Portugal, together with other neighboring countries, was part of the early European exploration wherein a lot of new lands (island, countries, etc) were discovered. They were able to held captive a mass amount of land and different rule.
During the early times, European countries did conquer
many of the Eastern territories. Among these countries is Portugal who had
great fraction of those conquered territories. They were able to widen the
scope of their governance and were able to trade most of their products to
other countries, especially to those they have conquered.
