History of Portugal (1640–1777) put to the test in 1762 when Spain invaded aided by France, during the Seven Years' War. Britain invoked its alliance with Portugal and sent troops. Several months later, the conflict was settled with comparatively little fighting. In 1777, Spain and Portugal signed the Treaty of San Ildefonso, which mainly resolved a number of border disputes between their South American colonies. During the Age of Enlightenment, Portugal was considered one of Europe's unenlightened backwaters; it was a country of three million with 200,000 people in 538 monasteries in 1750. Melo seems to have been deeply embarrassed by Portugal's much lamented
A land without a people for a people without a land Anita Shapira wrote that "The slogan 'A land without a people for a people without a land' was common among Zionists at the end of the nineteenth, and the beginning of the twentieth century." A variation apparently first used by a Christian clergyman and Christian Restorationist, Rev. Alexander Keith, D.D., appeared in 1843, when he wrote that the Jews are "a people without a country; even as their own land, as subsequently to be shown, is in a great measure a country without a people". In its most common wording, "A land without a people and a people without a