Portugal’s global trading empire – from fortified ports to faith-fuelled profits – across Africa, Brazil, and Asia.
The Portuguese Empire was built through ports, trade routes and slavery. Control of fortified ports allowed Portugal to dominate maritime commerce across Africa, Brazil and Asia, creating an empire based on movement rather than territory.
Faith played a central role in legitimising its expansion as missionaries accompanied merchants and military forces. Ports enforced systems of enslavement and forced labour, binding religious authority to economic extraction. Slavery became central to imperial wealth, linking African labour to plantations and markets across the Atlantic.
By integrating slavery into global trade networks, the Portuguese Empire played a central role in shaping modern economic systems, racial hierarchies and patterns of inequality that persist today.
Control once exercised through ports and sea routes increasingly runs through digital infrastructure, including submarine cables and data centres, as Portugal emerges as an important hub linking Europe, Africa and the Americas. Former colonies, such as Mozambique, remain shaped by extractive economic structures rooted in colonial rule while Lisbon faces mounting pressure from mass tourism and foreign real-estate investment, driving displacement and rising housing costs for local residents.
From maritime trade to data flows, the Portuguese model of power – built on controlling circulation rather than territory – continues to influence patterns of inequality in the modern world.
Published On 12 Jan 2026
