Then, in the early fifteenth century, this unlikely springboard for Western expansion suddenly began to accumulate an empire of its own, eventually extending more than halfway around the globe. The ...
Pelúcia, Alexandra 2022. La privanza de un rey inesperado: las primeras expresiones de favoritismo de D Manuel I de Portugal. Librosdelacorte.es, p. 174.
It was the largest empire by land area ever at that point in history. The Portuguese Empire reached 4 million square miles at its height in 1815, before losing Brazil and most of the rest in the ...
The British Empire stretched over 13 million square miles across several continents—23 percent of the world's land—at its height in 1922, whence comes the phrase: "The sun never sets on the ...