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
Land reforms by country in areas which they controlled. After the partition of the country into two parts (North Vietnam and South Vietnam), the communist land reform (1953–1956) redistributed land to more than 2 million poor peasants, but at a cost of thousands, possibly tens of thousands of lives and contributed to the exodus of up to 1 million people from the North to the South in 1954 and 1955.. The land reform campaign was accompanied by large-scale repression and excesses. some of which were subsequently criticized within the ruling Workers Party of Vietnam itself. South Vietnam made several further attempts in the post-Diem