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 re-introduced, it could never be observed as CEST (), and the only solution was to re-adopt WET as standard time. So, in 1976, Portugal adopted WET () as its standard time. DST started to be observed every year as WEST () usually from early April to later September. From 1981 on, DST started to be observed from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in September. In 1986, time in Portugal began to be calculated in accordance with UTC, instead of GMT.<ref name="Decree-Law 44-B/86"> Decree-Law 44-B/86, 7 March 1986 (in Portuguese). Retrieved 19 May 2013.</ref> In 1992, during