Rebirth of an Empire "O Renascimento de um Império" v2.0

[Lusitania]

to me it dosent matter the man manages not only to turn a poor decling empire and expanded to a great second rate power aleast and survive atempts to kill or desmise him

Yes we have to understand that world is viewing previous leaders differently. Take example of US review the civil war confederate generals or certain historical figures in UK (recent attack on statue of slaver) or the changing impression in Belgium on Leopold. Even in Canada where I live there are discussion about views and opinions of historical figures. I presume that be the case in Portugal too.

It is important to view these historical figures in proper context. What was their views and actions when compared to other people of similar class during their period. So if someone was cruel or actions resulted in death or suffering of people that was different than contemporaries. Then view that against their accomplishments.

When we view historical figures such as Pombal using these two principles we see that Pombal’s actions and opinions were no different that his peers or other leaders. Then we look at his accomplishments and the positive contribution is greater.

Even when people have negative impact at same time as positive actions we can understand both. While that person’s accomplishments may be viewed positively we much account for their actions. Therefore we might not celebrate that person in same way. A person with both negative and positive actions or just negative actions can be still viewed in the right context such as museum. Where as a person with positive can also have public display such as Marques Pombal name in his public statue and square in Lisbon. ITTL there would be several more statues of him throughout the empire and over dozen cities and even a province named after him.

In summary we cannot judge historical figures using modern ideals or attitudes only. We must view their actions and attitudes based on prevailing attitudes during their lifetime.

 

[RyuDrago]

And so an age ends. May Portugal will able to manage the struggles of the incoming revolutionary era...

 

[Lusitania]

And so an age ends. May Portugal will able to manage the struggles of the incoming revolutionary era...

Yes an age has passed. One that has transformed the country in almost every facet. The reforms have touched not only those at the very top but all people living in the empire.

This will lead us to our next section which we will post next week. In that section we discuss some of the following points:
1) political - how the transformation to a cabinet government model has changed the manner in which the country is governed.
2) nobility - how they have been impacted by the political, economic and societal changes.
3) religion - how the change in role in the church’s dominance and church liberation affected both those who are believers and those who are not.
4) education - the “radical” reforms have transformed the importance and quality of education in the country. How will that impact the people and country?
5) economic - massive changes have taken place not only in metropolitan Portugal but through out the empire. What will the impact be?
6) military - the country military has been gutted and rebuilt, military units are being led by trained military officers, country ordinance capabilities have been enhanced, navy strength, army strength have reaches new levels and military adventurism continue to provide Portuguese military with experience. How will all this play out?
7) society - the people of Portugal and its many possessions have endured a gamut of changes, the country has not only endured some of its darkest hours but has triumphantly overcome then. It has faced Earthquake that leveled it capital city and large portion of metropolitan part of country, has faced numerous adversaries and beaten them all. It has expanded into areas and territory it had not held for centuries and gained new territory. The relationship between different people and even metropolitan and its colonies has changed. What will be the impact gor the people and country?

 

[Drunkrobot]

 

[Lusitania]

King and Country (1783) (1 of 4)​

“I wonder if God is still with us.”
-António Soares Barbosa, exemplifying the uncertainties felt by the people in the period of transition​

The beginning of the Josephine era hailed in a young, naïve king with great ambition but also views that clashed with the European members of the multi-continental state and not enough experience to push them through. At the same time, new members had entered the cabinet, replacing notable figures like Count Wilhelm of Lippe at a time where people still believed a lot of the merits of the Pombaline Reforms were due to an oddity, an alignment of the stars in terms the skills of a hyper-proactive government.

Therefore, as much as there was the question if the Pombaline Government was truly beneficial, there was also the preoccupation if said benefits continued with Pombal himself slowly fading away, the political instability of the Tagus Declaration still hurting the nation, the threat of incoming wars with France and even the mere unfamiliarity with the new government faces like the Marquis of Lavradio and William Stephens. With the death of Pombal, a national retrospective on the years between 1777 and 1783 was not uncalled for.

Demographics & Culture​

The ‘Confused’ Generation
“I was raised between a generation that was exploited by Pombal and another that reaped the fruits of his efforts. I am, therefore, entirely indifferent to both their fates yet endlessly baffled by their beliefs.”
-Miguel Pereira Forjaz, general during the Peninsular War born in 1769​

The new people of Portugal taking jobs, offices, posts or even chairs in the classrooms formed the wave that would decide if the earliest actions of the Count of Oeiras in power were truly rooted. Born in the decade of 1760 and educated in 1770, they were all the faces of youth by 1783. However, much like the political era they lived in, they were a generation of transition, rather than a particularly defined message.

Nicknamed the ‘Confused Generation’ by some historians, they grew up watching the First and Second Estates being viciously curb stomped by the monarchy, the burghers, the military and the proto-liberals of the Enlightened movement in events like the Távora Affair, the Order of Christ Conspiracy, the Last Roman Assembly and ultimately the Tagus Declaration, believing in the virtues of these events in decreasing order to their listing. The fact they were named ‘Confused’ is due to the often-amorphous set of beliefs they showed while in positions of power (or at least in positions for their actions to matter enough in 18th century society to be recorded) with many debating in the judicial stages patronized by Joseph II later on with arguments tending towards limiting the damaging effects of radicalism and ideology worship.

One thing they usually showed very strong certainty of was in the benefits of education, culture and science; people born in Portugal and Brazil in the 1760s were educated in this decade and the 1770s, when the new universities, the Noble Colleges and the primary-to-secondary educations were solidly implemented. They therefore demonstrated in sub-urban areas a striking difference in trained skill in comparison to their parents.

The consequence of this was a shift towards scientific, cultural and labor pursuits at the expense of agricultural ones, with the number of doctors, financers, nurses, dentists, vets, painters, sculptors, architects, engineers, pharmacists and botanists increasing in many minor towns very significantly. In the major cities, the number of linguists, historians, essayists and all other sorts of written knowledge pool builders were the ones to take the helm of growth, with scientific principles being brought to the analysis of their fields and leading to a gradual sophistication of archives, studies and published findings.

This was in direct proportion to the prestige of their Orders and other miscellanea institutions.

But the ‘Confused Generation’ was not entirely devoted to peaceful matters, as not everyone could afford education. Many took to the bayonet and the cannon in the wars that Portugal fought in this short period, from the 4th Luso-Kongo War to the dreaded Three Years War itself. There was then a schism inside the generation to add to its confusion, with the more well-by or privileged side becoming the doctors and the scientists while the poorer, more vulnerable half becoming Marines and Lieutenants. Most settlers to Portuguese colonies in this short period belonged to this latter half, meaning the younger villages hoisting the flag were inhabited by the same hardened young shooters and burners of lesser education that emptied their sites.

These locations included the new domains of Angola, like the Marche of Congo (Ambriz), the Gujarat territories conquered in the Gulf of Cambay, the areas cleaned in Timor-Flores, the new Portuguese Malacca, the western frontier of Brazil and eventually even the Bahia Nova trade outpost and the Ponta d’Albuquerque settlement in Nova Zelândia. As the level of education and gentry of people in continental Portugal grew, so did the militarization its oversea border lines. These territories became primarily inhabited by descendants of these ‘Confused’, something that would shape their future politics as an age of decentralization was about to come under Joseph II (something that would make him very popular to frontiersmen).

In Lisbon and Oporto, the generation as a whole also grew increasingly demanding of scientific breakthroughs, specially medicine and machinery, as they observed the effects of vaccines on farm animals first hand and how the beasts now seemed healthier than the humans at the same time labor was cut by water wheels, experimental steam engines and new management methods. They also became increasingly interested in political debate, even if the authoritarian institutions did not encourage it.

The remainder of the population, which still formed the bulk of the people in the age of proto-industrialization, resided in the farms and the herds and the villages with their highest aspiration usually being that of forming a relatively stable household. Their technological interests resided mostly in the improvements to the cattle industry and agriculture, namely selective breeding, the improvement of irrigation, the combat of epidemics and the opening of the free trade food market, which they saw as beneficial mostly to the upper aristocrats but also undeniably game-changing to themselves.

They also housed the more conservative and traditional dimension of the Portuguese population. Rural folk included the biggest defenders of classic mass and valuing the guidance of priests over that of government appointed magistrates. Most of the people living in the countryside, even in the younger ‘Confused’ Generation, composed the faction that valued the effects of the many revolutionary movements the least. They had, however, a surprising ability to welcome refugees and PRP migrants, seeing them as new neighbors in lands abandoned by the young folks.

Hence, the farm countryside was usually the biggest speaker in the talks of immigration; just as they showed remarkable interest in some areas, the Évora typhoid outbreak had contributed to a xenophobic perception towards alien agglomerates, especially African ones, even though scientists insisted with the population it was due to water contamination. Members of the new generation saw influxes of non-whites to the urban centers of agricultural districts in the south but, also being raised in the age of slavery abolition in Portugal, saw them as groups of people to look down to as unsophisticated workers rather than someone to put in chains.

The relation between these farmyards and the cities, however, was changing due to a number of factors:

• Incremental increase in communication;
• The liberation of the food market;
• Introduction of the Mixed Land Enclosure;

The introduction of postal office reforms and the construction of improved road networks had stimulated the internal commerce and consumption blood flow in metropolitan Portugal and the same was beginning to occur in areas surrounding major Brazilian cities as well. This had led to the break of isolation of small towns, allowing the collective institutions to fight off the specters of illiteracy, cultism, tax fraud, illegal power encroachment and general mutual ignorance. The city and the village were no longer worlds apart.

On the other hand, the MLE system had brought to disparate and impoverished farms the idea of co-hops, organized farm landing and the banking of general agriculture tools for the community all centered around a nucleus of bureaucracy, finance and commerce, turning an otherwise organic activity into a gradually synthetic one. This had contributed to the bleeding of the long-standing idea in Portuguese culture of ‘ancestral land holding’, in which agricultural families considered their greatest wealth and reason to shed blood for the historical propriety of fields within the family, even if said fields had grown infertile or otherwise worthless.

Between 1760 and 1780, in no less part encouraged by new taxation laws, the number of registered terrain sales increased dramatically, with many younger people selling off lands inherited from their parents to build up money to start businesses, buy other profitable fields, pay for education, move to the cities or simply start up their own businesses. Most of these lands were bought either by the government which sought to finish important projects like the Royal Roads, aristocrats and industrialists that intended to organize the MLEs or simply more competitive farmers that had successfully adopted new tools and expanded their cattle and farm holdings into true personal micro-empires.

Portuguese farmlands became impeccably organized and equipped, but also increasingly incapable of retaining younger generations​

The gradual shifting of demographics caused by this stimulated further confusion in the youngest generation that tried to understand if they were meant to move to the city or simply further improve their hometowns. There didn’t seem to be any reason to continue working in places that would not promise them and their descendants a future and the people of the cities seemed to have strange ideas about ‘rights of citizens’ and ‘constitutions that limit the kings and defend the people’. On the other hand, gambling their family possessions on these adventures was not a guaranteed bet.

But it was precisely in this indecision that their most telling characteristic came to the surface; political skepticism. The ‘Confused’ were equally suspicious of old ideas of the Ancient Regime as they were of new ideas of the Pombaline Regime. This is because they witnessed both the collapse of the moral standard in the church and the court at the same time they lacked any nostalgic bias on the new institutions that replaced them, leading to a void of attachment and a general lack of interest in radically believing in any authority, right or left winged. They therefore made most decisions following an idea of rationalism instead of ideology.

Members of this generation would go on to be the main leaders of the country by 1800 and 1810. The ‘Big Five’, the most acclaimed military leaders in Portugal during the Napoleonic age like Francisco Lecor and Gomes Freire de Andrade, were almost exclusively products of this time. Important artists of the nationalistic and early classicist era also hailed from the ‘Confused’ while others like musician André da Silva Gomes based their greatest works on the experiences of this generation without being part of it themselves, drawing from the feelings of terror and uncertainty they felt about the future.

Migrations in Portugal – The 1770s & ‘The Costa Urbana’​

Brazilian billboard showing the impact of the PRP​

The late 18th century saw a gradual increase in population growth in Europe thanks to the beginning of the agricultural revolution. Many of these new people, however, moved around the world as the number of ships and new frontiers increased. In Europe in general, the transatlantic migration of impoverished radicals and African slaves to America seemed to dominate the currents of humanity. The movement of English puritans to the Thirteen Colonies had begun in 1650 and was until this point one of the most remarkable movements.

Within Europe, internal migration was still characterized by the movement of Jews and Huguenots fleeing religious persecution and the growing number of workers moving from one country for labor only to return home the next season. In Portugal, migration was considered beneficial in two situations; from Portugal itself into its colonies and from Europe to Portugal itself.

The abolition of slavery had caused migrations in Portugal to now occur under the context of indentured labor, the new specter of bound work. This tragedy was perpetuated continuously in the PRP, the government program that sought to control intercolonial demographics. Indentured servants coming from Africa and India were now the primary influx of cheap labor to colonies and were competing directly with not only regular white workers but also the increasingly inefficient and pirated slave labor industry in Northern Brazil.

In Europe, the PRP sought its migrants from three main theaters; Ireland, Italy and Poland. With the rise of famine in France, many French families also migrated to more peaceful European countries, joining the influx into Lisbon. With Western Europe as a whole facing a labor shortage crisis, the PRP could only act when in diplomatic accord with the host nation, which usually sought to rid itself of criminals or unrestful individuals. Great Britain, Prussia, France, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Kingdom of Sicily usually allowed the PRP to act under some sort of commercial privilege condition.

These travels were deceivingly productive. Most monarchs in accord with Portugal suspected that the number of families deported would not surpass the few dozens. The total collective for Portugal across several years from all these sources, however, reached the few thousands per decade. The First Partition of Poland in particular had the consequence of an unexpected influx that would settle in the north.

Irish personalities had come to study in Portugal, mainly the University of Évora, Coimbra and Lisbon since as early as the 16th century, with several distinct Irish families settling completely from the early 18th century onward, although some examples of factual immigration like John de Burgh dated back all the way to 1614. The proliferation of Catholic Orders common to the two territories had stimulated this further, with missionaries moving to Portuguese colonies from places like Cork and Galway under the patronage of the Dominicans and Jesuits.

These disparate examples, however, never formed organic communities to speak of. Irish families became more recognized and common in Lisbon and Oporto after the Fantastic War, when Count Lippe brought special expeditionary forces from the British Empire to fight the Spanish, of which included many disgruntled Irish expatriates.

The Irish landscape painter Thomas Roberts was a more solid example of the influx, however. After building up a career as an artist in his homeland, he moved to Lisbon in 1770[1] when he was patronized by wealthy individuals seeking to fill the museums with new art after the catastrophe of the 1755 tremor. This signaled a move away from Irish expat in Portugal being so for religious reasons and now following a more contemporary inclination of pursuing artistic fulfillment.

Landscape with Slane Castle
Although picturing an Irish landscape, the work of art was brought to Lisbon in 1770​

Operations carried out by the PRP increased the number further, with Irish families beginning to form a bulk in Oporto by 1780. The coexistence remained mostly peaceful thanks to shared religion, common European heritage and nigh complete lack of historical disputes. The fact that Northwestern Portugal had slight Celtic inclinations only served to link the people further.

However, the day-to-day would make the first divisions evident. The main root of differences was the celebratory tone to death among the Irish as opposed to the typical Portuguese nostalgia-based mourning, the consumption preferences and the differences between the social-economic cultures. This was something that came to the surface in religious events as well as classrooms.

In the very latter root, the Irish also had land owning patterns that were the product of successive invasions from the English, as their emigrating population was characterized by their precarious experience on land possession while the rural Portuguese were borderline violent regarding the sacredness of it, going as far as resolving many sibling disputes in bloody fashion. The Irish that managed to hold on to their lands now conglomerated them into grand English-style estates in their homeland and saw no reason to depart from the Emerald Island.

As for consumption it could be summed up to the tiniest things accumulated into a grand total that would affect mindset, schedules and social mingling. The Irish, for example, preferred mead and beer to wine, which quickly caused them to retreat from Portuguese taverns to their own established public houses. A converging would occur in the common consumption of honey-based delicacies and potatoes, the latter of which was a recent and growingly popular addition to both cultures.

It was mostly in agriculture that the Irish, indeed, found comfort in their new land as the Portuguese market, although now slowly adopting the ideas of Free Trade, allowed the farmers to sell their produce as they wished. This was in contrast with England where most Irish production as exported to the main British island. Economic opportunity seemed indeed to be the main attraction factor for migrants. Most of the settlers that did not choose to continue to sail towards North or South America made it so based on factors of good prospects for business or farm creation.

By 1780, the presence of Irish in northern Portugal was a documented reality. Gaelic became a niche tongue in some urban streets, with the first signs using its calligraphy showing up in Oporto around ’79 after the magistracy passed laws permitting limited cultural expression. The percentage of people with red hair and Celtic features also began to increase very slightly. The beginning of the decade marked the first steps in cultural diffusion with Catholic marriages beginning to occur between Irish expatriates and Portuguese natives seeking to fuse patrimonies.

The gradual abolishment of slavery and the death penalty had caused a temporary spike of both the number of would-be emigrants that ended up being retained as well as the immigrants that accepted to come to the Lusitanian coast. This period of positive influx of immigrants from both southern and western Europe would be interrupted by the Three Years War, where not only the war climate made the country an unattractive destination but caused most maritime lines to be temporarily severed, especially during the “Nightmare at Sea”.

Even so, the eventual Portuguese victory in this major European conflict rose international prestige for the navy to such a point that the territory became to be perceived as a stronghold of sorts ready to cart off refugees at a moment’s notice to America, prompting many that sought to flee the incoming waves of violence all over northern Europe to the Iberian Peninsula. The heavy involvement of Irish workers at the docks during the war had also impressed the northern population, contributing to a climate of social peace in Oporto.

But the perception from the outside that Portugal was becoming a relative hotbed for business was the most beneficial factor for immigration and emigration retention. While entrepreneur opportunities were slowing down,[2] enough financial and commercial success had been achieved in the previous decade to spread the belief that Portugal had joined the rest of the Western European countries as the shining frontier of development in the Old Continent, so workers believed more often they had a shot at a fulfilling life should they choose to stay by Oporto and Lisbon.

Internal migrations were acquiring a very distinct pattern with many people leaving the interior and the south to move to what was being more and more referred to as the “Costa Urbana”, the long strip of coastal land that comprised everything between Lisbon and Viana do Castelo. This area, comprised of Estremadura, Beira Litoral, the Douro Estuary and the Minho, became the most urbanized region in Iberia outside of the Madrid-Toledo central nucleus itself, surpassing even Catalonia and Valencia in urban concentration and development.

Many of these migrations were influenced by the design of the Royal Road network, as it purposely connected the designated urban centers of each district. The ease with which urbanization occurred was definitely accelerated by this infrastructure, as it provided a clear route for migrants and upcoming city dwellers towards their closest hub of opportunities. Other migrations were caused by PRP activity, which sought to repress desertification and limit the possibility of slum spawning.

Another significant urbanization was in the Algarve, especially in Faro and the newly created border city of “Vila Real de Santo António”. It was estimated by the PRP that most of the population living south of the Sado estuary line concentrated around these two upcoming cities, which were betting a lot of investment in commerce and docking infrastructure, but also fishing activities and piracy combat. The building of many coastal fortifications in the region during the years leading up to the Three Years War had also motivated a lot of people to seek safety in more developed outposts, leaving the vulnerable and impoverished parts of the Vicentine Coast.

Early Josephine Era migrations
Cyan: Native migrations
Red: Emigrations
Orange: Immigrations​

Finally, during the Three Years War, new migrations occurred as a result of fears of a possible intervention in the Gibraltar squabble which could pit the two Iberian countries against one another for the first time since the Fantastic War (on which many villagers still had bad memories of). There was also a small interchange of migrants between the two Iberian countries across the whole border, with either the Portuguese moving into Spain to avoid being caught by potential invasions or Spaniards moving across the border to escape the hardships of the ongoing war they fought against the British. The Mirandese strip of the Douro River concentrated its minority population significantly. With the proclamation of minority protection edicts by King Joseph II, many communities of non-Christians and non-Portuguese came out of hiding and felt encouraged to move further to the cities, as well.

1783 Josephine Census & The 20-year Mini-Boom​

With a twenty year cycle complete and the Three Years War finished, King Joseph II ordered another population census to be conducted to evaluate the state of affairs in Portuguese demographics as well as their options for colonization. At the end of the year, data was collected following the new system of Districts & Municipalities, allowing the population count to be inserted into a more sophisticated analysis as opposed to the 1763 Pombaline Census. The information was also placed in comparison with that of the old census to evaluate the benefits of the new system and, obviously, how much growth was experienced nationwide.

There were many factors influencing the birth rate and death rates in Portugal between 1763 and 1783:

• Labor Demand: The large aggregated demand for workers in all areas as a result of not only the propagation of technocratic projects but also the vast steps made to revolutionize doctorate employment (doctors, engineers, scientists, teachers, etc) as well as repeal of ethnic laws like ‘Blood Cleanliness’ that formerly prohibited entrance in high tier jobs to minorities allowed for fledgling families in both cities and countryside to believe that potential children had future in employment;
• Rising Health Standards: The very significant steps made in agriculture, city care and health, especially in the Late Pombaline Age, allowed for life expectancy growth, disease prevention and food shortage chances reduction to do their respective work to reduce the death rate, with the reforms/projects made by Secretary Manuel Constâncio and the efforts in educating sailors and fishermen about scurvy being especially notorious;
• Growing Militarization: The increasingly bolder and belligerent attitude in Portuguese politics had increased the number of overseas wars and annexations, resulting in more deaths by battle and colonial strife, especially during the Three Years War and the ongoing occupation of Morbeia;
• Urbanization: The repopulation of Lisbon, the new urban architecture projects, the completion of the Royal Roads and the many many incremental reforms in various domestic areas enabled and encouraged a great deal of movement away from the farms into the city centers, allowing both the countryside to be emptied for new families and the urban cores to grow more productive, with the ‘Costa Urbana’ being the contemporary phenomenon in the country;

These four factors were unique to this census period and considered unlikely to repeat themselves unless a new industrial or agricultural revolution occurred soon.

In the Metropolis and its nearby territories, this all translated into an average growth of approximately 2,23% per year, with the year of greatest growth being 3,1% in 1779 (a year of peace and relative optimism between the wars in Africa/Gujarat and the Three Year War in which many of the two periods reforms were already in place) and the smallest growth being 0,7% in 1763 (the year right after the Spanish invasions and the movement of people to Cisplatina to fight further wars in which Portugal was still under the iron mercantilist grip of Pombal).

The twenty years between 1763 and 1783 were singularly strong in population growth due to advances in medicine and urban development​

The PRP worked together with the Ministry of Science & Education to collect and interpret the information. The conclusion was that the population in Portugal had increased by an average of 2.23% per year, allowing a 20 year compound accumulation of 55% growth. This was an almost unprecedented growth and would not be rivalled until the industrial and medical revolutions of the 19th and 20th century. The main factors contributing to the growth had been the very significant increases to health standards, better urban planning and the availability of food and water. Said growth was called the Mini-Boom by the census specialists, who characterized it for being an unnatural spike in population growth resulting from advances and reforms particular to its timespan, but still not reaching the radical increases that were being observed, for example, in the population of London.

But there is also a lot of important information to consider about special cases like Lisbon and the Beira Litoral district. As the major victim of the Earthquake, Lisbon’s recovery was nothing short of exceptional, with the lost of more than one hundred thousand people now being offset by a regional growth to over nine hundred thousand. While the city perimeters themselves housed little more than three hundred thousand citizens and a lot of the population also stemmed from the also well developed city of Setúbal, the regional population placed the capital amongst one of the most promisingly populated amongst smaller European countries. A lot of the growth stemmed from immigration and urbanization; Lisbon and Setúbal were, in fact, the second biggest hotspot for newcomers in the country, rivalling even some Brazilian cities.

The development of the Tagus-Sado basin, however, was still the most invested in the entire country. The ongoing Lisbon-Abrantes navigation project intended by the new plutocratic class was allowing a lot of people to flock around midway towns like Vila Franca de Xira to collect the trickle down of infrastructural and commercial movement. The number of foreign ships docking at either Setúbal or Lisbon was increasing in direct proportion to its population.

Beira Litoral was also a zone of big growth, but this was mostly due to migration from Beira Interior, which suffered significant abandonment almost enough to offset its natural growth. Most people in the Guarda and Castelo Branco districts had moved away further towards the ‘Costa Urbana’ to settle in Viseu, Coimbra, Aveiro and Leiria. Aveiro and Coimbra were exceptions as they were, respectively, commercial and educational centers and therefore suffered growth that was entirely within the realm of being the result of development.

The trio of Braga, Oporto and Viana was, however, still the obvious melting point within the country. The growth of industry in Portugal was centered there and the fact that it already had the densest population in Portugal to draw upon only allowed the northern coast to develop urbanization even faster. Patents and businesses were being born amongst the three cities every week. The Royal Road connections between themselves and Beira Litoral only caused the acceleration of commerce to increase in further.

The provinces that had suffered the most were the islands and the Trás-os-Montes countryside. At one point the governors of Madeira and Azores believed the population grew and birthed new generations only to send them off to Brazil, Africa or India and most talent born in Bragança and Vila Real was moving towards the Costa Urbana as soon as they could possibly afford it.

This was due to the combination of business, university, dockyard and arts development in coastal cities, with Oporto in particular becoming a massive industrial center in the country, something that at the time was determinant in choosing the site of greatest urbanization. There simply were too many opportunities for sophisticated labour in the city as opposed to the lesser municipalities.

In the international scheme, the Portuguese metropolis cemented its status as highly populated as it reached the landmark of 4 million within its continental confines, with approximately 3 million in Brazil and another 3 million in its remaining oversea territories (with most of this last segment being in Angola and Mozambique). By comparison in 1783, Metropolitan Portugal now had the same population as the Kingdom of Naples, continental Spain was reaching up to 9 million, Great Britain (Ireland included) going up to 12 million and finally France topping all Western Europe with figures going above 22 million.

This meant a population density of twice over that of neighbor Spain and around the same as of an Italian state, something that foreshadowed the tense political atmosphere that would rise between the two in the mid-Josephine era. It also meant a comfortable lead over Brazil, which led to the pacification of certain national fears regarding the country’s ability to hold on to it. The grand total of around 10 million people worldwide placed it at 1% of the counted world population and on the same level as the Kingdom of Prussia.

---

[1] iOTL Thomas Roberts only moved to Portugal in 1777.
[2] See Section: King and Country (1783) – Finance & Technology – The 1780 Capitalist Capping.

Note:
Sorry for delay in posting.

This section tries to provide readers with a better understanding of the changes that Portuguese society had witnessed during Pombal's tenure as Prime Minister. I think that Miguel Pereira Forjaz captured the mood perfectly in that many of he older generation had suffered under Pombal, while the generations that followed reaped many of the benefits of the reforms initiated during Pombal with those born after his death benefiting more.

The emigration and demographics section is important for us to understand that Portuguese while welcoming were challenged to adapt to the new realities of the country and the need for emigrants, no part of the country was immune to that need especially rural areas which continued to loose the newer generation to the growing cities and towns. But like cities and towns the rural areas demanded the government provide labor. The people in these villages had a hard time accepting the people the government sent; Africans and Asians. We wanted to show the dark side too and the struggles that people on both sides faced. Eventually like in cities there was slow acceptance and over time even integration. But took a long time and lots of effort on both sides.

The population demographic table is very telling in that it shows a vastly different country than existed in 1760s. Not only the growth due to availability of food and health initiatives but more importantly the availability of jobs in towns and cities and industry expanded. iOTL people fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity in the rural areas simply emigrated to Brazil as the cities devoid of manufacturing and industry neither attracted the emigrants nor held those who passed through them.

Of course a backwards country did not attract emigrants from rest of Europe as Portugal stayed poor and undeveloped (IOTL). Here we have both clandestine and economic emigrants being brought from Europe to Portugal. As with all emigrants not everyone stayed in Portugal but enough did stay to establish new communities in the country, Eventually these communities would spread throughout the empire too.

. Questions/ Comments???

Join us on December13 we post the 2nd section in the "King and Country 1783" called Finances and Technology .

 

[Sceonn]

the western frontier of Brazil and eventually even the Bahia Nova trade outpost and the Ponta d’Albuquerque settlement in Nova Zelândia.

So Portugal managed to get New Zealand, that's going to be interesting. Put them in a favorable position in Oceania.

Seems Brazil might have to make do with internal population growth.

EDIT- How is the PRP dealing with Native Americans? Are they also being distributed throughout the Empire or are they being protected? Their population probably can't deal with that kind of shock after all.

 

[Adam Corvin]

So Portugal managed to get New Zealand, that's going to be interesting. Put them in a favorable position in Oceania.

Seems Brazil might have to make do with internal population growth.

Maori auxiliary troops FTW!

 

[Johannes Parisiensis]

By 1780, the presence of Irish in northern Portugal was a documented reality. Gaelic became a niche tongue in some urban streets, with the first signs using its calligraphy showing up in Oporto around ’79 after the magistracy passed laws permitting limited cultural expression. The percentage of people with red hair and Celtic features also began to increase very slightly. The beginning of the decade marked the first steps in cultural diffusion with Catholic marriages beginning to occur between Irish expatriates and Portuguese natives seeking to fuse patrimonies.

How will these Irish minorities influe on relations with Britain, and how will they relate to Galicians (OTL, some minor scholars claim Galicians have received Celtic influence)?

But it was precisely in this indecision that their most telling characteristic came to the surface; political skepticism. The ‘Confused’ were equally suspicious of old ideas of the Ancient Regime as they were of new ideas of the Pombaline Regime. This is because they witnessed both the collapse of the moral standard in the church and the court at the same time they lacked any nostalgic bias on the new institutions that replaced them, leading to a void of attachment and a general lack of interest in radically believing in any authority, right or left winged. They therefore made most decisions following an idea of rationalism instead of ideology.

This "Lost Generation" looks like good clients for nihilism ala Russia: the ideas they will invent could run the entire gamut from Enlightened Liberalism to Reactionary Romanticism.

 

[Drunkrobot]

The fact they were named ‘Confused’ is due to the often-amorphous set of beliefs they showed while in positions of power (or at least in positions for their actions to matter enough in 18th century society to be recorded) with many debating in the judicial stages patronized by Joseph II later on with arguments tending towards limiting the damaging effects of radicalism and ideology worship.

The ‘Confused’ were equally suspicious of old ideas of the Ancient Regime as they were of new ideas of the Pombaline Regime. This is because they witnessed both the collapse of the moral standard in the church and the court at the same time they lacked any nostalgic bias on the new institutions that replaced them, leading to a void of attachment and a general lack of interest in radically believing in any authority, right or left winged. They therefore made most decisions following an idea of rationalism instead of ideology.

With the right kind of leadership, this generation of relative ideological agnosticism could set Portugal dramatically apart from the rest of Europe following the end of Napoleon. While the post-Napoleonic consensus among the rest of the continent seems likely to still be the ultra-conservative and absolutist one engineered by Metternich, the generation taking charge after 1810 are likely to not desire a simple winding back of the clock, or even to believe that doing so is at all possible. The time of when Portugal was run by aristocrats and priests was the time when it was a has-been power with practically no protagonistic role in Europe and a near-universally decreasing one in the rest of the world; if other, larger powers think they can get by via bottling the genie of the French Revolution, I think Portugal is unlikely to.

So, it's not that implausible for that generation of leadership to embrace pluralism and wider political participation. The new consensus about what "Portugal" is would have to include the non-European people of the empire if it is to avoid the fate of the Netherlands - doomed to slide away from first-rate power by the sheer demographic weight of its rivals.

Hence, the farm countryside was usually the biggest speaker in the talks of immigration; just as they showed remarkable interest in some areas, the Évora typhoid outbreak had contributed to a xenophobic perception towards alien agglomerates, especially African ones, even though scientists insisted with the population it was due to water contamination. Members of the new generation saw influxes of non-whites to the urban centers of agricultural districts in the south but, also being raised in the age of slavery abolition in Portugal, saw them as groups of people to look down to as unsophisticated workers rather than someone to put in chains.

As for consumption it could be summed up to the tiniest things accumulated into a grand total that would affect mindset, schedules and social mingling. The Irish, for example, preferred mead and beer to wine, which quickly caused them to retreat from Portuguese taverns to their own established public houses.

But this is clearly already presenting a challenge. The national leadership might reasonably come to the conclusion that internal conflict, specifically conflict which is not moderated and resolved by the political infrastructure, hinders the nation from projecting power outward - Portugal can't afford to expend troops on bottling the chance of inter-ethnic or inter-racial war. The current generation of native Portuguese might be relatively open-minded to new arrivals, but if new communities are created and they have little to no interaction or communication between each other or to natives then attitudes between groups are probably going to harden into tribalism. A 'solution' that might be offered to this problem would be to simply stamp out all minority differences, either enforcing conversion on cultural issues or deporting groups whose differences from the majority are immutable. Aside from literally being what Hitler would do, this just isn't possible or is something that would even occur to the Confused Generation; again, the clock can't be turned back, there exists no order to stamp everybody into. Portugal has already left the closed society and can't go back. The only option is to build a new consensus, which actively gets all groups involved and interacting with each other to set right misconceptions and misunderstandings and to moderate views of one another. It seems unavoidable, given the overall objective of Portugal's immigration policies, that there will be local areas that become dominated by this or that group (fewer people will move if there isn't a community they can immediately be familiar with on the other end), but that doesn't have to end in tribalism if members of those semi-separate areas can be motivated to interact with each other. Children of different backgrounds can go to the same schools, and parents of those children can be made to discuss between each other how (part of) the budget of their school is spent. Participatory Budgeting in general can be a potent way to create discussion across groups of a local community, so long as whatever scheme the government comes up with has the outcome that it is universally preferable for each group to cooperate and compromise with the others, rather than seeing funds as a finite resource to squabble over. A Ministry of Culture, an Interior Ministry, and the Royal Family, working together, could actively produce a new heritage for Portugal, via new and inclusive art councils that sponsor a syncretism of artistic traditions, the promotion of new or existing habits that can serve as a common ground between existing identities (an Irish immigrant and a native Portuguese might disagree on alcohol, but they can both enjoy a coffee nap in the afternoon), or the funding of museums that diversify in their staff and humanise their portrayal of the non-European people of the empire.

They also housed the more conservative and traditional dimension of the Portuguese population. Rural folk included the biggest defenders of classic mass and valuing the guidance of priests over that of government appointed magistrates. Most of the people living in the countryside, even in the younger ‘Confused’ Generation, composed the faction that valued the effects of the many revolutionary movements the least. They had, however, a surprising ability to welcome refugees and PRP migrants, seeing them as new neighbors in lands abandoned by the young folks.

Portuguese farmlands became impeccably organized and equipped, but also increasingly incapable of retaining younger generations

This is the start of a problem that the country's agricultural policy will have to deal with; a countryside which falls below the population density needed for social health, and which has trouble transmitting expertise from older to younger generations. A deep flaw of our cultural idea of the single-family farm is that it is very rare, especially when existing farmers can't sire an heir to directly replace them, for people who aren't farmers to become farmers in such a model. That one family is effectively required to go from not running a farm at all to running it entirely, the farm itself might be going from nearly non-existent to requiring full operation and profitability. It doesn't leave much room for specialisation into certain areas, produce, or crafts that the individual farmer might have a latent talent for (there isn't much that capital can do to increase a farmer's time in the day, and definitely not their mental bandwidth which has to keep track of all the interweaving elements of their farm - monoculture is as popular as it is because it's simpler than farming methods which are less capital-intensive and are more efficient overall, but are taxing on labour and organisation), and aside from people who happen to already be born into farming families, there is little room for apprenticeship or training. There is also the issues of Napoleon - the Peninsular War is certain to desolate the countryside, especially in the east, reducing the stock of working farms and competent farmers further.

If agriculture is to continue becoming more efficient and professional, then an inevitable requirement is to break down the barriers to entry. The MLE system seems to be a lot more collaborative and flexible than 'Anglo-Saxon' family farming, but the ability for farmers to cooperate and specialise, and take in new arrivals, should be increased. There would also need to be some government-backed scheme to reestablish farmland torched during the campaigns against Napoleon, perhaps doubling as a scheme to compensate the huge population of veterans that are sure to exist once the war is over, perhaps by offering farmers in surviving MLEs and more traditional arrangements to increase their land and wealth by helping found new MLEs and taking veterans under their wing.

 

[Sceonn]

Moreover, the continued gains of Portugal in India, South America, East Indies and Africa angered the Spanish but the changes occurring in Brazil really alarmed the government of Spanish La Plata.

I think they're right to worry about Brazil, her greed for the South is obvious.

He established commercial freedom in the American colonies in 1782

This is big, really big.

 

[Lusitania]

So Portugal managed to get New Zealand, that's going to be interesting. Put them in a favorable position in Oceania.

Seems Brazil might have to make do with internal population growth.

EDIT- How is the PRP dealing with Native Americans? Are they also being distributed throughout the Empire or are they being protected? Their population probably can't deal with that kind of shock after all.

The Portuguese discovered New Zealand a little before captain Cook. The status of the islands was in dispute till treaty of Paris agreement between the British and Portuguese. The Portuguese claim was recognized in return for the Portuguese recognition of British claim to Australia.

Emigration to Brazil has changed since the 1760s with limitations of emigration from Portuguese from Europe. Its demographics are also changing as emigrants from Portuguese conquest in India and Asia have occurred along with some from other parts of Europe. iOTL the limitations imposed by Pombal had been relaxed and the population of Metropolitan Portugal never grown t the level iTTL. Brazil own population demographics and information will be presented at a later date.

Majority of the natives in Brazil live in the areas of Brazil under the jurisdiction of the Vice Rei and not the provinces. They are protected from slavery and have stayed for most part in Brazil (although several thousand were sent to Portugal to help with the Earthquake repairs.) They have been spared PRP intervention mostly due to the economic profit Rio receives from trade with them.

Maori auxiliary troops FTW!

I can see that happening and many warriors going to serve in Portuguese armed forces. Hopefully that not accelerate the Maori tribe warfare.

I think they're right to worry about Brazil, her greed for the South is obvious.

This is big, really big.

Yes there were two things about the way Brazil was governed that worried the Spanish. First was making Brazil an equal partner in the Empire and treating the people living in Brazil equal to the Portuguese. allowing for growth of industry and free movement people and capital. For New Zealand was as much a Brazilian colony as it was a Portuguese colony with settlers coming from both Brazil and Portugal. Secondly was the growing industrial and economic power in Brazil was overshadowing the Rio de Plata region with Portuguese and English goods being smuggled into the region.

You are right Brazil with all its gains still had designs on increasing its size. Although this is a complicated attitude for majority of the people and leaders were centered on their respective provinces and could care less about greater Brazil since there was no central government. While some did think about greater Brazil the greater desire and idea came from Rio the residency of the Vice Rei who whished to expand the Portuguese/Brazilian domains. Therefore any opportunity to increase Portuguese territory would be both welcome in some centers and opposed in others.

The establishment of commercial freedom was something that happen iOTL also as he saw the benefits of Pombal's reforms and implemented them too. He was for all intensive purposes Spain's own Pombal.

 

[Lusitania]

With the right kind of leadership, this generation of relative ideological agnosticism could set Portugal dramatically apart from the rest of Europe following the end of Napoleon. While the post-Napoleonic consensus among the rest of the continent seems likely to still be the ultra-conservative and absolutist one engineered by Metternich, the generation taking charge after 1810 are likely to not desire a simple winding back of the clock, or even to believe that doing so is at all possible. The time of when Portugal was run by aristocrats and priests was the time when it was a has-been power with practically no protagonistic role in Europe and a near-universally decreasing one in the rest of the world; if other, larger powers think they can get by via bottling the genie of the French Revolution, I think Portugal is unlikely to.

So, it's not that implausible for that generation of leadership to embrace pluralism and wider political participation. The new consensus about what "Portugal" is would have to include the non-European people of the empire if it is to avoid the fate of the Netherlands - doomed to slide away from first-rate power by the sheer demographic weight of its rivals.

That is very good insight and we can infer that it would be the most likely path. The country is morphing into a more just and caring society. We have had tolerance for other religions and people as well as the outlawing of slavery decades before other countries. You are right that what is needed is the right type of leader. I think that the those leaders have already been born and are being influenced by the events the country is going through and will witness. To discuss more at this time would premature but we can see that a likely path. more in future.

But this is clearly already presenting a challenge. The national leadership might reasonably come to the conclusion that internal conflict, specifically conflict which is not moderated and resolved by the political infrastructure, hinders the nation from projecting power outward - Portugal can't afford to expend troops on bottling the chance of inter-ethnic or inter-racial war. The current generation of native Portuguese might be relatively open-minded to new arrivals, but if new communities are created and they have little to no interaction or communication between each other or to natives then attitudes between groups are probably going to harden into tribalism. A 'solution' that might be offered to this problem would be to simply stamp out all minority differences, either enforcing conversion on cultural issues or deporting groups whose differences from the majority are immutable. Aside from literally being what Hitler would do, this just isn't possible or is something that would even occur to the Confused Generation; again, the clock can't be turned back, there exists no order to stamp everybody into. Portugal has already left the closed society and can't go back. The only option is to build a new consensus, which actively gets all groups involved and interacting with each other to set right misconceptions and misunderstandings and to moderate views of one another. It seems unavoidable, given the overall objective of Portugal's immigration policies, that there will be local areas that become dominated by this or that group (fewer people will move if there isn't a community they can immediately be familiar with on the other end), but that doesn't have to end in tribalism if members of those semi-separate areas can be motivated to interact with each other. Children of different backgrounds can go to the same schools, and parents of those children can be made to discuss between each other how (part of) the budget of their school is spent. Participatory Budgeting in general can be a potent way to create discussion across groups of a local community, so long as whatever scheme the government comes up with has the outcome that it is universally preferable for each group to cooperate and compromise with the others, rather than seeing funds as a finite resource to squabble over. A Ministry of Culture, an Interior Ministry, and the Royal Family, working together, could actively produce a new heritage for Portugal, via new and inclusive art councils that sponsor a syncretism of artistic traditions, the promotion of new or existing habits that can serve as a common ground between existing identities (an Irish immigrant and a native Portuguese might disagree on alcohol, but they can both enjoy a coffee nap in the afternoon), or the funding of museums that diversify in their staff and humanise their portrayal of the non-European people of the empire.

hm... there are a few points here that we should respond to.
1) You are right that the Portuguese people in Metropolitan Portugal and even in Brazil are having to deal with an influx of people from different parts of world and Europe. The need for manpower and labor is ongoing and cannot be met with internal population growth. We have Irish, Polish, Italians being brought to the country from Europe while Indians, Asians and Africans come from newly conquered and pacified territories. Then natural immigration is also occurring as manufacturing, early industrialization and development attract people from all over Europe. These people will overtime integrate and become part of the fabric of the country.

I met a couple traveling in Canada during the early 1990s on business, what was interesting was that this couple was speaking English with British accent but were from Porto. A Port winery owners. Reason I bring this up is that the opportunities to emigrate to Portugal IOTL was so few and there was a couple who were descendants of those emigrants who were integrated but also retained a sense of their roots. It will be the same here except on a much bigger scale. Just like Portuguese-Indians were both Portuguese and Indian.

So therefore there will need be a huge effort by government to make sure that there is integration in the country. As time goes on and the empire grows the integration will also be more complex and those that are defined as Portuguese will also change. Then the integration of new people will be different as new emigrants are integrated into the new Portuguese society. We can look at the efforts to integrate people in places such as USA and Canada. The difference will be that Portuguese will not only be integrating Europeans into country and society but also be integrating people from different parts of world and who have joined the empire due to conquest. The integration of these people will be just of the problems and tasks for the country.

As you indicated and we have written the number of workers, traders, craftsmen and soldiers needed to compete against the larger empires such as Spain, Britain or France who due to their larger population do not have the same luxury and must adapt and bring people to the country.

Lastly you are right the country will have its work cut out to integrate Europeans, Africans, Indians, Asians and rest of world into new defined "Portuguese". The best way to bring people together is a country united in a battle for its survival and that just might be coming.

This is the start of a problem that the country's agricultural policy will have to deal with; a countryside which falls below the population density needed for social health, and which has trouble transmitting expertise from older to younger generations. A deep flaw of our cultural idea of the single-family farm is that it is very rare, especially when existing farmers can't sire an heir to directly replace them, for people who aren't farmers to become farmers in such a model. That one family is effectively required to go from not running a farm at all to running it entirely, the farm itself might be going from nearly non-existent to requiring full operation and profitability. It doesn't leave much room for specialisation into certain areas, produce, or crafts that the individual farmer might have a latent talent for (there isn't much that capital can do to increase a farmer's time in the day, and definitely not their mental bandwidth which has to keep track of all the interweaving elements of their farm - monoculture is as popular as it is because it's simpler than farming methods which are less capital-intensive and are more efficient overall, but are taxing on labour and organisation), and aside from people who happen to already be born into farming families, there is little room for apprenticeship or training. There is also the issues of Napoleon - the Peninsular War is certain to desolate the countryside, especially in the east, reducing the stock of working farms and competent farmers further.

If agriculture is to continue becoming more efficient and professional, then an inevitable requirement is to break down the barriers to entry. The MLE system seems to be a lot more collaborative and flexible than 'Anglo-Saxon' family farming, but the ability for farmers to cooperate and specialise, and take in new arrivals, should be increased. There would also need to be some government-backed scheme to reestablish farmland torched during the campaigns against Napoleon, perhaps doubling as a scheme to compensate the huge population of veterans that are sure to exist once the war is over, perhaps by offering farmers in surviving MLEs and more traditional arrangements to increase their land and wealth by helping found new MLEs and taking veterans under their wing.

Yes the existing system of small holding or lands owned by nobles who most of the time rented the lands out to tenants was inefficient and for most part prevented Portuguese agriculture from taking advantage of new technologies and practices. For the land owner either could not afford the changes in the cases of small holdings or was not interested in investing and changing since that cost money. Renters only were interested in short term gains and not very interested in investment that would only pay in long term. iOTL this problem actually existed well into the 20th century. iTTL the massive movement of people to towns and cities in search of jobs and opening of the countryside with the construction of Royal Roads along with local roads linked to them suddenly opened new markets to farmers that had grown greatly with the population increase to over 4 million (iOTL was only about 2,7 million ) led to new opportunities and at same time availability of capital translated to expansion of land being used in farming.

For all Portuguese advances it will still require additional sources of agricultural products be they within the country or from external sources.

 

[Galahad]

The only thing that can unite a disparate people with immigrants and natives into the country is a fight for the nation's sovereignty.

 

[Panzerlied]

The only thing that can unite a disparate people with immigrants and natives into the country is a fight for the nation's sovereignty.

I think Napoleon and the Spanish will be more than happy to help with this request.

 

[Sceonn]

Integrating the people isn't that hard, the PRP's abrupt wholesale distributions make integration the only option down the line and smart colonialism will take care of the rest.

 

[Lusitania]

The only thing that can unite a disparate people with immigrants and natives into the country is a fight for the nation's sovereignty.

The people will slowly integrate but a war for the very heart and soul of the country would definitely accelerate the process. Men who fight together, sleep together and give their blood to save one another have a habit of viewing each other as a brother in arms and following the war new friendships and alliances are born. A European saved by an Indian who become fast friends when the war is over might think very highly that such Indian friend is someone great to marry his younger sister. Or a black veteran beset by two thugs finds himself being helped by other European veterans.

I think Napoleon and the Spanish will be more than happy to help with this request.

Oh I think that they could fill that role very well. We just have to see if future events will provide opportunities for that to happen.

Integrating the people isn't that hard, the PRP's abrupt wholesale distributions make integration the only option down the line and smart colonialism will take care of the rest.

Yes an Indian, Chinese and Asian stuck in middle of Africa treated correctly and made to feel Portuguese and not foreign will accept and strive to take on that identity. Their children will only know one thing they Portuguese and other than color of skin will have little in common with people of where their ancestors came from. Be no different that American with Greek or German name identify themselves as Americans and not where they grandparents or great grandparents came from.

People retain their parents or grandparents identity if they ostracized and not allowed to integrate. Always feeling outsiders. The Portuguese Europeans do not have the manpower on their own to maintain their empire and are integrating Africans, Indians, Asians and Chinese plus a shitload of European emigrants. Will it be easy no, can they succeed yes absolutely but in doing so they will transform what it means to be Portuguese so that it be different than our iotl understanding.

 

[Drunkrobot]

With the professionalisation and the systemisation of the military and of war/battle analysis, and the renaissance in the teaching of fields like mathematics, it would be interesting to have some bright spark hit upon Lanchester's laws in time for the military reforms prior to the Napoleonic Wars.

To not get too involved with the mathematics, the laws posit this; Warfare from eras dominated by melee units could be understood to be fights of two large groups engaging each other practically on one-on-one duels. One spearman or one horseman can only attack one spearman or horseman at a time, so we can assume that if the individual soldiers of both sides are roughly of equal quality then we expect casualties taken to roughly equal casualties made, even if there is a numerical superiority of one side. This is also the case with unaimed fire into each others areas, like a duel between howitzers divided by a hill: you might have twice as many guns as mine, but that's just another way of saying that the target I have to hit is twice as large as yours, so it evens out to me being able to take out as many of your guns as you mine. This is Lanchester's Linear Law.

But with the arrival of muskets and rifles of increasing accuracy and power, the battlefield becomes more accurately described as the whole force of one side fighting against the whole force of the other; it is easier for a full regiment of riflemen to attack every member of a half-depleted regiment than if both sides were using spears. Using nothing more than a bit of calculus and some basic and fairly reasonable assumptions to create a basic model, Lanchester calculates that in 'modern' war, the strength of a military force is not proportional to its number of soldiers, but rather to the square of its number of units. If I have 1,000 soldiers and you have 800, then what once may have been a bloody struggle for each of us will likely be a crushing victory for me, because the effect of superior numbers has been dramatically increase. This is Lanchester's Square Law.

Now, of course, practically no engagement between two enemy forces in military history ever had exactly the strict conditions assumed by either law, or had the exponent be equal to 1 or 2; the effective exponent has always been between 1 and 2, with certain technologies or tactics increasing or decreasing it. But in general, it has increased over history, and it can certainly be used to help describe the challenges posed to Portugal by an enemy that is both larger and as-well-or-better trained and equipped. Better quality troops is welcome, as is better tactics and generalship (Portugal's smaller army can, for example, trust more in an aggressive pursuit of defeat in detail to overcome a larger opponent, as it shows that even a slight local numerical advantage can achieve decisive results), but so long as Portugal's enemy has a land route then the overwhelming factor is always going to be numbers - if Portugal is outnumbered by the French on the field 2 to 1, then it would have to make every Portuguese soldier equal to 4 French. Against Napoleon's army of 1808, that is impossible. It's more worth Portugal's time to have more troops, either for set-piece battles or guerrilla, and to know how to raise and lower the exponent of both sides in an engagement. Of course, it goes without saying that moves which lower the exponent of the enemy side, increase the exponent of your side, or both, is always good to do, but moves that increase or decrease the exponents of both sides increases the relative importance of numbers, so only some times will increasing it on both ends be beneficial; Portugal's army must lower it when they are outnumbered to at least promise/deliver to the French a slog for their victory (for example, getting the French into squares or columns when they should be in lines, or in a more strategic sense focusing on disruption/wasteful expense of the French supply of ammunition to force more melee combat) and raise it when they have the upper hand and can deliver a decisive blow (like inviting the French onto an open field or to come down a hill and then letting the rockets fly, or pulling back a regiment targetted for a bayonet charge and whittling the charge down with the advantage in rifles).

 

[Lusitania]

King and Country (1783) (2 of 4)
​

Finances & Technology​

The Agricultural Drag (1779-1783)​

The Late Pombaline period was one of reform consolidation in the field of agriculture, which would be characterized by the work not of the Ministry of Agriculture and Health, but that of Planning & Infrastructure. Minister Mourão of the ‘P & I’ department recreated the practice of space utilization, something that was vital in a country like Portugal, where orography formed one of the greatest challenges to efficient development potential. The greatest proof of advanced terrain construction had already been obtained from the success of the Royal Roads’ Secondary Phase, which successfully connected the disparate centers of Northwestern Portuguese Hills like Guarda, Castelo Branco and Bragança against all odds of engineering, so faith in the government to correctly defeat the challenges of geography in other fields was high.

The three main crops in Metropolitan Portugal were grain, vines and olive trees, these last two being a sort of semi-cash-crop due to being staples of Southern Europe with high enough resale value in non-Mediterranean climates and cultures to make them more valuable than common crops. Amongst the common crops there was American corn, which had been brought to dominance in Northern Portugal in the 16th century but failed to spread to southern territories due to lack of proper humidity. Rye was cultivated in the poor soils of the Beira cliffs and Algarve. Moreover, efforts were being made to introduce potatoes as a more mainstream produce for a better overall bounty of food. Finally, wheat was mass produced in the Tagus Valley and Alentejo, which formed enough food to turn the region into a national breadbasket.

In addition, many oversea plantations provided sugar, spices, tobacco, cocoa, cotton and extra sources of food crops (like Morbeia’s celebrated wheat fields). The most important agricultural centers were the Brazilian Slave States, the Angolan coast (which provided food for its entire theater plus the neglected St. Tomé Island) and East Timor, where sandalwood was produced uniquely in the empire.

There were also the plantations that had strategic importance instead of economic one; Guinean and Timor plantations were the primary means of land claiming by the Portuguese in their respective areas and Madeira possessed one of the extremely few plantations of tropical species in Europe, like sugar and mango.

Standing on top of this economy was cattle herding, a pyramid level that both fed on, worked on and fertilized agriculture. In an age where most prestigious economic papers hailed agriculture as the true source of wealth as it was the only field known to be proportional to most of the population productivity in terms of land usage, agricultural development was seen as both the consequence and the propulsion of power. In the previous phase of Government (1763-1777), the introduction of land enclosure, national deposits, agricultural liberal market and the Royal Academy of Sciences allowed for the accumulation of tools and know-how for an authentic agricultural revolution, but the funds necessary for a nation-wide investment were at the time consumed by expensive projects like the Royal Roads, Portugal Secure and the CPD.

In 1777, with a population of little over 3.5 Million, the territory consumed approximately 12.25 Million Hectoliters of food per year, of which a yearly average of 6% was imported (well below the European average). Minister Aaron had a twofold objective; to reduce the minimum importation needed to exclusive crops and to create a significant surplus of food exports to profit off feeding foreign war machines and economies. In 1778, due to increased GDP, lower interest rates, rising gold reserves, improved bureaucracy, improved education and improved implementation as opposed to 1750, conditions were set for serious work to be undertaken at a metropolitan level.

The main problems of self-feeding, however, had been answered outside Aaron’s department, for they were caused primarily by logistics; the 6% of importations, for example, could be blamed on Lisbon alone, where there were more people than local food production could feed, and projects like the Royal Roads of the PI Ministry and the commercial expansion of the FC Ministry had allowed for food influx to occur more quickly and efficiently, reducing the need for foreign food purchase. This meant that the city could increasingly rely on external food instead of its own, meaning the consumption per urbanization was likely to increase.

The entrance of significant fluxes of Polish, Italian and Irish families seeking land owning opportunities allowed the system to evolve past its staleness. In the agricultural pyramid, the number of non-native families working on crops increased significantly while the native families ‘moved up’ to cattle herding. Basic produce like potatoes, rice and corn were now increasingly low-wage immigrant enterprises while cattle, thanks to breakthroughs in market, vaccination and selective breeding, was growing more and more competitive. The middle way was the fruit and vegetables market, which was still occupied by a balance between established families and newly arrived strangers.

In the cities, the market of sweets had developed itself to become the golden crown of pyramid, with increasingly prestige gaining bakeries developing Portuguese gastronomy with more and more recipes based on local and foreign recipes. The biggest indication of their evolution was the end of household deliveries in the baked goods realm even in some rural areas, with the trendiness and appeal of the food turning the businesses into places to socialize. This was continuing the trend observed in the 1750-1777 period in which the increasingly sophisticated economy was causing technological, methodological and cultural benefits in things as simple as eating.

The proliferation of MLE’s also caused food productivity to increase almost to double its original amounts by 1783; the increasing availability of tools, the pooling of knowledge and improved organization had all contributed to significantly reduce the probability of food shortages and increased the overall revenue of agriculture in the market. This, however, caused a painful and frictional departure from the original Portuguese cultural attachment to completely private land owning, one of the few longstanding symbols of pauper power in national history.

Many natives sought to move to the colonies as a result of the disheartening turn of affairs. Between 1779 and 1783, the number of emigrations related to land owning tragedies almost tripled, with most new settlers choosing to go to new Brazilian frontiers, Guinea and Angola in search for cheap land after the much-celebrated war gains, where the government couldn’t get them.

In 1780, King Joseph passed the Minority Protection Law, which prohibited violence or further anti-ethnic laws from being passed in the nation until a proper new court could be established in 1784. This allowed the new coming farming families to live more openly in the countryside and diffuse their culture further instead of repressing it. As a result, Portuguese culture, as a direct consequence of the developments in the realm of agriculture, was deviating even further from its colonies with the image of the typical farmer being mixed with Polish and Italian stereotypes. The word ‘bambino’, originally from the Italian for ‘child’, became known as a derogatory term towards some poor farmers in Alentejo as it was often loudly heard amongst them by the native Portuguese whenever they scolded their sons.

This, however, allowed for the typical native resistance towards innovation to dilute, as poor families tried their best to thrive in the contrarian environment. Food dynamics began shifting very quickly and towards creating the surpluses necessary to sustain bigger urban centers. This meant that the ‘dragging’ in the sector continued on till the end of the decade, with no lucrative surplus being achieved.

In 1782, the population finally surpassed the 4.5 Million mark and between the new numbers and new cattle businesses, food consumption had raised to 15.75 Hectoliters, with 8% being imported. While the importations had increased, the percentage of its composition was much more on the side of exclusive goods that the territory couldn’t produce efficiently, like cash crops and some fish species like cod. Cities also became increasingly reliant on internal imports of food, but this was because the number of cities not dedicated to agriculture was increasing (by 1783 virtually all district capitals except for border ones were attempting this) and they were all increasing their size and developing in indirect proportion. While this meant that the negative impacts of the drag had been reduced, it was still a visible hardship that would feed aggressive feelings towards Morocco’s wheat lands in the 19th century.

The 1780 Capitalist Capping​

“We have reached the limit of our technology, the limit of our land. We must innovate now and break the illusion of barriers that surround us… or forever stagnate.”
-Chairman Alexander, speaking at the Chamber of Commerce​

Accompanying the rise in population, however, was the slowing down of the economic growth. Despite going through the age of breakthroughs in economic thinking, as demonstrated by the publishing of the GTP, the number of businesses created, the percentage of capital growth, the investment and even productivity in general had slowed down visibly in comparison to the early Pombaline Age. Some attributed this to the end of the Royal Roads project, as it meant that the new network revenue growth had now reached its full potential and could contribute no more, but others believed that the true cause was the lack of technological growth.

The chairman of the Chamber of Commerce, Alexander Batalha, believed that the country growth was growing slower because it was reaching a point of saturation in its potential, which he argued was measured by the combination of technology and territorial limits. This was an opinion formed based on information the Chamber could collect on the transactions being made nationally, which indicated that the variety of goods had not increased, the contracts had not grown more sophisticated or lucrative, the primitive factories were beginning to drain as much from the management well as they could and the Merchant Fleet had not acquired or refitted new vessels.

The seizing of new territory overseas like New Zealand did not stamp this problem, as many investors sought to improve the state of the imperial core economy instead of investing further in far off lands like the country had done for centuries. During 1783 many Portuguese merchants decided to sell off their European holdings and begin new businesses in frontier ports, like Memere, Malaca and Bahia Nova (and eventually Ponta d’Albuquerque). The development of finance and accounting tools suggested that there was some room for inefficiency plugging, as patrimonies were now managed more directly and money spills were being cut down on, but without a central banking institution it was unlikely this would pan out for long.

The acquisition of new resources in India, like expensive dyes usually only traded by the Calcutta office or even military rockets, as well as the breaking of the monopoly of the Dutch in South East Asia, promised lucrative opportunities for European merchants importing goods to Europe, which alleviated the situation, but many high-end plutocrats remained concerned. The opportunities for commerce seemed to increase, but their profitability was reducing. Inflation remained relatively stable, but profits were simply decreasing due to lack of room in the economy for investing in itself.

They ended up turning to technology.

The Steam Engine & Machine Parts​

The Royal Polytechnic Academy of Oporto had distributed knowledge on the Watt model steam engines for a while and they were the primary developers of national prototypes. Investors became interested in the steam engine because artificial automatic power allowed factories to be built away from rivers with watermills, allowing the possible ratio between suitable territory and possible industrial infrastructure size to increase dramatically, not to mention the sheer work gains. There was also a desperate need in Europe to devise means to produce manufactured goods to not only compete with one another, but also to sell them away in America and Asia. The textile industry in Oporto was especially interested in securing a way to make the increasingly complex rotary machinery move with extra power.

Because of undisputed Watt engine patents, the Academy had to seriously innovate in the design, so it could produce its own profitable patent. The coal economy programs[1] drawn out by William Stephans actively encouraged and invested in engineers capable of developing new steam engine patents, even offering to buy coal from England to experiment with. This triggered the beginnings of a technological burst in the 1780s and 1790s, with many patents designed for increasingly powerful and safer rotary movements being made. The last major invention in 1783 was none other than the power loom, a machine developed by João da Costa Ferreira fellow students of the academy to safely pump out cotton-based fabric with minimal human involvement through the use of rotary power.[2]

This was accompanied by an increasing demand from all economic sectors, especially agriculture and industry itself, for specialized tools and tool parts. The Rotterdam Plough had become massively popular due to its superior traits to wooden ploughs almost straight across the board. The gun and rocket factories of Silver Arm also required ever more sophisticated precision tools, from needles to measurement instruments to simply more efficient forges.

But the industries of ceramics, cork, glass, textiles and paper would dominate the acquisition of early machinery. Plagued by problems of labor shortage, they sought to invest even in primitive mechanization to cut through labor costs and produce enough quality material to compete with their international rivals. Between 1781 and 1783, the early introduction of imported steam engines allowed manpower demand to be cut by a couple of hundreds of workers while maintaining the same productivity output. Coal therefore became the new concern, as well as the fuel inefficiency of the new technology.

Introducing power looms, however, was very promising and encouraged textiles to grow more and more. Oporto became the center of studies AND benefits of steam technology, with both the main academy and the main beneficiary industry being centered there. The end of the Three Years War allowed the city to become internationally renowned as the main port in Iberia for mechanization studies, attracting a large number of investors and students in the following decade.

This signaled the entrance of Portugal in the race towards the Second Industrial Revolution.

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[1] See Section: The last Years of Pombal (1777 – 1782) – Ministry of Industry & Armament – Metallurgy Patronizing & The Metropolitan ‘Coal Plan’ (1780).
[2] IOTL the power loom was developed by Cartwright in England in 1785. iTTL the power loom was simultaneously developed in both countries.


This section tries to provide readers with a better understanding of the changes that Portuguese society had witnessed during Pombal's tenure as Prime Minister. We have 3 points that we wanted to discuss - Agriculture, Capital, Steam Engine & Machinery.

The Agriculture aspect was very important due to the continued deficit in food production in the country. The fact that agriculture output increased considerable as the Metropolitan Portugal population increased by about 2 million from 1755 to 1783 is a great achievement. We are also witnessing the change in the products being produced, this trend will continue to change as products that can be imported at lower price will price out local production while products with short shelf life and needed close to the growing cities will see an increase in value and acreage.

The productivity and capital gap provide us with a snapshot as country grapples with changing economics and both availability of labor and costs. This will have two major impacts one is the dispersant of capital to new markets as investors continue to look for profitable markets and goods. Secondly will be the demand for tools and processes that will increase productivity and allow for increased production.. Which leads us to the next point.

The advent of special tools and steam engines in Portugal in the 1780s is a huge game changer as it puts the Portuguese directly in the path of being one of the early adopters and beneficiaries of 2nd industrial revolution.

. Questions/ Comments???

Join us on December27 we post the 3rd section in the "King and Country 1783" called Philosophy, Religion & Ideology
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[Panzerlied]

December13

December 13th?

 

[Lusitania]

December 13th?

It was done on purpose so we get more responses. Lol.