The Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of England first agreed to an alliance all the way back in 1386 in the Treaty of Windsor.

This treaty has been in effect ever since, even in our time, making this the oldest alliance in the world still in force, a justified point of pride for both nations.

But the awkward truth is that by the late 19th century, this treaty, though still formally in effect,

had become nearly a dead letter. But then came the Great War, which breathed a new life

into the old alliance, though not necessarily

in the way you might expect.

Welcome to the history of the 20th century. The

The Oh, and the Episode 128, a Portuguese.

I began writing this episode, intending it to be the next chapter in the story of the Great

War in Africa, which we last visited in episode 113.

But the British effort to subdue German East Africa, the one German colony that

stubbornly refuses to get subdued, is now going to include assistance

from Belgium and Portugal, assistance that the British were less than pleased to accept,

for reasons I'll get into in a few minutes.

The involvement of Belgian and Portuguese soldiers in the war in German East Africa

stems from the geographical

fact that the German colony borders not only on British East Africa and other British territories,

but also on the Belgian Congo and on Portuguese East Africa, which we know today as Mozambique.

So before I can talk about the Belgian and Portuguese roles in the fighting,

maybe we should first take a look at these neighboring colonies.

First, a quick recap on the Belgian Congo. I already talked about King Leopold's Congo

free state at length in episodes 19 and 20. At the conclusion

...