PORTUGAL

Between the French Revolution and the onset of World War I, Portugal experienced both decline and revival in its overseas empire as well as in its economy and society. In politics, this small Iberian state underwent waves of revolutionary change. As of 1800, Portugal, with one of the largest contemporary overseas empires, was in a relatively stronger position vis-à-vis the other European imperial powers, than it was a century earlier or later. Following an imperial decline from 1580 to 1700, Portugal experienced a limited, imperial revival based largely on the resources of massive Brazil, its richly endowed but restive South American colony. Following French occupation of Portugal in 1807 and the opening of Brazil to foreign traders in 1808, Portugal's revival of imperial power and influence ended, its political system was destabilized, and its economy weakened. When Brazil declared its independence in 1822, Portugal confronted a crisis on the order of magnitude of the post-1580 decline; Portugal's very independence as a sovereign state seemed in peril.

from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and civil war (1789–1834)

The Peninsular Wars had a profound impact on Portugal and its people. After frustrating diplomatic skirmishing Napoleon (r. 1804–1814/15) sent French armies into Spain and Portugal. In vain Portugal tried to avoid involvement in the growing conflict between England and France. The first French invasion of Portugal in 1807–1808 precipitated the flight of the royal family and its retinue to Brazil, Portugal's jewel in the crown, transported and protected by an English fleet.

A major external factor was English intervention in Portuguese affairs. This reached a zenith during the nineteenth century and played a persistent role in both foreign and domestic affairs. Despite the fact that England defended Portugal from other foreign invaders on nearly a dozen occasions beginning in 1385, relations between the allies were uneasy. Sustained resistance to English intrusion became one key element in the psychology of Portuguese nationalism and imperialism as well as in Lisbon's efforts for a greater freedom of maneuver. The policies in dispute ranged from how to handle the suppression of the slave trade and slavery itself; questions of trade and industry; diplomacy connected to territorial claims; the maintenance of constitutional monarchy and the expansion of empire, and economic and financial issues.

Portugal's dogged push for a tropical African empire after 1822 was in part driven by resentment of a position of dependency under its oldest ally. The relationship was troubled by English highhandedness and the disparity in power and status. England was the world's leading power while Portugal, especially after the loss of Brazil in 1822, slipped in importance as a power and became more dependent on Britain for defense. Indeed, in a standard diplomatic historical account of the 1960s, the former Portuguese prime minister Marcello Caetano (1906–1980) aptly described the nineteenth century of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance as "The English Century," a period in which Portugal became, in effect, a dependent protectorate of its ally.

The French invaded Portugal on three occasions beginning in 1807 and their actions transformed Portugal's political system, endangered Portugal's hold on its empire, and brought greater English influence over Portugal. Yet again armed forces of Britain rescued an imperiled Portugal as the Duke of Wellington's (1769–1852) invading armies defeated and expelled the French and took the war across the frontier into Spain. By 1811 the French occupying forces had withdrawn but British officers governed the country until after the return of King John VI (r. 1816–1826) from Brazil in 1821.

In the meantime Portuguese constitutional liberals engineered a revolution in 1820 and demanded the king in Brazil return to Portugal and accept their constitution, a radical document that empowered parliament and stripped the constitutional monarch of most powers. The constitutional liberals called for an end to absolute monarchy, a reform of the economy, the end of noble privileges, and an abolition of entailed estates so that a rising middle class of non-nobles could own property. Ideas derived from the French Revolution, such as liberty, equality, and fraternity, were also discussed.

King John VI returned from Brazil in 1821 as a reluctant constitutionalist, and soon counterrevolutionary forces opposed the constitutional liberals' reform ideas and policies and abrogated the 1822 constitution. John's older son, Dom Pedro (1798–1834), remained in Brazil and helped engineer the declaration of independence for Brazil in 1822 and Brazil's secession from the Empire. There followed a struggle in Portugal, which lasted more than a decade, to determine if a constitutional monarchy system would prevail or if there would be return to an absolute monarchy, which eschewed any constitutional mandates or any social and economic reforms. The struggle reached another stage following the death of John VI in 1826.

Yet again an imperial question was at the center of a political sea change. The heir-presumptive, Pedro, was emperor of Brazil at the time and did not want the Portuguese throne for himself. Yet his brother, Miguel, who hankered after that throne, was a reactionary absolutist whose political values were in conflict with the liberal Pedro. Pedro was anxious, however, to restore political and family peace to Portugal. A compromise family agreement was reached, based on a new 1826 Charter or Constitution, designed by Pedro in Brazil and brought to Portugal, and on a family marriage agreement whereby Pedro's young daughter Maria Da Glória (r. 1834–1853), although only seven years old, eventually would wed Pedro's younger brother, Miguel (1802–1866), the darling of the Absolutist Monarchy party. The agreement collapsed when Miguel proclaimed himself king and refused to swear loyalty to the 1826 Charter. Beginning in 1828, Miguel's contested rule imposed reaction and repression on Portugal.

In 1831 Portugal's travail and Brazilian instability moved Pedro to abdicate as emperor of the Brazilian Empire, prepare an armed expedition, and return to Portugal to oppose Miguelite rule. Pedro's cause was supported initially by risings in the Azores Islands and in continental Portugal. In 1832 Pedro landed an army to fight in Portugal. There followed a civil war between the constitutionalists aligned with Pedro and the absolutists who supported Miguel, "The War of the Two Brothers," which lasted from 1832 to 1834.

consolidating constitutional monarchy and the regeneration (1834–1870)

The victory in 1834 of the constitutionalists over the absolutists in the War of the Two Brothers marked the end of one historical era and the beginning of another, and the beginning phase of the consolidation of Portugal's constitutional monarchy. The 1826 constitution, nicknamed "The Charter," born in Brazil but conceived in France, became the dominant constitutional instrument during much of the remainder of the constitutional monarchy. Its principal element was the monarch's "moderating power," a means of balancing the powers of different branches of government and providing stability and continuity when political dissension and inaction threatened good governance. Parliament consisted of two houses, the lower elected and the higher appointed.

The liberal constitutionalists who came to power in the years 1834 to 1836 passed key liberal legislation to institute basic reforms. To pay off large debts incurred during the wars fought between 1807 and 1834, the state confiscated the lands owned by the Catholic Church, abolished monasteries and convents, and put church lands up for sale. As these lands sold at auction, a new landed upper middle class emerged, part of the constitutional monarchist establishment. The land sales were intended to address the land distribution issue; most Portuguese who worked the land were landless and the middle and lower classes under the Old Regime could not legally own property. The new system, despite its good intentions, did not facilitate true land reform. Some aspects of liberal reform were successful: educational reforms, a standard system of currency, weights and measures, and a national transportation and communications system through the construction after 1850 of a railroad network and a telegraph system. In the 1860s entailed estates, key factors of the Old Regime, were finally abolished. The period of 1851 to 1870 was known as "The Regeneration," a time of new social and economic reforms and greater political stability.

Reform, however, was slow and radical reformers were frustrated. The so-called Generation of 1870 featured intellectuals who studied at Portugal's only full-fledged university of the time, the University of Coimbra, and who rebelled against conventional society and its political system which they saw as isolated, narrow-minded, ultraclerical, ignorant, and reactionary. These voices of reform included the novelist Jose Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845–1900), the poet Antero Tarquînio de Quental (1842–1891), and the economist Joquim Pedro de Oliveira Martins (1845–1894). They proposed radical land reform; the disestablishment of the Catholic Church; a secular educational system; and greater freedom of the press, of speech, and of assembly, but such reformist notions were in large part ignored or evaded.

economic progress and failure in political reform (1870–1890)

While Portugal remained one of the poorest, least developed of western European states, after the failure of the radicals of the Generation of 1870 to institute their reforms, some economic progress continued. If the wolf of bankruptcy seemed always at the nation's door, Portugal's transportation and communications infrastructure experienced improvements. With assistance from foreign investors and engineers, especially from France, Belgium, and Britain, Portuguese railroads, trams, and telegraph systems were extended. In 1889 those "roads of iron" reached an important milestone: Portugal's rail system was connected at the frontier with Spain's. Now a traveler in Lisbon could take a train through Spain and across France to Paris and back.

For a resource-hungry country like Portugal, however, progress had its price and one cost of extending the railroad network was an increased foreign debt, a sensitive issue in a country where foreign investment could be judged as a prelude to foreign control. Earlier examples, when British or French armies ruled Portugal between the French invasions (1807–1811) and the return of King John VI from Brazil in 1821, were not easily forgotten. In 1890 Portugal's national finances were close to bankruptcy, which alarmed volatile politicians and worsened the national uproar over the "English ultimatum" crisis that began in January 1890. This crisis was based on a dispute between Britain and Portugal over Central African territory.

The tragedy of this troubled constitutional monarchy was not only institutional but also personal: the royal family sustained heavy losses in its efforts to adapt the monarchy to the new system. In 1834 the former emperor of Brazil, the exhausted Dom Pedro of Braganza, succumbed to tuberculosis at age thirty-six, only months after his forces triumphed in the Civil War. Following the death in 1853 of Queen Maria II in childbirth at age thirty-four Portugal was ruled by other courageous monarchs who also possessed special aptitudes. Young King Pedro V (r. 1853–1861), well educated and with prodigious intellectual gifts, began his brief reign with great promise, only to die of typhoid at age twenty-four. The brother who succeeded him, King Luis I (r. 1861–1889), was not as talented as Pedro but was a steady, conscientious leader during a long reign. His son, Carlos I (r. 1889–1908), who succeeded him, was more gifted than his father, but confronted a more challenging era, which began with a crisis after the English ultimatum incident of January 1890, when Britain humiliated Portugal and nearly declared war over disputed territory in Central Africa.

from monarchy to republic (1890–1910)

The ultimatum crisis produced an emotional, violent nationalistic response, weakened the monarchy, encouraged republicans and impelled Portugal finally to occupy and pacify larger portions of its tropical African empire. Riots broke out in Lisbon and in other towns. Despite the fact that there was little Portugal could have done so late in the scramble for Africa to thwart British action, the monarchy along with establishment politicians were discredited by the ultimatum and the idea of a republic that would bring "national salvation" and restore lost prestige attracted supporters. In January 1890 as Portuguese armed forces maneuvered in Central Africa, in what is now Malawi, Britain became aggressive toward its oldest ally and, in order to annex the area itself, demanded that Portugal withdraw all its forces. Humiliated but helpless before the threat of British naval action, a declaration of war, and an abrogation of the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, Portugal ordered the withdrawal of its expedition from Central Africa and the Government resigned.

The political consequences of the English ultimatum crisis were significant. Although the immediate crisis dissipated when in January 1891 the government easily crushed an abortive military coup in Oporto, the crisis continued. The party system, although prodded by young King Carlos, failed to adopt genuine reform and remained corrupt. This era featured the increasing instability of governments that came and went rapidly, lack of administrative continuity, fractiousness of the political parties, and an increase in public violence, including the renewal of military rebellions. The now-historic tradition of military insurrectionism, which began in Spain and Spanish America and emerged in Portugal as early as 1817, was revived after a hiatus of some decades (1860–1890) as republicans encouraged military rebellions in order to overthrow the monarchy.

The rise of republicanism after 1890 was encouraged, too, by secret or semisecret societies of militants, including well-educated Masonic orders as well as the Carbonária, a radical republican group, which advocated terrorist methods to achieve power. While some republican deputies managed to be elected to the parliament after 1900, a pattern restricted to Lisbon and Oporto, legal, peaceful ways of replacing the monarchists and gaining public office were blocked by the closed system, including rigged elections, heavy-handed police repression and press censorship. Urbanization burgeoned after 1890 and extremist elements, including anarchists and anarcho-syndicalists, grew more active. As conspiracies multiplied the government responded harshly to yet another republican coup plot in late 1907. By this time, the king, Carlos I, and his family had become fully identified with the failing system and he became a target of militants who in an age of political assassination believed in the anarchist-terrorist doctrine of the propaganda of the deed.

On 1 February 1908 in the streets of Lisbon, several republican Carbonária shot dead King Carlos and his eldest son, Luis Filipe, the heir presumptive, in their open carriage. A shocked, slightly wounded and unprepared young King Manuel II, at age eighteen deemed "The Unfortuate," succeeded to the throne, an orphan both personally and politically. Curiously, after the unexpected tragedy, which should have aroused sympathy for the ruling group, out of fear the government in office resigned. A republican-led military and civilian insurrection and an insurgent navy, beginning on 3 October 1910, neutralized the army. On 5 October a parliamentary republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon's city hall and a new political age began.

the young republic (1910–1914)

There was initial popular enthusiasm for the republic, but the country had inherited a deadly legacy from the monarchy. This included a largely rural, illiterate, peasant population, labor unrest among

ill-paid, poor, repressed workers, a largely undeveloped, rebellious overseas empire in Africa and Asia, and heavy foreign and domestic debt. And how could this republic, only the third republic in a still largely monarchist Europe, bring genuine reform to a poor, isolated country, meet the expectations of classes that supported the republican revolution of 1910, and yet reconcile the passions of contending political forces?

The republic easily crushed armed incursions of monarchists from Spain in 1911 and 1912, but found that winning over and sustaining a broad range of supporters was more challenging. The republic's 1911 constitution, featuring parliamentary, not executive, power and the republican governing group with its assault on the Catholic Church alienated various classes of devout Catholics in a nation with an ancient Catholic tradition. Anticlerical legislation based largely on French legal models, for the first time separated church and state, expropriated all church property, legalized divorce, expelled religious orders, restricted religious worship, and secularized education. The working classes, who expected much from promises made by republican leaders and from the initial legalization of strikes, were profoundly disappointed as the republic did too little to assist organized labor or the working classes.

The Democratic Party, which dominated elections for most of the first republic, favored immediate entry into World War I on the Allied side. This policy was controversial in Portugal, however, as other political parties as well as interest groups favored neutrality or only modest support for the Allies. Few Portuguese supported the Central Powers. In the summer and fall of 1914 the Portuguese parliament (Congress of Deputies and Senate) voted to join the Allied powers, but Portugal's oldest ally, Britain, requested Portugal not to join the war but to remain neutral. Portugal remained neutral for the time being, but late in 1914 German forces in German South West Africa (today Namibia) invaded Angola. This action did not bring Portugal into the war and only later, in March 1916, under new pressure from ally Britain to seize German ships in Portugal's harbors, did Portugal enter the war on the Allied side. As World War I deepened into the trench warfare stalemate, the novice republic had a bad press in Britain due to international controversies over the republicans' treatment of monarchist political prisoners and forced-labor practices in Portugal's African colonies. Even early in its history, the republic was beginning to suffer from the political instability, social turmoil, economic distress, and military insurrectionism that would help bring it down twelve years later.

See alsoColonies; Great Britain; Spain.

bibliography

Costa Pinto, António, ed. Modern Portugal. Palo Alto, Calif., 1998. See early pages of chapters 1–3.

Eça de Queirós, Jose Maria. The Maias. Translated by Patricia McGowan Pinheiro and Ann Stevens. London, 1965. Classic nineteenth-century novel that portrays Portuguese society c. 1880, by Portugal's greatest modern novelist.

Feijó, Rui. Liberal Revolution, Social Change, and Economic Development. New York, 1993. See especially chapter 1, pp. 1–27.

Hammond, Richard James. Portugal and Africa, 1815–1910. Stanford, Calif., 1966.

Macauley, Neill. Dom Pedro: The Struggle for Liberty in Brazil and Portugal, 1798–1834. Durham, N.C., 1986.

Oliveira Marques, A. H. de. History of Portugal. 2nd ed. New York, 1976. See especially vol. 1, pp. 406–507, and vol. 2, pp. 1–137.

Wheeler, Douglas L. "The Portuguese Revolution of 1910." Journal of Modern History 44, no. 2 (June 1972): 172–194.

——. Republican Portugal. A Political History (1910–1926). Madison, Wis., 1978, See especially chapters 1–6.

Douglas L. Wheeler