three forms: the first Portuguese Republic, the Estado Novo, and the current Portuguese Republic. In the latter Republic, Portugal granted independence to all of its overseas possessions acquired in the Discoveries, except for the nearby archipelagos of Azores and Madeira, which are autonomous regions of Portugal.