Portugal

Portugal is a country in Europe. It was a great seafaring nation and built the world's first European overseas empire, which also turned out to be the last. It was a ancient kingdom until 1910 and after a revolution became a republic the following year. Its most notable head of government in the 20th century was Dr. António de Oliveira Salazar (1889–1970).

Portugal fought notable wars against Soviet-supplied communist terrorists in her African colonies. A sad loss for Portugal was when India invaded (December 1961) and annexed their colony of Goa, which Portugal had held for over 450 years, since 1510.

The so-called Carnation Revolution (Portuguese: Revolução dos Cravos) was a military coup by Left-leaning military officers that overthrew the Estado Novo government on 25 April 1974 in Lisbon, producing major social, economic, territorial, demographic, and political changes in Portugal and its overseas colonies through the Processo Revolucionário Em Curso. It resulted in the Portuguese transition to democracy and the abandonment of Portugal's colonies in Africa.

History

Kingdom of Portugal

Portugal is one of the oldest countries in Europe. It’s history is the combination of the story of Iberian tribes, Celtic peoples, the Roman Empire, Germanic kingdoms, Muslim invasions and the consequent Christian Reconquista, and finally, of the Exploration of the World. In Portugal, the territory became controlled by the Germanic in the 5th century. The Kingdom of the Suebi controlled Galicia and the North and Center of Portugal, while the Visigothic Kingdom controlled the rest of the Iberian Peninsula, including the rest of Portugal, until eventually conquering the Suebi and, consequently, the whole of Iberia. This is when the rigid class structure appeared in the country, with a Nobility and Clergy getting more and more political and social power.

Portugal was founded in 1143, year of the Zamora’s Treaty signing. The treaty, agreed upon by D. Afonso Henriques, the first King of Portugal, and Alphonse the VII of León and Castile, recognized Portugal as an independent kingdom. However, it was only in 1179 that a papal bull by Pope Alexander the III officially recognized Afonso I as king. The Reconquista continued with the Algarve, the south of the country, finally being conquered in 1249, and Lisbon becoming the capital in 1255. Since then, Portugal’s land borders have remained almost unchanged, being considered one of the longest standing borders in Europe.

The Kingdom of Portugal emerged in the 12th century connected with the process concerning the Christian reconquest of the Iberian Peninsula. At the same time that all the territories occupied by the Moors were conquered southwards Portugal, originally a county and a part of one of the most ancient Christian kingdoms of the Peninsula - Leão - demanded its independence in 1143. Due to endless fights and negotiations D. Afonso I, first king of Portugal, was awarded by the pope (1179) with the papal bull manifestis probatum thus bringing stability. At the eyes of all the Christian world, that meant the birth of a new kingdom in a part of the world were the fight against the infidels would be reinforced by a backup force of attack (The Palestine and the Peninsula). The concept of crusade and the believe that all peninsular kings descent from an ancient visigotic monarchy justified all the Southern process of conquest in the al-Andaluz. The support of the church was unquestionable - the crusaders (conquest of Lisbon and Silves) and the religious and military orders gave a big help to the birth of several kingdoms by their endless effort of conquest and settlement. The peculiarity of the kingdom's formation lies in the various ways by the which the territory was occupied. To all the well known European feudal forms of occupation - by the nobility, by the clergy and the allotment, the council land is added. It is an autonomous form serveyed between the king or the nobel and a community of free men, it derives from an effort to populate deserted territories and it was carried out by kings and nobels during the conquest process. The word council is still used in the modern local administration. [...] Portugal was an expert concerning the technological development of cartography and navigation and that enabled us in the 15th century of discoveries. The inventions and the technical improvements have the most various roots, though Portugal's geographical position and its cultural cohesion were a step ahead to find new things. A nautical culture was being built. The motivation to the great adventure was bottom line the food and workers scarcity. Social and economic reasons do not justify such deed. In that period it was important to fight the infidel and save souls. Foreign people (such as Italians or Catalonians, castilians, bascs, northern Europeans and muslins) also wanted to take part on the crusade enterprise but with their own interests. Above all, the discoveries enterprise was seen as a way of increasing the national patrimony and treasure. In the beginning of the 15th century, due to the crisis felt through all Europe during the 14th century, Portugal was dealing with serious economical problems. It was urgent to find new resources, spereead the Christian belief to new people and fulfil the desire to find/know new lands. [...]

The echoes of the French revolution were also felt in Portugal, ending with the Ancient Regime (Antigo Regime). The ideals of this revolution were in a way gladly acknowledge by some people, however they were violently imposed by three invasions (1807, 1808, 1810). The royal family fled to Brazil keeping Portugal's independence and its government, even ruling from overseas. Meanwhile the British, taking advantage of several popular uprisings all over the Peninsula against the French dominion, send troops to another European battle field. With the end of the Napoleonic Wars, England enjoys a privileged governmental position controlling all commercial relationships with the colonies and the rest of the world (Oporto and Madeira wine). While the king was still in Brazil there a was in Portugal and uprising against Beresford (Who represented the British interests in Portugal), the idea was to expel him out of the country. People were getting angrier every day and the acceptance to the French Revolution ideals - Liberty, Equality and Fraternity - was growing. So, in 1820 a group of liberals organised an uprising in Oporto that spread through out the country. Government was set in the hand of a temporary committee whose task was organise the first elections and write a constitution, which would be published in 1822. That is how a constitutional monarchy was born. The loss of Brazil in 1822 shows a period of troubled times to the liberals. The remaining supporters of an absolute system went to a civil war that lasted until 1834, the liberals won the war, they were led by D. Pedro, brother of the leader of the absolutist wing, D. Miguel. Liberal governments do serious agrarian and industrial reforms in the country, and also in transports and public affairs. It is obvious that the progress in commerce is due to the development of the communications. The technological delay, the lack of capital, loosen investments, the foreign competition in main economical sectors, opposite policies of development led to a slight gap between Portugal and the rest of the world. Like the Berlin Conference (1884-85) has confirmed, other European major countries were looking for new markets and raw materials, but Portugal was far back in this race, though without enlarging its possessions, Portugal still maintained, with some effort, the colonies. There were many problems with which the monarchic government could not deal with: in one hand the people unsatisfaction, and in the other hand the growing group of republican supporters that were against the government. In fact on 1 February of 1908 in an attack against the royal family D. Carlos and the heir prince D. Luís Filipe, are killed. D. Manuel II (the second son of D. Carlos) was recognised king of Portugal by the end of that same year. He was the last king of Portugal. During the two last years of is reign the revolution movements did not stop growing. On 5 October 1910 it was proclaimed the Republic in Lisbon, the royal family was expelled out of country.

In 1578, King Sebastian of Portugal from the House of Aviz was killed in battle without any heirs, causing a succession crisis. He was succeeded by his elderly great-uncle Henrique who was a Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church and had no descendants because he had taken a vow of chastity as a priest. When Cardinal-King Enrique died two years later, three grandchildren of Manuel I, King of Portugal (1469 – 1521) claimed the Portuguese throne. Ultimately, the grandchild who was successful in his claim was Felipe II, King of Spain. The Iberian Union was the union of the Kingdom of Spain and the Kingdom of Portugal that existed between 1580 and 1640, under the Spanish Habsburg kings Felipe II, Felipe III, and Felipe IV who reigned in Portugal under the names Filipe I, Filipe II, and Filipe III.

The earliest relationship between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation began in the High Middle Ages, when German crusaders helped to recapture the City of Lisbon in 1147. However, the time of the Portuguese Reconquista ended in the first half of the thirteenth century. Later, after the Succession crisis (1383–1385), as it is known, the House of Avis established the second dynasty of kings in Portugal (1385–1580) and the “golden era” of the Portuguese discoveries began. In this age, Infante Pedro, Duke of Coimbra (1392–1449), the brother of the Portuguese king Dom Duarte I (Edward, called the “philosopher”, ruled from 1433 to 1438), traveled throughout Europe. Few historians are aware that Pedro even lived at the Habsburg Court, from 1426 to 1428. His arrival in Vienna on 28th March 1426 is well documented in the so-called Kleine Klosterneuburger Chronik, a chronicle of the Austrian monastery Klosterneuburg not far from Vienna, where it is written: “im selben jar […] da kham hergefahrn ein khünigs sun von pordigall, mit seinem volckh, auf 300 guets volckh, er khunt nit teutsch, aber guet lateynisch” (“in the same year […], a son of the king of Portugal came with 300 good people; he could not speak German, but very well Latin”). Pedro was not only the brother of Infante Henrique (“the Navigator”, 1394–1460), who played a significant role for the Portuguese expeditions in these times, but he was also the uncle of Infanta Leonor (Eleanor of Portugal, 1436–1467), who married the Holy Roman Emperor Friedrich III (Frederick III, life dates: 1415–1493) in 1452. Leonor died 15 years later, on 3th September 1467 in Wiener Neustadt, with the young age of 33 years. Her tomb with an impressive tomb slab can be found in the local Cistercian abbey (Neuklosterkirche zur Heiligen Dreifaltigkeit), where also her chambermaid, the Portuguese noblewoman Beatrix Lopi († 9th April 1453), was buried. [...] Already in the Late Middle Ages, the “Bartholomäus-Brüderschaft” (“confraria de São Bartolomeu”)16, a fraternity devoted to Saint Bartholomew, was founded in Lisbon by German-speaking immigrants. It was a Hanseatic timber merchant, Michael Overstädt (Miguel Sobrevila, probably a counselor of D. Dinis I of Portugal), who possessed a storage yard in Lisbon on the northern bank of the river Tejo. On the side of the present-day Praça do Município he built a chapel, which served as a place for devotions to the Holy Apostle Bartholomew. But the chapel was pulled down only a few years later. In exchange for this, it was incorporated into the larger church of S. Julião, which was completed around 1290/1291. This is the traditional date for the foundation of the “Bartholomäusbruderschaft”, which functioned mainly as a guild for the German merchant community in Lisbon. The ecclesiastical fraternity supported the acquisition and maintenance of the Lisbon chapel18 as well as the salary of its own priest (who ministered already in the German language), but also supported charity-projects in Lisbon, such as the creation of its own cimitery in 1425, and the foundation of the first German hospital in 1495. However, it was during the second half of the fifteenth century when the character of this society changed to become a fraternity of German soldiers (“confraria dos bombardeiros alemães” with “bombardeiros da nómina”, cannoneers and Renaissance craftsmen as members), so that the merchants moved into another chapel of S. Julião (devoted to Saint Sebastian). The two fraternities were only reunited in the seventeenth century. The “Bartholomäus-Brüderschaft”, which has a long and very interesting history, has influenced the cultural life in Lisbon over centuries and still exists today. In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese empire expanded, with the help inter alia of German and Flemish mercenaries, under the reign of King Dom Manuel I (“the Fortunate”, ruled 1495–1521) into Africa, India and Asia. In 1514, Manuel gave the famous elephant Hanno as a present to Pope Leo X (1513–1521), and during his reign a new architectural style, called “estilo manuelino” (Manueline style), was established. His third wife, which he married in 1519, was Eleonor of Austria (Eleanor of Castile, 1498–1558, who later became also Queen Consort of France).

The House of Braganza, a cadet branch of the German House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, came to power in Portugal after deposing the Spanish Habsburg Philippine dynasty in the Portuguese Restoration War, resulting in João, 8th Duke of Braganza becoming King João IV of Portugal, in 1640. From 1640 to 1822, the Braganzas ruled Portugal and the Portuguese Empire. In 1822, Brazil, part of the Portuguese Empire, became independent and the Braganzas also reigned as the Emperors of Brazil. The Braganzas lost their power when Emperor Pedro II was deposed in Brazil in 1889 and when King Manuel II was deposed in Portugal in 1910.

United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves

The United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (1815–1825) was a pluricontinental monarchy formed by the elevation of the Portuguese colony named State of Brazil to the status of a kingdom and by the simultaneous union of that Kingdom of Brazil with the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of the Algarves, constituting a single state consisting of three kingdoms. It came into being in the wake of Portugal's war with Napoleonic France. The Portuguese Prince Regent (the future King John VI), with his incapacitated mother (Queen Maria I of Portugal) and the Royal Court, fled to the colony of Brazil in 1808. By a law issued by the Prince Regent on 16 December 1815, the colony of Brazil was thus elevated to the rank of a kingdom and by the same law the separate kingdoms of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves were united as a single state.

Portugal recognized the sovereignty of Brazil only in 1825. Since a coup d'etát on 3 June 1823 the Portuguese King John VI had already abolished the Constitution of 1822 and dissolved the Cortes, thus reversing the Liberal Revolution of 1820. On 4 January 1824 King John VI issued a Charter of Law confirming as in force the "traditional laws of the Portuguese Monarchy", thus ratifying the restoration of the absolutist régime in Portugal.

There were two Portuguese acts of recognition of Brazilian independence. The first was unilateral and purporting to be constitutive of such independence, the second was bilateral and declaratory.

The first act of recognition was materialized in Letters Patent issued on 13 May 1825, by which the Portuguese King "voluntarily ceded and transferred the sovereignty" over Brazil to his son, the Brazilian Emperor, and thus recognized, as a result of this concession, Brazil as an "Independent Empire, separate from the Kingdoms of Portugal and Algarves".

The second act of recognition was materialized in a Treaty of Peace signed in Rio de Janeiro on 29 August 1825, by means of which Portugal again recognized the independence of Brazil. This Treaty was ratified by the Emperor of Brazil on 30 August 1825, and by the King of Portugal on 15 November 1825, and entered into force in international Law also on 15 November 1825 upon the exchange of the instruments of ratification in Lisbon. On the same date of the signature of the Portuguese instrument of ratification and of the exchange of the ratification documents between the representatives of the two Nations, the Portuguese King also signed a Charter of Law, a statute, ordering the execution of the Treaty as part of the domestic Law of Portugal. The Treaty was incorporated as part of the domestic Law of Brazil by a Decree of Emperor Pedro I signed on 10 April 1826.

Sources

• Axelson, Eric, Portuguese in South-East Africa 1488-1600, Struik pubs., University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, 1973. ISBN: 0-85494-193-2
• Boxer, Charles R., The Portuguese Seaborne Empire 1415-1825, Carncanet, U.K., 1991, ISBN: 0-85635-962-9
• Bruce, Neil, Portugal: The Last Empire, David & Charles, U.K., 1975, ISBN: 0-7153-6956-3
• Derrick, Michael, The Portugal of Salazar, The Palladin Press, London, 1938.
• Egerton, F.C.C., Salazar: Rebuilder of Portugal, Hodder & Stoughton, London, August 1943.

External links

• Encyclopedia.com: Portugal