[Rocha]

Your friend has a very limited view of world history.

Picking up small Portugal, and just from scratch, I leave a small compendium of the conflicts were we where protagonists:

- Portuguese Reconquista (868–1249)

- After the Reconquista – conflicts with Castile (1279-1415)

- Imperial expansion:

Portuguese–Mamluk war
Persian–Portuguese war
Portuguese intervention in Abyssinia
Portuguese conquest of Jaffna Kingdom
Dutch–Portuguese War
Battle of Alcácer Quibir
Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts
Conquest of Tunis (1535)
Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1538–57)
Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1558–66)
Ottoman–Portuguese conflicts (1580–89)
Ottoman–Venetian War (1714–18)
Guaraní War
Portuguese conquest of the Banda Oriental

- Independence Wars

War of the Portuguese Succession
Portuguese Restoration War
War of the Spanish Succession
Spanish–Portuguese War (1735–37)
Spanish–Portuguese War (1761–63)
Spanish–Portuguese War (1776–77)

- Napoleonic Wars:

Peninsular War (1807–14)

- Civil Wars (1820–51)

- Colonization of Africa (19th century)

- World War I (1916–18)

- Spanish Civil War (1936–39)

- Portuguese–Indian War (1961)

- Portuguese Colonial War (1961–74)

Many others are missing...