Portuguese East India Company Portuguese East India Company The Portuguese East India Company ( or ) was a short-lived ill-fated attempt by Philip III of Portugal to create a national chartered company to look after interests in Portuguese India in the face on encroachment by the Dutch and English following the personal union of the Portuguese and Spanish Crowns. Portuguese trade with India had been a crown monopoly since the Portuguese captain Vasco da Gama opened the sea route to India in 1497-99. The monopoly had been managed by the Casa da Índia, the royal trading house founded around 1500. The Casa was responsible
Time in Portugal Cavaco Silva government, by Decree-Law 124/92, mainland Portugal officially changed its time zone from WET () to CET ().<ref name="Decree-Law 124/92"> Decree-Law 124/92, 2 July 1992 (in Portuguese). Retrieved 12 May 2013.</ref> Differently from the 1966 move to CET, this time DST was to be observed, as CEST (), from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in September. The measure, approved without the consultation of Lisbon Observatory, had the intention of promoting energy savings, in order that “Portugal follow, in work schedules, the countries with which it maintains more frequent contacts” (DL 124/92) and so promoting economic