A Brief History of Portugal
From the Roman and Moorish empires to the present day
Travelling around modern Portugal you can see the influence of the various peoples who have contributed to its history. the vestiges of Celtic language that remain in the modern language, the chestnut trees and vines introduced by the Romans, the olive trees, tiles and cooking methods brought by the Moors.
History books describe the early recorded history of Portugal as waves of invading armies - Romans, visigoths and vandals, followed by Moors and then re-conquered by European warlords returning from the Crusades. However, the question must be asked as to whether the populations of the country really changed, or was there were merely changes in who they paid taxes to.
Roman Mosaic
Paulo Magalhães
It was the Greeks who bestowed the name of Iberia to the pennisular that incorporates Portugal and Spain but the Romans eventually took the region and named it Hispania (or Lusitania), with Olisipo (Lisbon) as the western capital of the Roman empire. The Romans provided the predominately Latin roots of the Portuguese language, as well as the road networks that formed the basis of todays motorways and connections to the rest of Europe.
Rising up from north Africa, inspired by the prophet who had died only 79 years earlier, came the Muslim invaders in 711 AD. The Moors held power in Portugal and Spain for the next four centuries. In 1147 Dom Afonso Henriques, the first king of Portugal, led an assault against the Moors aided by mercenaries from across Europe. The decisive battle for the capital took place at the castle in Lisbon, which in victory, the Portuguese turned into the castle of Saint George.
It took another 100 years for the Portuguese to finally complete the reconquest of Portugal. Many of the Moors continued to live in Portugal and converted to Christianity. In fact, the area around the castle, where Fado music was born, has long been refered to as the Moorish quarter.
By the 12th Century Portuguese merchants were trading with the English and the Italians and over time ships began arriving in Lisbon carrying Milanese, Genoese, Catalan and Majorcan traders and travellers.
Painted Tiles - José Manuel
The Portuguese pioneered the concept of overseas colonisation on the islands of the Atlantic. Vasco de Gama became the first European to sail down western Africa and travel round the Cape of Good Hope to reach India in 1492. Indian pepper and cotton soon began to be shipped to Portugal, followed by Chinese silk and porcelian and later, Indonesian perfume and spice as the Portuguese expanded their trade routes through the Far East. In 1500 Portuguese ships landed on the shores of what would become its greatest colony, the vast and rich lands of Brazil. As a result of these pioneering explorations Portugal became the supreme global empire of the 15th and 16th centuries.
With imperial expansion came exploitation, in this case the creation of a vast trans-atlantic slave trade. The Portuguese explorers who reached Angola and Kongo found an environment inwhich local chiefs could supply them with slaves, usually people captured on raiding parties against rival clans, or people accused of criminal acts or withcraft. The numbers of African´s brought to Portuguese shores during this period is suprisingly high, at one point 10 per cent of the population of Evora was black. With the discovery of Brazil the slave trade boomed, marking the beginning of a trade that Britain, Holland, Spain and France also embraced and eventually took over from the Portuguese.
In 1568 a 14 year old boy called Sebastian was crowned King of Portugal. By the late 1570's, the now wild and fanatical, King Sebastian led a disastrous attempt to conquer Morocco. The invasion led to his death and the destruction or enslavement of all but one hundred of his army of over 20,000. The royal succession was determined in favour of the Spanish Habsburgs. With the ascension of Philip II of Spain, all of the Iberian Peninsula was brought under Spanish rule. The rebellion against Spanish rule broke out in 1640 and continued for the next three decades until 1668 when the Treaty of Lisbon acknowledged Portuguese independence.
Portugal entered into the Treaty of Windsor in 1386 which promoted trade between the two countries and created a useful alliance to counterbalance France's power. For a long time the treaties signed Portugal signed worked primarily in Britains favour by giving them cheap access to Portuguese cloth and Port wine, however it proved essential for Portugal when Napoleon invaded in 1807. The following year Wellingtons armies entered Portugal and spent the next three years battling the French in Oporto, Almeida and Busaco.
The revolutionary ideas that had taken seed in France eventually spread to Portugal and the "Liberal Revolution" led to the first elections being held in Oporto in 1820. Over the next thirty years Portugal went through the inevitable phases of radical reformism, reactionary backlash, civil war, mass uprising and urban terror, until 1851 when the revolution ended and a transformed Portugal settled into stability.
Despite the overthrow of the aristocracy and the empowerment of the bourgeoisie very little in the way of dramatic modernisation occured, although there was a large growth in the textile and glass industries and vigorous programmes of public works. The Brazilian colony that Portugal had relied upon for its wealth had become independent in 1822, and now most of the money came from remittances sent home from Portuguese migrant workers and the wine trade. Portugal attempted to build a new empire in Africa but came into collision with Britains colonial ambitions.
In 1890 Britain issued an ultimatum to Portugal over Central African heartlands that Cecil Rhodes was claiming. Portugal capitulated leading to countrywide demonstrations and a discrediting of the government. Proletarian uprisings, of both democrats and anarchists, eventually led to the toppling of the monarchy and the declaration of a liberal republic in 1910. However, unable to satisfy the demands of the rising proletariat and the middle classes, the liberal republic was soon overthrown in the military coup of 1926.
For the following fifty years Portugal was ruled by an authoritarian conservative dictatorship known as the "Estado Novo" (The New State). Although the New State was essentially a fascist regime, Portugal remained neutral during the second World War. Because of its anti-communist platform the dictatorship was tolerated by the allies following the end of the war. After a long period of economic recession Portugal experienced a rapid increase in wealth as a result of renewed vitality in its African colonies and the large expansion in the European market for Portuguese migrant workers.
By 1974 industrialists and the military desired a faster pace of modernisation and the growth of independence movements in its African colonies led to another military coup d'etat this time led by the left. Portugal experienced a brief flirtation with Marxist ideology but General Antonio Eanes was elected keeper of the constitution and for the next ten years the democratice process was allowed to evolve without military interference. In 1986 president Mario Soares brought Portugal into the European Community and since then the country has been governed according to moderate-centre politics. The rapid economic expansion that the country underwent in the 80´s and 90´s has slowed over recent years, but Portugal´s entry into the EU has focused the political culture which is now driven by greater involvement with other European nations.