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

[Lusitania]

Paris Treaty – Aftermath​

The month of December of 1783 was one of national celebration like it had not been seen in a very long time. Victory had been obtained against politically unsurmountable odds; not only were strong, ancient rivals checkmated, but majorly important diplomatic victories were achieved in the theater of the Paris Peace Treaty. Overall, it was a triumph for every corner of society, from soldiers, to diplomats, to statesmen, to the Royal Family itself.

The importance of this conflict for Portugal therefore cannot be understated. It’s timing after the Pombaline Revolution, during the last years of Pombal himself and finally during the early years of King Joseph’s reign legitimized the new government and gave tremendous internal prestige for the colonial empire, with a newfound confidence in national capacity observed. The impact it had on society, especially considering the events of the ‘Nightmare at Sea’ period, would go on to be observed well into the Napoleonic period and helped shape philosophical positions in the country and its colonies throughout that period.

War Analysis & Lessons​

The war with the French and the Dutch, albeit separate, have a blurred line in terms of their mark on national mindset and methodology due to their nigh simultaneous occurrence and the similarities with which they were fought; the Luso-Maratha War was fought mostly on land, with confrontational politics, while the Luso-Franco-Dutch War was fought mostly at sea, under the eye of the British and in the political backstage.

Overall, the two conflicts were registered as impacted by the following factors:

• The Role of Espionage: The Luso-Franco War was the first conflict to be so heavily influenced by the actions of Portuguese espionage, ranging from the ‘Rope Bust’ incident that helped spark the war to the actual process of war where intel was vital to hold the advantage over both French and Dutch naval movements and intentions;
• Commerce, Blockades & Logistics: Trade (and restrictions of it) played an important political and logistical role that affected this war in particular, namely in how merchants involved, Portuguese or not, helped decide the development of battle plans, diplomatic decision making and, most importantly, political leveraging in the Paris Peace Treaty;
• French Financial Crisis: The ongoing dramatic situation in France’s finances was inescapable, with not only the French military and naval machines being chained by lack of funding but also with several important French actors in the war, such as Struffen and Vergennes being motivated by it;
• Overwhelming Portuguese Inferiority: There was no hope for Lisbon to fight these two wars in simple military metrics due to the enormous land and naval advantage France had over Portugal, so the country was tested mostly in its ability to fight a war unconventionally and develop a new political-military doctrine;
• Statesmanship towards Amsterdam: The vision of people like the Count of Barca, Queen Charlotte, Vice-Admiral Rebelo and Duke Lencastre of Angola helped prevent the escalation of violence in the Luso-Dutch War and reach out for an innovative compromise to solve the grievances between the two powers;
• No Interest in America: The North American theatre was completely off the interest sphere of the Portuguese, allowing it to focus on obtaining gains in theaters of less priority to the major powers involved, which is the main reason why the Three-Years War is considered as separate from but involved in the American Revolutionary War;
• British Protection: Although Lisbon diplomats would claim in Paris that the country fought the war on its lonesome, the importance of the Royal Navy is undeniable, as it prevented, through its own conflict with Paris and Amsterdam, the full wrath of the French and Dutch fleets to be turned to focus on attacking Portugal and obtain an immediate and absolute victory over it;

Running parallel to this were the important war lessons absorbed during the conflict:

• Validation of Coastal Fortification: Portuguese coastal positions remained largely difficult to assail due to the careful preparation work done by the I & A Ministry during the Luso-French War which would go on to influence the Luso-Dutch War, too, encouraging the development of this military art;
• Development of Army and Navy Cooperation: The War with the Marathas and the Dutch tested the ties not only between the mariners and the land soldiers, but also between the army and the navy in general, as many important operations during the Three Year War, like the capture of Malacca, were accomplished thanks to the flexibility and coordination of these two branches;
• Breakthrough in Overseas Doctrines: Thanks to the unfolding of Luso-Dutch negotiations, a new mindset was rising in Portuguese colonial politicians that focused on securing the future of the colonies through a less self-centered and more rationalist approach based on talent and manpower retention and territorial consolidation;
• Securement of Diplomatic Prestige: The events of the Paris Peace Treaty demonstrated to not only the observers but also the Portuguese themselves that the country was now truly capable of a new diplomatic muscle and bargaining that, albeit still meek, helped decide the outcome of even theaters it had no action in, like the Ohio River Border proposal;

The most important lessons, however, would remain for years to come in the minds of the people, as the Three Years War was a test to their resolve to endure hardship as well. As already stated, the scenario of defending the seas against the French fleets during the Winter of 1782 was heavily impactful, mirroring in a lesser scale, in the people’s point of view, a Mongolian invasion of Japan. Placating Spain so it would remain Portugal’s ‘Stone Shield’ became evidently important to Lisbon, something that put a self-conscious thorn in the already tense outlook it had on its neighbor prior to the Order of Christ Conspiracy.

It was unknown to the people, the King and the generals alike how the war would have proceeded if Spain had decided to support French grievances with Portugal and many began fearing the scenario of a future joint Franco-Spanish Invasion. A new eye was turned to Portugal’s only land border and the following twenty-five years would be impacted by this preoccupation, influencing military priorities, expeditions and even national culture in itself.

Note:
So we now start a very important segment of the previous wars which as discussion of the key points both positive and negative and what lesson learned. As we can see one of the most important aspect was the fact both the French and Dutch were fighting the British at same time and that prevented them from unleashing their full navies on Portugal. Will the new treaty with the Dutch provide the Portuguese with long term peace on that front? If so then the Portuguese will be facing one less enemy in the future and the potential working together means that Portuguese and Dutch will be stronger as result of it. The biggest threat is and will continue to be Spain. We cannot imagine that the diplomatic circumstances that kept peace between Spain and Portugal will work in the future. The real possibility that Spain will join France in future war against Portugal will dominate political, cultural and military planner for the foreseeable future. . Questions/ Comments???

We will post in about an hour the integration of Malacca as we continue to discuss the world after the "The Paris Treaty of 1783.

 

[Lusitania]

Paris Treaty – Aftermath (cont.)​

Territorial Integration – Malaca
“Is it Maláca or Málaca? And this place is useful to the crown in what manner?”
-José Gonçalo da Gama, first governor of the second Portuguese administration in Malaca, pointing out the settlement’s lack of effective usefulness​

The territorial acquisition of Malaca was made possible by Coronel Brito’s attack on the fortress and was a welcome addition to Portuguese gains in the Paris Treaty, as it symbolized a return to old glory in many ways. The first governor of the new administration was José Gonçalo da Gama, a man who initially was intended to become a future governor of Angola before the colony’s uplifting to overseas state status.

As the Dutch administration had demonstrated, however, the usefulness of the port was in question. The VOC preferred Batavia as an HQ for its trade operations and the strait could be easily policed by native powers from other positions, especially Johor and especially considering the Dutch were allied to strait powers and opened their ports to them. The 142 years of Malacca being Dutch had led, to no Dutch fault, the degradation of Malaca’s importance in the region and they held on to the city mostly to prevent it from falling to other Europeans’ hands.

Tempered by two decades of financial culture development, many Portuguese administrators and politicians also had their doubts supersede their sense of national pride; governor Gama, for example, actively called out the lack of importance the port had fallen into and predicted that his tenure would be marked by unfair political and economic disadvantages, not to mention an exaggerated pressure to succeed.

Added to the financial prospects, there was also the matter of the inhabitant policy to be decided on; Malaca was populated by a native Malayan majority, by a Dutch burgher minority protected by Portuguese guarantees in the Treaty of Paris and, finally, a “kristang” minority descendant from the First Portuguese Administration. None of these, including the kristangs, were especially excited about the new government; the Dutch and Malayans were actively opposed to it while the kristangs felt the Portuguese would not only be unable to protect them but would also expose them to discrimination by the majorities.

Failure was not an option, however, as pressure from all corners of Portuguese Asia as well as Lisbon itself made it clear to Governor Gama that Malaca would not be held in neglect. In sympathy with the difficulties felt in Malaca, however, the Goan colonies authorized the Indic Army to station protective and law enforcing Companies in the settlement so that the first steps to assimilation would run smoothly.

Governor Gama therefore enacted the following projects:

• Portuguese-Malayan Law Code: A new legal codex begun to be drafted to attend to Malaca’s particular needs with the goal of pacifying natives and assuring them that the old authoritarian Portuguese ways based on the sword and cannon were a thing of the past;
• Malacca City Renovation: Working on top of previous Dutch plans to improve the city that had been interrupted in 1780, the Portuguese drafted and initiated construction efforts to repair the fortifications and improve the Malacca River’s urban estuary with the final objective being of increasing the city’s defensive and docking capabilities;
• Gear Shifting to Logistics: Activity in the city began to be geared to change from being a commercial trade center to being a connecting point between Portuguese colonies, with less funding going to markets and instead going to naval and military support;
• Diplomatic, Linguistic & Cultural Development: Knowing that the city was now inhabited by a tri-factor of Dutch, Portuguese and Malaysian cultures, Governor Gama diverted funding to develop the embassy, the schools and the theater with the objective of turning Malaca into the primary meeting point between European personalities and the Malaysian Peninsula;
• Passive and Asset Downsizing: The scale of Malaca’s capital responsibility, mainly through a series of sales and financial scrapings to Dutch Burghers and Goa, began to be intentionally decreased with the objective of reducing its liabilities and toxic assets;

Malaca City Plan (1782)
Gama’s reforms were important to prevent Malaca from becoming a financial sinkhole​

The Gama reforms on Malaca were harsh and no one predicted the city would ever return to its old glory, but should they succeed then the colony would at least be sustainable and useful to the empire, something that satisfied the central government’s main objectives.

Points 1 & 2
“The Malaccans do not seem to be completely hostile to us. Therefore, we must respond in kind and set an example for the entire region.”
-Governor Gama arguing in his letter to Goa for the justice sector of his proposed budget​

The first point regarding the law was the biggest indication that the 2nd Administration would be far different from the 1st. The Malaca law codex made use of the Dutch example as well as lessons learned from the First Luso-Dutch War, where Portuguese religious zealousness ultimately proved its diplomatic undoing, as well as making use of a general difference in colonial attitude between Post-Pombaline Portuguese and their Albuquerquean ancestors.

For once, religious persecution was outlawed, with religious violence being declared a proper court charge to being jailed and having your assets seized (this alone simultaneously pacified the social cliques and warned them that challenging the new administration would only render harsh results). Secondly the Dutch Burghers were allowed to continue their commerce freely and the ports remained open to native powers. This was a deliberately anti-protectionist stance that guaranteed Malayan sultans that the Mare Clausum was a thing of the past (for now). This did not prevent the fleeing of Muslim merchants from the port, as it had happened in the 16th century.

Finally this translated to a more sophisticated colony overall, with a just court and open market. Governor Gama did not tolerate dissent, but he also sought to modernize the settlement as much as he could and this passed from letting go of the notion that Malaca was to be turned into some sort of Christian stronghold.

To enforce all this it was important to have in place a modern legal mechanism, so an official tribune was established inside the Portuguese fortress to settle matters between the various social segments beneath the eye of the Portuguese authority. Law, order but most importantly justice became the guidelines, motivated by a desire to reduce the chance of a native uprising.

The second point concerned itself with improving Malacan infrastructure to the point it would be once again impenetrable and useful to the Navy. The old fort of Formosa was a bygone relic, but Dutch fortifications could be easily repaired, renamed and reformed. Moreover, the commercial attractiveness of Malaca was not entirely abandoned and a good portion of the infrastructural budget went to renovating Malaca’s harbor and the Malaca River banks. The insight of the Dutch settlers was vital, as they had good engineering skills especially geared towards fluvial and dock improvements.

Improved Malaca Harbor (1799)[1]​

Points 3 & 4​

The third point was perhaps the most important one; Portuguese merchants had a divisive stance on Malaca, with one faction believing it to be an unquestionable gem and the other claiming it was a hassle and a danger to their operations (mostly due to concerns that it would encourage Johor to finance pirates to spite Portugal). Governor Gama himself suspected Malaca served no purpose other than satiate some misguided sense of national anger towards Portugal’s misfortunes. The loss of Malaca in the 17th century had been a telltale sign of the decline of the Portuguese Empire and many associated its return to the benefits of the Late Pombaline Age.

Now it stood to reason that Malaca was useful only in the sense it guaranteed that Portugal had its own entry point to the Far East and the South East Asian region. Rationalists and free trade defenders, for example, argued that using Malaca as a trade door lock was counterproductive and kind of an ungentlemanly move towards Portugal’s new allies, the Dutch (some Portuguese were still having trouble with this last idea, just to top it). There were also concerns regarding the traditional peacekeeper of the region, the Chinese Empire. Restricting trade through the strait could repeat the tragedy of the 17th century where the Emperor, after Portugal first conquered Malaca, persecuted the Portuguese in Canton for three whole decades.

Admiral Rebelo, now promoted to his new post by letter from the King himself after the Three Years War, argued that Malaca was now more useful as an entrepôt for the Navy instead of for the merchant class. The Portuguese had suffered tremendous administrative and naval difficulties in Macau and Timor after the loss of Malaca, as now they had no reliable private resting point to relay their troops, letters and ships through. The recovery of Malaca eased this somewhat just for the simple fact it encouraged Goans to stay in contact with the Timorese and the Macanese. It was also important in the sense it reminded the Dutch they could no longer keep the Portuguese off South East Asian affairs and that natives now had a second power to bargain benefits from.[2]

Malaca’s importance therefore was promoted within the context of administrating the Portuguese Empire rather than for commercial steering; Dili, Macau and Goa stationed their own offices in the city to look out for their respective interests, allowing issues to be immediately mediated between the two parties for the benefit of their merchants and emissaries. Malaca therefore became the meeting point of three different colonial administrations, triangulating Portuguese interests in Asia. For Timor this was a boon, as it ensured its exports would reliably and profitably reach its clients.

For Macau, however, it meant increased risk. In 1785, celebrating the 50th anniversary of Emperor Quianlong’s reign, a Luso-Malacan embassy traveled to Beijing to assure the emperor of their good intentions and generally placate him, but unfortunately it would fall under the context of a bad climate between Macau and its mainland homologue. Governor Gama wished to request both a Chinese recognition of Malaca as Portuguese and laborers to help develop it as a new and improved city. While the encounter still resulted in an influx of Chinese workers and merchants that came to live in Malaca in dockyards and warehouses to develop Malacan docking power, as well as make the Empire look over the de jure transfer of power from the Netherlands to Portugal, it still contributed to the rise of tensions between Portuguese Macau and China due to issues pertaining Chinese understanding of how well the Portuguese still served them.

Still, over the course of the following two decades Malaca focused on developing a lax trade policy to encourage merchants to keep making use of it and ensure it maintained a good infrastructure to support the Navy. This allowed the province to keep itself afloat while it served the rest of the Empire as a central resting point.

The fourth point regarded internal politics; the status of Malaca within the empire had to be decided using the new colonial policies drafted by Minister Castro and taking in consideration its social make up. The age of aggressive conversion to Catholicism was over, but Malaca was still an important historical springboard for Roman Christianity in Asia. On the other hand, it sat on a region that was in itself a massive Islamic hub. Prospects for religious assimilation appeared expensive and very risky. The Colonial Profit Doctrine argued that stabilizing the colony’s finances was more important than using it as a tool for imperial conversion, so religious proselytization would have to be put aside.

Language, population and rights, however, were a different matter. While the Dutch settlers were guaranteed their independence, the Portuguese had full authority to input school curriculum to educate locals in Portuguese. The only available case to base the methodology on, however, was the case in pre-war Portuguese Konkan (Northern Goa & Southern Damão) where Canarim, the official creole, was tolerated to protect the quantitative power of the language in the region.[3] Governor Joseph Soares of Greater Damão recommended to Governor Gama to encourage Kristangs to feel at peace and focus the language spreading to pure Malayans.

This meant, however, that Malaccan linguistic demographics would remain fractured for the foreseeable future but, in return, would mean the protection of the present influence and peace between Portuguese Malaca and the Johor Sultanate, which would not have so much reason to feel the Portuguese were a danger to their people.

Point 5 & Conclusion​

The most difficult point of all, but also the most financially critical, was the rebalancing of the present assets in the city in order to keep Malaca economically stable. There was a high number of Dutch settlers whose fortunes had been guaranteed by the Portuguese as untouchable, but tax policy experts predicted that the regular colonial taxation, even under CPD reduction, would inevitably lead to the ruination of Malaca in the long term due to an inability to provide the richer citizens with the means to sustain their wealth. While many burghers were allowed to keep doing commerce as they pleased, the colony of Malaca in itself had been entering a downward spiral for some time and even before the war the settlers feared that Batavia would sell them off to the British at some point.[4]

The Portuguese found themselves in the position to give Malaca some use the Dutch could not, given their popular affection to the city, the context of their empire’s logistics and communications, the commerce predicted to be held with Siam and China in short term and finally the support of Goa and Timor’s administrations, but their ability was not transcendent to the world’s changing currents; it was likely Malaca would never see its golden age returning, as even its initial prosperity had been ruined by the First Portuguese Administration’s conquest of it, as it disrupted traditional Spice Island docking movements.

As a result, many assets, mostly in the form of stocks, wares and even weaponry, were sold off to the Batavia office as a means to lessen the Malacan burden in the long term. The objective would be to get rid of potentially toxic possessions the Portuguese had little capacity to improve upon and build up treasury for more adequate projects (such as repairing the city after Coronel Leonel’s attack on it). This effectively lessened Malacca’s wealth but perhaps this was better than letting said wealth rot until it made the surrender of the city inevitable.

Finally, in conclusion, the return of Malaca was a very welcome news for the empire as a whole as, as already stated, it seemed like a symbol of the return to a better time for the population, but its integration had to be done with many painstaking decisions that made it clear to the colonists that it would never be the same Malaca that once made the empire rich. Its inclusion, however, meant a definitive return of Portugal to the South East Asia political theater, as evidenced by visits from Siamese and Burmese embassies immediately after the war seeking to guarantee bilateral relations, as well as a return of Portuguese interest to the far off Chinese Sea, where many riches still laid un-plundered.

​

[1] Image courtesy of https://forum.lowyat.net/topic/4193562/all

[2] While at first the Dutch felt assured by these concessions it would ironically lead to the steeling of the alliance, as it assured the Dutch that any conspiracy to block off the Portuguese would be more costly than worth it.

[3] See Section: The Three-Years War (1780 – 1783) – The Luso-Maratha War (1780 – 1783) – War Impact - Countries and People – Internal Powers – The Vice-Roy, the Archbishops and the Governors.

[4] iOTL as part of the Anglo-Dutch Treaty of 1824 the Dutch traded the unprofitable Malacca for British colony on the island of Sumatra.

Note:
How do the Portuguese go about integrating Malaca. That was a question on the regional leaders and the local population. The previous Portuguese administration had left allot negative feeling in the region (except for the Christians who were happy for the Portuguese return. As mentioned the value of Malacca as a trading center had greatly diminished but instead the focus became on the new strategic value. While a more relaxed attitude towards locals and religion was put into practice but even so Muslims did not feel welcome under Portuguese administration and left. Questions/ Comments???

We will post the integration of Malabar on October 18 as we continue to discuss the world after the "The Paris Treaty of 1783.

 

[Lusitania]

Paris Treaty – Aftermath (cont.)

Territorial Integration – Malabar

“The Vice-Roy has put us in the frontline against Tipu’s cannons.”
-Governor Joseph Soares, arguing against Vice-Roy Frederick’s political accomplishment appraisals​

As a result of the war, the ports of Maia, Cochim and Coulão were also annexed, resulting in the entire Malabar region being under Portuguese control, a significant addition in the sense it meant that virtually the entire western Indian coast was under the Portuguese sphere of influence. These ports were placed under the administrative jurisdiction known as the “Velhos Portos”, which enjoyed special trade rights and practiced laxer policies regarding interaction with the Indian natives. Their integration, therefore, was much less in-depth than Malaca, which had issues regarding distance and importance to solve.

Moreover, the annexation of Malabar was a crowning jewel in Vice-Roy Frederick’s tenure, as it accomplished his objective of bringing the entire western Indian coast under Portuguese control. Whether this was politically positive or not was up to debate; Frederick Holstein was an efficient Vice-Roy but was opposed by Joseph Soares (the governor of Damão) and several minor Old Port governors who believed the Vice-Roy had belligerent inclinations that threatened to spark a new devastating Mysore invasion. In any case, Frederick was now seen back in Lisbon as a Vice-Roy so successful that his feats now emulated those of Afonso de Albuquerque himself.

With the exception of Surat and Bombay, the entire western coast was once again under Lusitanian control​

The prospects for political and commercial power growth in the region were pretty enormous and this would attract the preoccupation of several powers, including the British. It didn’t seem feasible anymore that Portuguese presence could be curtailed without a major national upset akin to the disasters suffered in the 16th and 17th centuries. The prestige alone of recovering these territories was hard to shake off.

Still, policies needed to be decided for short term administration. An important aspect of the reintegration of these territories was the fact that Dutch Malabar was organized in Municipalities (Kochi/Cochim) was the first municipality in the Indian subcontinent). This was because of the philosophy of Dutch expansion in India as opposed to Portuguese or even British ones; they focused mostly on corporate urban development and concentrating power in trade cities and left rural expanses be, foregoing county-style administration. The Portuguese had also signed agreements to protect the rights of Dutch settlers and Burghers in the conquered territories, so the natural solution was to integrate Dutch administration into the Goan hierarchy.

There was also the matter that European involvement in Travancore affairs had grown weak. In 1753, the Dutch signed the treaty of Mavelikkara to detach themselves from native affairs after a series of grueling conflicts with the king that weakened them significantly (this was one of the factors behind Dutch frailty in the war and why the Goan fleet was able to so easily assault Dutch Malabar). This ultimately led to Tipu Sultan’s invasion of Kerala which subdued a helpless Travancore to Mysorean rule. Portuguese Malabar was therefore surrounded by a Travancore region in submission to a major enemy, Mysore, and no political agents were in place to inherit from the Dutch to deal with this matter.

The ‘Old Port’ style of administration therefore seemed ideal at first, focusing on ruling these ports indirectly from Goa, appeasing natives and securing commercial profit and justice. There were doubts, however, regarding the profitability of these ports, as the Portuguese found themselves only reaping the benefits of trade of minor spices and exotic flora in a time where the entire empire was growing less and less interested in rural commodities and more and more desperate for industrial ones.

It also seemed pretty obvious that these ports would become stages for future sieges by Tipu Sultan, so a rushed effort was made to repair the fortifications from the damage caused by the Portuguese themselves. Pacifying and allying themselves with the “Partido Holandês”, as the political bodies of the Dutch settlers became known as, was also of vital importance. The presence of Sephardic Jews, St. Thomas Christians and other Abrahamic minorities also became important weights to balance in the power scale to achieve government objectives.

Repaired Forts of Coulão and Cochim​

The main figurehead of the sympathetic population in these ports became Johan van Angelbeek.

Johan Gerard Van Angelbeek
Dutch Colonial Officer
(1727 – 1799)​

Born in East Frisia in 1727, Johan was a VOC Koopman who was appointed by Dutch Ceylon to act as an intermediary to Portuguese Malabar with the aim to ensure the Portuguese side of the Paris Treaty regarding the well-being of the Dutch settlers was respected. He pushed the Goan office to allow the Malabar ports to continue their Dutch policies and, even though he was unsuccessful in arguing that they should be fully left alone or even that Dutch burgher assets should be fully protected, he succeeded in securing religious toleration rules which prevented many settlers from revolting or leaving in the long run. Nominally he was an enemy of Portuguese authority, but it’s arguable that without him it would have been impossible to secure Dutch cooperation in preparing the new territories for profitability and security.

All this preoccupation and political fighting stemmed from the Dutch observing the initial effects of the Portuguese takeover of Mahé, now known as Maia. The former French trade outpost was immediately stripped of its protections, as the Portuguese viewed the French as much bigger enemies and ill-intenders during the war than the Dutch, and there was little to no political assimilation practiced in the port, where Portuguese law and commercial command was immediately installed. In fact many French traders fled south towards Malabar, where they sought protection with the Dutch Parties that had secured better agreements.

Moreover, Maia became a form of militarized outpost as its importance to syphon trade was negatively biased against by the Portuguese, who preferred Calecute and Mangalore, so the significantly hilled region surrounding Maia was turned into a springboard for the Indic Army Battalions to stage their attacks from, something the Mysoreans eyed very carefully.

Still, all was not tension between the Portuguese and their European counterparts; a significant number of ambitious Dutch and French actors also saw the circumstances of complete Lusitanian monopoly over southwestern India as an opportunity for profit. Many took part in projects to unify trade with the traditional Portuguese trade posts of Panjim, Calecute, Cannanore and Mangalore, with French actors in particular attempting to head a diplomatic mission to convince Tipu Sultan to let them fund the construction of a road between all these ports.

Other more suspicious ones instead took the protective route, seeking to strengthen their respective outpost defenses and supply funding in what they saw as a delicate short-term period of hostility. It was therefore too soon to take conclusions regarding this new Portuguese Malabar and wars with Tipu Sultan would have to be fought before a definitive administration was decided on.


Note:
This post is about the integration of Malabar and the rest of Western Indian coast under Portuguese control or influence. We really need to understand the political implications to the Indian and to European nations. The conquest of these ports followed by British acceptance of Portuguese dominance and control (British had been limited to two enclaves (Surat and Bombay) meant the Portuguese practically controlled western coast from the Southern tip of Indian subcontinent to Diu. How this would play out in future political and military purposes would be something to analyze and for future leaders and military people to decide at the moment the Portuguese are busy integrating things. One interesting point I wanted to make was the continuing number of Dutch who decided to stay within the Portuguese Empire. While some left those staying behind may find themselves much richer and powerful than they be under Dutch rule. Questions/ Comments???

Since this post was a little shorter than normal posts we will the next section called "The Second Colonial Accord – Guinea, Cape, Australia and Zeeland" on October 23 as we continue to discuss the world after the "The Paris Treaty of 1783.

 

[Lusitania]

Paris Treaty – Aftermath (cont.)

The Second Colonial Accord – Guinea, Cape, Australia and Zeeland​

The Peace treaty greatly reduced Dutch presence on the African Continent and Indian Subcontinent to just a few outposts and factories.

Despite the Portuguese being mostly satisfied with their side of gains in the war, Count Barca defended that a separate agreement had to be made to settle a few lingering issues with the British and ensure the alliance stood strong for the future. The accord was not negotiated in Versailles like the other peace treaties but in London and Lisbon. The main Portuguese concern was the ongoing animosity between British East India Company and Portuguese India as well as the effects of their own bargaining with the British regarding the Ohio River Proposal and the future of Dutch Cape Colony. The growth of Portuguese India through several conquests against the Maratha and Mysore had antagonized the company officials especially in Bombay and Portuguese Africa had acquired a number of political prisoners and assets that were viable for exchange.

To bring peace to the subcontinent the new Portuguese government of Marquis of Lavradio proposed several territory adjustments. While on paper they were tilted in the British favor, the territory the Portuguese stood to receive could potentially secure their dominion over their spheres of influence. Lastly the territory offered was a great motivator for the British to accept the Portuguese conquests of the Dutch territory so soon after losing their prime colony.

The accord became known as the Second Anglo-Luso Colonial Accord, mirroring the one made in Damão that allowed the Calcutta and Goa offices to cooperate in their joint war against the Maratha Confederacy, and it focused mostly on the concession of claims, not actual territories, so future British and Portuguese colonization could proceed peacefully and profitably.

Allegory of George III and the Marquis of Lavradio (1783-onward PM) agreeing to ‘divide the seas and the lands’ on the Second Colonial Accord, paying no mind to natives they step on​

Great Britain secured the following claims:

• All coasts south of the Orange River and Dutch Cape itself;
• The Portuguese factories and claims along the Gold, Slave and Ivory Coasts;
• The Bombay Bay peninsula;
• All Islands outside the Malaysian and Timorese demarcations;
• The New Holland mainland (Australia);

The British, on the other hand, agreed to support Portuguese interests in the following areas:

• The northern bank of the Limpopo River up to 50 km from the coast;
• All coasts between Bissau and Sierra Leone;
• All Western Indian Coasts with the exception of Bombay (a project for discussion over Surate’s future was agreed upon to be made later) and including Mahé/Maia;
• The Malaysia Peninsula (mainland) and the Greater Timor Archipelago;
• The Nieuw Zeeland Island (North Island);
• All coast north of Orange River including Walvis Bay /Angra Pequena

These points went mostly back to the back and purposely avoided deeper discussion regarding the Bombay office, which remained an odd thorn in Anglo-Luso relations. The African and South East Asian divisions had more bilateral enthusiasm, with Portuguese East Africa and South East Asia breathing a sigh of relief that the British would not be seeking to conspire against their conquests.

From Guinea to Serra Leoa​

Since the reorganization of Guinea-Bissau under the CPD policy, the governors of Guinea had sought to expand its territory to new settlements. The five settlements of Bissau began to send out prospectors as early as 1770, but the Portuguese doubted they could annex more territory without brute force of arms, something that required Lisbon to ensure other Europeans wouldn’t contest their claims. The main Portuguese interest was in the areas south of Guinea, where French power was much sparser, as the Senegal river up north was now locked in Parisian lands for the foreseeable future.

There was also the growing desire to establish a Free Slave Colony in Africa in several enlightened segments of Portuguese society to help combat the clandestine slave trade (and to lighten the perceived burden of African presence in Brazil and Portugal). In 1780, the governor of Bissau organized a group of settlers to establish a port in Serra Leoa, much further south of Bissau. His promise was that Portuguese speaking black families would be forever free in Serra Leoa, so the name quickly became associated to the idea of a haven of liberty in Africa. Trade outposts had been present in the area and used by Portuguese, Dutch and French as early as the 15th century, but no actual settlement had been demarcated.

At the conclusion of the Three Years War, the Portuguese took the opportunity to ascertain their claim to this port and the settlement of Serra Leoa officially came to life.

Slaves Freed in Brazil being brought to Serra Leoa (1783)​

This enclave, however, remained vulnerable due to its distance to Bissau and the nearby presence of strongly entrenched Islamic empires. Portuguese growth in the area was slow and became entirely dependent on the goodwill of the black settlers brought from Brazil and Portugal. It could hardly be said that it was even in Bissau’s command, as the main colony concerned itself more with acting as a springboard for the Atlantic Army than in being expansionist. To gain European support for Portuguese annexation of the Bissau-Leona coast, Lisbon surrendered acquisitions made in the Gold Coast during the war to the Dutch and British parties in Paris.

Nova Zelândia​

The negotiations regarding New Holland and New Zeeland came as a surprise addition to the Accord, including to the Portuguese themselves, and stemmed from a number of events and preoccupations rising in the immediate post-war period. As early as 1770, Captain Cook had charted the entire New Zealand area and the number of North and South American fishing ships contacting the Maori began to gradually increase. The introduction of European goods, however, was increasing the ability of the Maoris to stage tribal wars mostly through the increase of food storage capabilities and musket technology. The British, however, lacked the necessary springboard to immediately prey on these territories, but still retained an interest in them.

With the decline of Batavian power in South East Asia, the road to negotiating the new colonial prospects was open, but British governors and settlers soon became more interested in the massive empty mainland known as New Holland or Australia. The objective would be to establish a European all-white colony in this corner of the world using old Dutch plans of similar intentions. With the annexation of Malaca, the Portuguese found themselves with a renewed ability to interact with the region and sought to strengthen their presence as well, mostly through Brazilian settlers who interacted with these islands through a Pacific Ocean route and negotiations to carve out Australia began.

The Count of Barca and the Marquis of Lavradio were one of mind in the idea that they would not be able to convince the British to have their own Portuguese Australia colony, even using the leverage they obtained during the Luso-Dutch War, but another possibility was highly tantalizing; the islands of New Zealand. While these territories didn’t seem to possess precious resources at first sight, the scientific HQ established in Dili supported the notion that they could have academic interest. Being so far removed from typical theaters of conflict as well, the islands seemed like a promising haven for Portuguese colonialists.

In the Second Colonial Accord, the Portuguese admitted their willingness to exchange further claims on African and South East Asian lands in exchange for being allowed to start their own new colony on North Island, where an expedition was already being headed to press Lusitanian advantage. In 1784, the colony of Ponta d’Albuquerque was founded in the Northwestern tip of the territory at the harbor of Kaipara. This was followed by a defensive alliance with Maori and a scientific expedition to the southern bay of North Island that concluded in 1785.

Left: Ponta d’Albuquerque is founded
Right: Portuguese Timor scientific team arrives on Ilha Norte, New Zealand, in 1785, in the site of future settlement of ‘Braga-Beatriz’
These two events were critical to Nova Zelandia’s history​

Portuguese colonial muscle for an intense annexation was not particularly strong, especially in comparison to French and British interests, but the accomplishment of these two major feats thanks to their advanced outpost at Dili demonstrated that the Portuguese were in a privileged position to not only carry out the assimilation of these territories but obtain the favor of the natives first, fortify their small step on the territory, as well as argue in the European community their scientific and military claim to these lands.

Portuguese ships visit South Island in what is now Nova Ceuta​

The securement of New Zealand therefore validated what had been a growing shift in Portuguese colonial mindset; rather than a tool for religious expansion, it ought to be argued in Europe that Lisbon was in a position to enlighten these lands and this was earning it more power and land than its old crusader-like approach had in over two hundred years.[1]


Combined with the demonstrated results of Portuguese colonial policy shifting and the loss of their reputation as zealous Catholic evangelizers in exchange for astute new commercial players, the Portuguese proposition seemed pretty reasonable to the British, especially considering it freed their own hands to pursue the colonization of New South Wales. It was frankly easier to agree to the accord than trying to counter this significant feat of colonial racing.

New Zealand was therefore marked as a new frontier for Portuguese colonization, a jubilant addition to a population avid for new glories. Brazilian interests in particular began supplying Bahia Nova and Ponta d’Albuquerque with new Portuguese-speaking settlers through their fishing expeditions and more agreements were made with natives to ensure the territory stayed in Portuguese sphere of influence for a long time. At 11:32 of 28 February 1785, the flag was holstered above Ponta d’Albuquerque, starting a new chapter in Portuguese history.

Perhaps even more importantly, Ilha Norte became the HQ of Portuguese power projection into the southwestern Pacific, something that would affect the history of regionally major territories like Samoa, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga in the 19th century

[1] This unfortunately would be another step towards the “White Man Burden” philosophies that would rise in the next century.

Note:
This post deals with two main points; 1) Foremost was British acceptance of Portuguese conquests while Portuguese were required to give up all factories and outposts in Gold Coast and Ivory Coast to the British. Plus recognize South Africa as British. It also divided two main areas of future colonization New Zealand and Australia, with the first being recognized as Portuguese and second as British. This provided the Portuguese Empire with some assurances and also forced the British East India Company to accept Portuguese dominance on the west coast once and for all. In the next section we will post we will discuss the implications of the war and its impact on people and countries. To get a better understanding of the British sentiment and thinking at end of the war. 2) the second important point was the expansion of the Portuguese in West Africa and New Zealand. Both of which would have great impact in future for the applicable regions. As part of the expansion of Portuguese Guinea was the establishment of several settlements of freed Africans. While a growing anti-slavery movement existed in Southern Brazilian provinces some freed slaves wanted to leave the continent altogether and these settlements served two purposes: i) provide a refuge for freed slaves ii) provide a Portuguese anchor at the southern end of Portuguese Guinea. Questions/ Comments???

Join us on November 1 we will the next section called "The Paris Treaty of 1783 - War Impact – Countries and People"

 

[Lusitania]

Paris Treaty – Aftermath (cont.)

War Impact – Countries and People​

The treaty of Paris 1783 was a double edge sword for the Portuguese. In some ways it exemplified the continued growth in Portugal economically and militarily but in other ways it reinforced the attitude that many countries had that Portugal was only able to achieve the military conquests due to its relationship with Britain and even had only been able to defeat both the Dutch and French due to those countries being distracted by the British. It also exacerbated lingering tensions between Portugal and its rivals despite the last-minute twist that was the Luso-Dutch Alliance.

American Independence & Impact on Britain​

During negotiations in Paris, (Paris Treaty of 1783) the American delegation discovered that France would support independence, but no territorial gains. The new nation would be confined to the area east of the Appalachian Mountains, with the Northwest Territories staying in British-Canadian hands. The American delegation opened direct secret negotiations with London, cutting the French out, but Lord Shelburne had already agreed to these terms due to the possibility of ending Spanish aggressions on it in both Gibraltar and North America.[1]


Despite the settlement being made at the Ohio border proposal, Shelburne still now saw a chance make the United States a valuable economic partner. At the end of the war the US was practically bankrupt and in dire economic peril. As part of the agreement the US obtained all the land east of the Mississippi River, south of Canada, and north of Florida, forming a very sizeable land filled with white Anglo-Saxon Protestants that could make valuable allies. In addition, it gained fishing rights off Canadian and Mexican coasts. Shelburne was able to negotiate a favorable trade agreement with US allowing for British investment and trade with the US, to ease the burden on the young nation and to foster better relations Britain agreed to pay full compensation and costs to British merchants and Loyalists wishing to relocate to British territory. It was a highly favorable treaty for the United States even without the Northwest Territories, and deliberately so from the British point of view.

However, many American state builders, some of them among the Founding Fathers, had lingering concerns regarding the lost lands to the west, perceiving them as a relinquished right to their chartered states. Since the blockade was lifted and the old imperial restrictions were gone, American merchants were free to trade with any nation anywhere in the world and their businesses flourished, but this growth would only propel feelings amongst the newest citizens of the world that their potential was in curfew to the east of the Ohio River.

Initially, the more pacifist politicians sought to counter this frustration in a number of ways:

1. Stressing the vagueness of the Paris Treaty regarding settling rights in these ‘lost territories’, thus encouraging migrants in America to move west regardless of it;
2. Pursuing westward expansion south of the Ohio River or, in other words, right through Spanish Louisiana and Texas;
3. Encouraging eastward commercial expansion by reattaching ties with European nations;

Only the third alternative was completely peaceful, with the other two being blatant disregards to the Paris Treaty’s delineations, something that would spark immense accumulated border friction all the way until the 1810s.

The British recognition of United States and the Peace treaty freed Portugal from its British obligations to not recognize United States and embargo the country. Portugal recognized the independence of United States and to the delight of many merchants and politicians its embargo was lifted.

Losing the war and the Thirteen Colonies was a shock to Britain and to Europe. The war revealed the limitations of Britain's fiscal-military state when it discovered it suddenly faced powerful enemies, with few allies, and dependent on extended and vulnerable transatlantic lines of communication. The defeat heightened dissension and escalated political antagonism to the King's ministers. Inside parliament, the primary concern changed from fears of an over-mighty monarch to the issues of representation, parliamentary reform, and government retrenchment. Reformers sought to destroy what they saw as widespread institutional corruption.

The result was a powerful crisis, lasting between 1776 and 1783. The peace in 1783 left France financially prostrate, while the British economy boomed thanks to the return of American business. The crisis ended after 1784 thanks to the King's shrewdness in outwitting Charles James Fox (the leader of the Fox-North Coalition), and renewed confidence in the system engendered by the leadership of the new Prime Minister, William Pitt. Historians conclude that loss of the American colonies enabled Britain to deal with the French Revolution with more unity and better organization than would otherwise have been the case. Britain turned towards Asia, the Pacific and later Africa with subsequent exploration leading to the rise of the Second British Empire, which would become much stronger and larger than the First.

Britain's war against the Americans, French and Spanish cost about £100 million. The Treasury borrowed 40% of the money it needed. Heavy spending brought France to the verge of bankruptcy and revolution, while the British had relatively little difficulty financing their war, keeping their suppliers and soldiers paid, and hiring tens of thousands of German soldiers. Britain had a sophisticated financial system based on the wealth of thousands of landowners, who supported the government, together with banks and financiers in London. The efficient British tax system collected about 12 percent of the GDP in taxes during the 1770s.

In sharp contrast, Congress and the American states had no end of financing the war. In 1775 there was at most 12 million dollars in gold in the colonies; not nearly enough to cover current transactions, let alone finance a major war. The British made the situation much worse by imposing a tight blockade on every American port, which cut off almost all imports and exports. One partial solution was to rely on volunteer support from militiamen, and donations from patriotic citizens.

Another was to delay actual payments, pay soldiers and suppliers in depreciated currency, and promise it would be made good after the war. Indeed, in 1783 the soldiers and officers were given land grants to cover the wages they had earned but had not been paid during the war. Not until 1781, when Robert Morris was named Superintendent of Finance of the United States, did the national government have a strong leader in financial matter.

Morris used a French loan in 1782 to set up the private Bank of North America to finance the war. Seeking greater efficiency, Morris reduced the civil list, saved money by using competitive bidding for contracts, tightened accounting procedures, and demanded the national government's full share of money and supplies from the confederated states.

Congress used four main methods to cover the cost of the war, which cost about 66 million dollars in specie (gold and silver). Congress made two issues of paper money, in 1775–1780, and in 1780–81. The first issue amounted to 242 million dollars. This paper money would supposedly be redeemed for state taxes, but the holders were eventually paid off in 1791 at the rate of one cent on the dollar. By 1780, the paper money was "not worth a Continental", as people said.

The skyrocketing inflation was a hardship on the few people who had fixed incomes, but 90% of the people were farmers, and were not directly affected by that inflation. Debtors benefited by paying off their debts with depreciated paper. The greatest burden was borne by the soldiers of the Continental Army, whose wages, usually in arrears, declined in value every month, weakening their morale and adding to the hardships of their families.

Beginning in 1777, Congress repeatedly asked the states to provide money, but the states had no system of taxation either, and were little help. By 1780 Congress was making requisitions for specific supplies of corn, beef, pork and other necessities; an inefficient system that kept the army barely alive.

Starting in 1776, the Congress sought to raise money by loans from wealthy individuals, promising to redeem the bonds after the war. The bonds were in fact redeemed in 1791 at face value, but the scheme raised little money because Americans had little specie, and many of the rich merchants were supporters of the Crown. Starting in 1776, the French secretly supplied the Americans with money, gunpowder, and munitions in order to weaken its arch enemy, Great Britain. When France officially entered the war in 1778, the subsidies continued, and the French government, as well as bankers in Paris and Amsterdam loaned large sums to the American war effort. These loans were repaid in full in the 1790s.

The 1790s, however, would see economical trouble return in the form of Barbary Pirates, which would hold the entire American economy hostage for years on end with ransoms, until the Americans fought back and even obtained help from an unexpected ally in Europe…[2]

Revolutionary Influence in Portugal & Rise of Liberals

“I finally see in your eyes a spark of the same fear I believe may have perhaps also spurred my family to leave for the Colonies; your Majesty, that is the fear of tyranny and you’d do well not be remembered for it.”
-Aaron Lopez, to Joseph II, July 1780​

The topic of the American Revolution, its Declaration of Independence and the ideology over which the United States were founded was, in Portugal, heavily influenced by a number of factors, from which the following stood out:

• Anglo-Luso Alliance;
• Hispanic-Luso Rivalry;
• Lusitanian presence in American commerce and population;
• Portuguese sovereignty over Brazil;
• Tagus Declaration & Pombaline Revolution;
• Portuguese losses and gains in the 1778 Luso-Mysore War;

All six of these great factors helped shape Portugal’s opinion of the American Revolution and its impact in Portugal into a mess of indecisions, anxiety, uncertainty and doubt from both the government and the people. The Marquis of Pombal, main representative of the government throughout most of the American Revolutionary War (before his passing in 1782) adopted a stance of skeptic caution. In his opinion the American uprising served only to endanger Portugal (as it did by dragging it back into a short conflict with Spain), endanger its colonial sovereignty (see section immediately below) and put at risk the precarious balance the Tagus Declaration managed to achieve between progressivism and government authority.

In the cabinet at the time the opinion varied greatly, with Aaron Lopez finding himself at the end of many estranged stares due to his previous habitation in the northeastern United States.

King Joseph II, on the other hand, far younger, humbler and modern-in-mind, was greatly upset by the events in the Thirteen Colonies, seeing them as a mirror to an imaginary dark future in his own reign. Most of Joseph’s liberal stances on colonialism were heavily influenced by both his attachment to Brazil and the impact of the Founding Fathers’ actions and arguments.

There was not much flexibility allowed to Portugal’s response, however; its fragile size and vulnerable positions demanded British protection, anti-Hispanic caution, overbearing vigilance and commitment to historical agreements. Portugal was obligated to defend Great Britain’s stance on the Thirteen Colonies, good or bad, and defend an example of obedience rather than rebellion to Brazil. The future of the Portuguese Empire could very well depend on its authoritarianism, counterproductive as it may have been.

Was there, however, a desire from Portugal’s part to embrace or defend the American ideology?

The new capitalist, mercantile and bureaucratic communities, backed by the Chambers of Commerce, would say ‘yes’. Commerce and immigration were increasingly pressing issues for Portugal, especially after the revival of its economy. The North American theater was rich in a number of low-cash, but vital, goods, such as timber for ships and food from the Grand Bank Fisheries. Its southern plantations were useless to Portugal’s Brazilian-fed tobacco, sugar and cocoa sectors, but the country’s new manufactories sorely needed the products of the northern states, which is why a number of merchants had wormed their way in Boston, Massachusetts and New York between 1760 and 1773, the hot years of unrest in these territories. Portuguese manufactories had also made significant profits and friendships during the early years of the American Revolution by smuggling manufactured goods to these cities when Britain would not.

The libertarian arguments were also attractive to the merchants; meritocracy was always welcomed by capitalists oppressed by monarchies.

As for the rest of society there was a widespread attitude that ranged from ignorance to dismissal to outright hostility. The new statesmen and lawmakers mused over the significance of the United States for nation-building and civilization, not sure what to tell their patronal entities. There were also border matters to consider; antagonizing the British meant emboldening the French and Spanish, the greatest threats to Portuguese independence.

Even disregarding British influence and Brazilian preoccupations, the population was unsure whether or not to identify themselves with the American movement, due to the simple reason of having already recently accepted a movement of their own; the Pombaline one. The repudiation of clerical power and renunciation of aristocratic influence over law and taxes had created a freer society that felt little reason for more radical steps so soon.

Radicals begged to differ; allied to capitalists, merchants and other sectors predisposed to defend the American ideology, they began to defend and propagate basic ideals of liberalism, starting with word of mouth and underground publications. This fringe movement was easily noticed but highly underestimated, believed by the common man as lacking in proper fuel for any actual significance. They based themselves on the Tagus Declaration but sought more thorough change, wishing for further tax reform, social reworking and even republicanism.

In 1778, with the resolution of the Luso-Mysore War, issues of representation and citizen rights similar to those faced in Britain further spiked liberalist talk in Lisbon, with young college students fearing for their lives in a potential overseas war despite the state’s pretenses of democracy. At the same time Goan stocks rose to new heights, commercial hearings about the protection of merchant assets and investments in education mushroomed, intensifying the miasma of left-wing politics in major cities.

The Josephine period was marked by the gradual rise of liberals in Portugal, especially in tune with the rise of literacy, wealth and urbanization. The Pombaline Revolution, of course, set the initial course of its ideas in Portugal’s particular political theater, but more and more it would assimilate American constitutionalism and French republicanism until in the early 1800s it would evolve into a full pro-Constitution movement that captivated nearly a quarter of the population.[3]

Revolutionary Influence in Brazil & Rise of Autonomists​

The emergence of a republican independent country in the Americas had a great impact on many European countries and their colonies, Portugal being no exception. The major impact was the declaration that Americans could become citizens of country and not just subjects. The major difference was the status of Brazil and the Brazilians in the Portuguese Empire.

At the time of the American Revolution the British population was between 8 – 9 million while the American colonies population was about 2.5 million of which 30-50% were slaves. In the Portuguese Empire the population of Portugal was 3.5 million while Brazil population was 2.5 million of which about 30% were slaves. Since the British population outnumbered the colonists’ European population 4:1 there was not a huge concern or empathy with the colonist and their concerns.

Meanwhile the Portuguese and Brazilian population was almost the same size. The population disparity had not been lost on the Portuguese government who had put in place severe population controls starting in the 1750s. The most critical and important change during King Joseph I reign had been the elevation of Brazil to kingdom and the promotion of (free) Brazilians as equal states to those of the kingdom.

Secondly, the elevation to kingdom had also been followed by complete abolition of all restrictions on Brazilian economic and industrial development.[4] Moreover, the major contention of the British colonist in America “taxation” had been changed where Portuguese taxes had been reduced or completely eliminated and the Brazilians collected their own taxes and shared in the Empire’s expenses and defense. Brazilian’s investment in Portuguese colonies in Africa and Asia was growing at an ever-increasing rate. Also there started to be a belief by many Brazilian elites that they were becoming equal partners.

Productivity and power had therefore become Brazil’s contribution to the Portuguese Empire, rather than overreaching taxes, but for all of the kingdom’s attempt change its relationship with Brazil and advancements, discontent with Lisbon and Portuguese government increased in the later part of the 18th century.

The first substantial revolt against Portuguese rule came in the late 1780s when Joseph Joaquim da Silva Xavier, known as Tiradentes, joined and soon became the leader of the Inconfidência Mineira, a movement against Portuguese rule and for revolutionary democracy in Brazil that was inspired by the American Revolution and was based in Vila Rica, Minas Gerais.

‘Tiradentes’ sentencing and hanging in 1792​

Due to the new MAD doctrine, Portugal was not allowed to interfere directly in Brazilian state legislation, only help enforce it on request with the Atlantic Army, so Brazilian authorities handled the incident themselves. In 1789 the movement was betrayed, and its leaders were imprisoned. In 1792 they were freed and exiled with the exception of Tiradentes (eng. Teeth-puller), who was re-trialed by the state of Rio de Janeiro and executed, causing the matter to fall down into relative obscurity.[5]

Impact on France​

In 1781, after studying the result of the Portuguese-French War of India of the prior year, the Swiss-born French Minister of Finance Jacques Necker published his most influential document ever, the Compte rendu au roi (Fr. Report to the King), detailing the terrible state of the French economy resulting of famine, war debts and mismanagement. It also suggested a series of Enlightenment measures that would help reverse the situation. To cite his case, Jacques Necker exemplified Pombaline Portugal, mainly how it succeeded against the French Navy and French India.

In one of the clearest signs of unwanted revolutionary influence on others, the Pombaline Revolution was used as a pretext to justify Necker’s policies. The document spoke of the industrial spread in Portugal that cut it off from dependence on Brazilian gold and stabilized the economy. It also spoke of how the more balanced social taxes there and the booming capitalism created a surge of jobs and revenue that kept the Third Estate happy at the same time it’s deeply cemented Jesuit brainwashing was attacked by the Portuguese Crown.

The document was successful in convincing King Louis XVI to raise new loans to finance the American Revolutionary War. For a while it seemed that the normally hesitant King was comfortable in relying on the Portuguese example to support Necker’s measures.

However, the king’s mentality changed when news of the Order of Christ Conspiracy, the Portuguese Catholic Church persecution and the ensuing execution of countless nobles and priests in Portugal reached Paris. French envoys, diplomats and travelers spoke to the people of France about how Portugal was rounding about aristocrats who had betrayed the King and his reforms and how now they hanged, had their heads cut off or even burned them inside their own houses. The violence in Portugal, though microscopic compared to what would later on occur in France, was enough to convince many conservative members of French society that the small Iberian country had gone mad and was heading down the wrong path.

Louis XVI, whose poor leadership strength was easily influenced by others, suddenly felt that of his aristocratic brothers and vassals demanding that he disregarded Portugal as an example of proper economic management. Portugal was argued to be undergoing a delusional path, that it was economically stronger now mostly thanks to its colonial revenues and Indian expansion, rather than wise rule, and that France following its example would lead to a barbarian revolution in which the proper church values would be destroyed and make France subject to Austrian or Spanish attack. As a result, King Louis XVI supported no more reforms based on the Pombaline model for the remainder of his rule.

The echoes of the Pombaline revolution then, as unwanted as they were by both senders and receivers, fell on deaf ears, though the renouncement of them could be argued to be a minor catalyst to the French Revolution. Revolutionaries’ cartoons and posters would later on include Portugal now and then, the most iconic one portraying the First and Second Estates shouting over young Joseph II’s enlightened words at King Louis XVI’s ears.

Impact on the Netherlands​

The Three-Years War nearly bankrupt the Dutch state which, in conjunction with the assistance it provided to Britain’s enemies, it faced a major global assault as retaliation, lost almost a third of its territorial claims, relinquished full authority over Kapstaad to British overseers and finally saw its dominion over the South East Asia frontier to the Pacific stolen by Lisbon or lost to native islands. The VOC shrunk significantly, losing all factories on mainland India and concentrating its capital around Batavia and Colombo core lands. Ceylon and Java became then more than ever the jewels of the Amsterdam Empire.

Its navy didn’t fare much better; the war had already started with ill omens as, despite ambitious ship building programs, the privately-administered VOC was forced for the first time to ask assistance from the government, something that didn’t even come to fruition as most reinforcements sent were lost in battle either along the way to Java or in the Battle of Timor Sea. The commercial power of the company dropped as a result, as well as its ability to defend itself, and the balance of power had been permanently tilted to be maintained in conjunction with their new forceful allies, the Portuguese.

This led to the rise in political power of the Patriot Party back home, plunging the Netherlands into steep political instability for the rest of the decade. The war in itself became recorded as a black turning point in Dutch history, eventually seen in the late 19th century as where the Netherlands lost de facto its great power claim. New commercial lanes and shipping tech brought by steam power, as well as weaponry, would eventually allow it to make a return and expand in Indonesia, Suriname and Africa, but with the onset of the Second Colonial Accord, Dutch hopes of colonizing its discoveries in Australia Incognita were lost forever and its settlers more often became migrants to other colonial empires than to its own.

Impact on Spain​

Although the treaty was concluded with no shots having ever been exchanged between the two Iberian countries, as a result of King Joseph II’s actions and the Lusitanian stance regarding British Gibraltar the animosity from Madrid continued to grow. In some circles of the Spanish society, hatred and resentment towards Lisbon’s backstabbing started surpassing that towards Britain. 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. The Count of Floridablanca, José Redondo, became more worried about the economic and political changes in Brazil than with an independent United States, arguing that Brazil, as a huge colony still owned by its motherland, had more leverage to pursue territorial gains at Spanish expense than the fledgling republic in North America. The fact that the north bank of the La Plata estuary now belonged to Portugal since 1770 only accentuated this.

But not everything between Madrid and Lisbon was rivalry and resentment; Floridablanca, as a man of Enlightenment, was also an avid studier of recent events across the border, where secular institutions had succeeded in fighting for a newfound balance in political power with the church. He was also in a position of good relations with the Italian branch of the Bourbons and the Portuguese Royal Family, allowing him diplomatic privileges with Lisbon that proved crucial to maintaining Luso-Hispanic relations active between 1780 and 1800.

José Moñino y Redondo
Count of Floridablanca
(1728 - 1808)
He maintained Luso-Hispanic relations alive despite the growing tensions between the Iberian countries throughout the last stage of the 18th century​

In 1785 he embarked on a thorough reform of the Spanish bureaucracy, establishing a true cabinet in 1787 (the Supreme Council of State). He founded the National Bank of San Carlos in 1782 and spearheaded the reform in Spanish universities, which had become increasingly lax since the 16th century and the expulsion of the Jesuits. Spain's higher education system was left woefully understaffed; Floridablanca worked to hire new teachers and administrators and to modernize pedagogical methods. Seeking to reduce the cost of reforms at the same time he familiarized the people in power with his ideals, he also established new schools throughout Spain similar to the Portuguese Noble Colleges.

During his tenure, Madrid was rebuilt; Floridablanca regulated the Madrid police and encouraged public works in the city. He established commercial freedom in the American colonies in 1782 and improved press liberties in Spain. The Spanish Empire indeed seemed poised to take on a new age of reforming and many in Portugal believed in 1783 that the Three-Years War had benefited Spanish mentality more than the Portuguese one, as the thorn of Gibraltar seemed to be pressing it to succeed.

The Hispanic-British rivalry, nonetheless, seemed to be approaching another tension peak; with the Gibraltar question getting more and more intolerable and the Bourbon houses slowly harnessing Hispanic-French ties in the middle of a revolutionary climate, many seemed to agree that the end of the current war was just a prelude to a much bigger conflict in the near future that might drag Portugal unto itself.

Spain therefore left the war as a stable, albeit tense state fervently seeking to catch up with its rivals and prevent the American Revolution from infecting its possessions. The counter-culture rise of many less-than-reputable politicians like Manuel de Godoy, however, would signal an incoming storm that would affect Iberian history forever.

Impact on Southern India​

In India, the Kingdom of Mysore resented Portuguese presence along its western coast, but their former war treaties were used as justification for Portuguese control of the former Dutch possessions and all economic rights. The recently-signed Luso-Hyderabad alliance, however, put a thorn on Tipu Sultan’s grievances, allowing peace to stay momentarily.

To the south of Mysore was the Kingdom of Travancore, which the Portuguese had very little contact with since their losses to the Dutch in the 17th century. The Portuguese argued that the Dutch Burghers now living in Coulão and Cochim as Portuguese citizens detained their rights as merchants to Travancore, but Travancore’s ruler, Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma, weary of Vice-Roy Frederick and its reputation to the north, refused to meet with Portuguese emissary and closed all contact with the Portuguese, with which the Vice-Roy responded by ordering a blockade of Travancore. This brought a wave of civil revolt in the territory which feared the difficulties caused by the blockade would allow the Mysoreans to swoop in and annex them.

In 1785, Karthika Thirunal Rama Varma finally agreed to meet with Portuguese emissary Count of Cunha. Portugal and Travancore agreed to establish trade relationship and granting Portugal all rights and privileges owed to the Dutch, on the condition that said trade’s middleman be the previously mentioned Dutch Burghers already in contract with Travancore producers. In turn Portugal would lift its blockade, provide military training and arms to Travancore army and guarantee its sovereignty against Tipu Sultan, their common enemy.

Further to the center of the coast, following the peace with Kingdom of Maratha and the return of Cananore and Calecute to Portuguese India, the new administrations were received perceived differently by the various people residing in those enclaves. The local Christians for most part welcomed Portugal’s return since news of the closing of the Goa Inquisition had reached them and meant increased privileges and freedoms. The Muslims as well Hindus for most part opposed Portuguese administration, fearing new waves of Inquisition. A number of revolts encouraged by disgruntled French and Dutch burghers sparked, forcing Goa to put down the uprising, trial the instigators as traitors and execute all the local leaders including all the Muslim and Hindu religious leaders who they perceived had incited the people. This unfortunately would not solve the issue, as the non-Christians saw the crackdown as a validation of their fears.

With the addition of the French enclave of Mahé and Dutch Malabar, the Portuguese found themselves controlling several enclaves scattered over a vast distance with limited military and administrative resources to govern and control them. Portuguese enclaves also had to contend to both Kingdom of Mysore and Kingdom of Travancore, so Viceroy Holstein ordered that a more conciliatory tone be taken with the former French and Dutch enclaves. Under the ‘Old Port’ policy, these territories were not allowed to be organized into a province and remained enclaves of Goa in the meantime.

Portuguese Malabar 1785​

[1] iOTL the siege of Gibraltar continued without Joseph II’s diplomatic interference, causing the British to defeat Spain on their own and Lord Shelburne feeling like Spain had no leverage on them, thus accepting America’s offer to negotiate unilaterally and take the Northwest​

[2] See Section: Rebirth of Empire 1799-1820 - Barbary Wars.​

[3] See Rebirth of Empire 1799-1820, Birth of Constitutional Monarchy​

[4] The traditional European – colonial dependency; where colonies provided raw material and home country provided the manufactured goods in existence at the time in British, Spanish and Dutch colonies had been abandoned by Pombal. Industry was developed in the region where resources and labor was most available. The growth of a steel, gunpowder, textile and ship building industries in Brazil marked a great departure from colony to equal kingdom for Brazil and a blue print for future industrialization and development in other parts of Empire in the 19th century.

[5] iOTL the Inconfidência Mineira was viewed in Brazil as the first revolt against Portuguese colonial rule and following independence viewed as a patriotic struggle with Tiradentes considered a national hero. Many stories, movies and television programs were made to portray the failed revolt as a nationalistic revolt. Here with the progressive reforms already in place in Brazil, Tiradentes’ radicalism became unfounded and counterproductive, tragically reducing him to a common criminal.

Note:
This post provides us with our final review of the impact of the war and its far reaching implications. On one side it exposed to the British the need for allies as it fought several powerful countries at once with only the Portuguese as its ally. This I think more than anything allowed for the British to have a more generous view of Portuguese claims and demands both during the peace treaty negotiations as well as subsequent sphere of influence talks and agreements. To the French and Spanish it showed their military and more importantly economic problems which the French were unable to resolve and would eventually plunge the country into revolt while Spain was able to continue some of the same reforms instituted in Portugal the forces arrayed against Count of Floridablanca would eventually prove to much and unfortunately for Spain his reforms would not continue. For the Dutch it signaled their loss of prestige and power (about 25 years ahead of IOTL and to the Portuguese instead of British). To the Americans it showed them that the Europeans were not about to deal with them as equals but a country that would need to earn its place in the world.

The outcome of the war and the treaty would change many countries views of Portugal and not always for the best. Some like France and Spain looked at the Portuguese as lucky and only able to win due to them being supported by Britain. The Portuguese image did improve somewhat in other parts of Europe depending on the religious and political alignment of the country. As for internally the impact of the USA was not viewed in the same way and did not provide inspiration to majority of people in Brazil. The elevation of Brazil as kingdom and equal rights to the people of Brazil similar to those in Metropolitan Portugal resulted in many people of Brazil feeling as though they were partners and co-owners of the empire. Something that scared the Spanish more than the existence of USA. Questions/ Comments???

Join us on November 15 we start the next section called "Death of Pombal"

 

[Lusitania]

Death of Pombal​

Funeral of Marques Pombal​

On 10 October 1779 Pombal collapsed on way to a Cabinet meeting and was bedridden for two months. When he returned to work, he was weaker and had to take several rests during the day. On 15 October 1781 the Marquis of Pombal health suffered further setbacks and under direct orders from the king, the Prime Minister retired to his estate in Pombal to rest. On 8 May 1782, the Marquis of Pombal died at the age of 82 at his home.

The new King, who grew up during the apex of his regime, as well as the whole country observed one month of mourning.[1] This was due to more than a personal feeling of attachment, as the despotic Marquis had become a sort of national anchor in the world of politics and reform, even if a very cruel one. Even the factions against Pombal, like the more conservative elements of the church and plutocrats, understood that his disappearance meant uncertainty for the future.

The funeral procession occurred in Lisbon itself, though similar honorary ceremonies occurred in other major cities both at home and in the overseas. Joseph II and Pombal were popular amongst the new age magistrates and Vice-Roys, meaning that a lot of the people in power were in a position to push a positive message about his legacy on the country.

Eventually his passing spurred the conversation of building the national Pantheon itself, as the memory of losing the tomb of Nuno Álvares Pereira was relatively fresh and Pombal had been the one to correct the catastrophic earthquake damage that triggered the loss to begin with. It also cemented the years of the late 1770s and early 1780s as truly the start of the Josephine Era, as in this time period the leader in people’s minds increasingly ceased to be the Marquis and instead turned towards the figures of the Cabinet headed by young Joseph II.

The contributions of the Marquis to this era in Portuguese history were central; indeed the very age he came to live in was written down as the Pombalist Age and even the Cabinet that took away most of his responsibilities (and in the point of view of many histories, surpassed him in them) was nicknamed the Pombaline Cabinet. Eventually his ideals had inspired the Tagus Declaration, an aristocratic document that rebalanced society in itself in their quest to curb the excesses of both their own class and the clergy, and patronized the theological treatises that allowed the church to detach itself from Rome and establish its own Patriarchy.

All of these events would shape the changes in mentality that became associated with the Pombaline Revolution, the period that saw the coming of the debate against capital punishment, slavery and absolutism in Portuguese society and allowed it to be on par with the French Revolution in ideology. The early years after his death, however, still characterized the Marquis as controversial both at home and abroad; he was far less popular in Brazil than in Portugal itself, for example, and British PMs often ridiculed how he attempted to cheat against the market in the commerce between Oporto and London.

As the 1790s rolled in and the first few machine age innovations arrived, however, it became increasingly undeniable that he left a net positive in Portugal; the universities, workshops, factories and businesses were competitive and renowned, something that was thought impossible to achieve after the massive setback of the Earthquake. Moreover, the political stage in Portugal was also undeniably more sophisticated, as government and the ever-evolving cabinets were now an element of reformation instead of corruption. In fact, his reconstruction of Lisbon in itself became more and more viewed with nostalgic worship, especially as the Napoleonic Age arrived.

The growth of nationalism in the early 19th century caused the citizens to begin to look back at history and pick out their heroes. The construction of a large statue dedicated to the PM initiated itself in the reign of Queen Beatriz, whose Ministers hired a team of celebrated sculptors and engineers to immortalize the monument to the man they saw as the embodiment of the new Lisbon. With his hand on a lion of power and standing on a large pillar, lower sculptures of workers symbolizing his reforms and the winged woman representing the re-erected capital, the largest memorial in the nation was inaugurated in 1858 and became a symbol of uptown central Lisbon.

Statue of Pombal​

Decline of ‘Pombalism’​

“Are you mad? The man’s a Pombalist! Make him Prime Minister and it will be another thirty years of hangings, cabinet infighting and poor taste for paintings.”
-Duke John, criticizing the appointment of Marquis of Lavradio to the new Prime Minister​

With the passing of the Prime Minister, the idea of ‘Pombalismo’ began to be categorized openly for the first time with this name, used to refer to the policies, stances and ideas associated with the 1750s government. It purposely had a negative connotation of being outdated. From 1783 onward, it became a derogatory term for heavy-handed enlightened despotism used by liberal and conservative members alike to criticize their foes. This was done despite the recognition that Pombal had many undeniably positive contributions, like the reconstruction of Lisbon and many acts of law that helped steer the country economically through some serious challenges.

King Joseph II himself sought to distance himself from this description even though he was an advocate of pushing the gears to progress and had mourned Pombal publicly. If anything this helped cement the end of the Pombaline age even further, as the new center of gravity for the country gradually moved away from the Prime Ministers, who despite their competence or popularity, high or low, lacked iconic status, and instead move leadership attention to the king, the generals of the Napoleonic Age and some particular cabinet members.

The proliferation of newspapers and pamphlets thanks to gradual growth of civil right protections contributed to spread around accusations between citizens and politicians of mimicking the worst behaviors of Pombal. Around the 1790s, it would become common for burghers to attack their more successful rivals by painting them as oligarchs akin to the despot seeking to monopolize industries and set partial market laws.

The ridiculousness of the extent of this reached diplomacy itself in the early 1800s. In attempts to appease Spanish and French powers, Portuguese diplomats would offer guarantees that they would not practice mercantilist ideas of the previous century and would treat their representatives with none of the scrutiny Pombal would offer.

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[1] The king was so affected by the death of the Marquis of Pombal whom he idolized that for the rest of his life he wore a black armband on both arms to signify his mourning.


Note:
We sadly come to the end of Pombal’s government and the figure in Portuguese history with his death. He was forever associated as a forceful and powerful figure both iOTL and ITTL.

iOTL he had been dismissed by Queen Maria 1 shortly after she became queen in 1777 and placed under arrest in his estate where he died in 1783 while the many reforms he had initiated were dismantled. Not all were dismantled, for the Port Wine company and his education reforms continued on but majority of education and administration reforms were. In later years as the country suffered under government leaders who were more concerned with pomp and ceremony while going out of their way to destroy any remaining Pombalism the Portuguese people would be quoted as saying "We were so much better under Pombal". The country limped into the 19th century woefully unprepared and continually economically weak and a corrupt and weak military.

iTTL the reforms of Pombal have not only survived but have grown deeper and more wide spread than Pombal by himself could of achieved. The country would continue to be led by a King who supported the reforms and betterment of the people and country. The cabinet style started under Pombal continued and the country was led by some of the country best leaders. The cabinet government style had the affect of providing support, guidance and additional review of major government and political policies and initiatives.

As we have indicated many people both domestically and outside the country were happy to hear of Pombal's death. Some expected major changes or weakening of the government resolve and ability (this was very true iOTL) but with young king Joseph II and continuation of cabinet populated by both supporters and adversaries of Pombalism the country continued to prosper and grow. Questions/ Comments???

Join us on November 29 we start the next section called "King and Country 1783". This section will strive to analyze and summarize the state of the country in 1783 and try to showcase the accomplishment of the Pombal Administration in rebuilding the country.

 

[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 .

 

[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
.

 

[Lusitania]

King and Country (1783) (3 of 4)
​

Philosophy, Religion & Ideology​

The end of the Three Years War was both a balsam and a painful cool off for Portugal. A massive challenge had been overcome, but only at the cost of an almost total and seemingly needless mobilization of forces the nation did not know itself capable of mustering in such a short time. Moreover, the terms of the Treaty of Paris, albeit generous for Lisbon, seemed like a foreign prize for such feelings of emergency the nation face in 1781 when the threat of Franco-Dutch naval invasions first solidified.

There was also the en masse use of manpower away from the army into the navy, where cultural and racial standards for the naval equivalents of officers were lower. This resulted in the fate of the nation shortly relying on its Irish communities in the Douro Valley who habitually took fishing and sailing jobs upon immigrating.

Spurred by rising representationalism in Portuguese magistracy and politics, the 18th century as a whole and the Late Pombaline Era in particular were when the Locke ideas of social contract began truly rooting themselves deeply into metropolitan society. With the decreasing powers of all established figures, from the Prime Minister to the priests, more and more people began rising between the masses to form assemblies, discussions, committees and candidacies. One big flag of this idea was the change in code in the clergy which stated that the Prelate was chosen amongst the Patriarchs and archbishops via candidacy and closed-door election (not unlike the Pope) and the fact that magistrates now began to be chosen amongst the local population, raising their dedication in same proportion as their self-interest.

Power in Portugal, however, was still not by consent of the people. The Bragança Dynasty still held dogmatic rights to the throne and the ministers were chosen mostly following the authoritarian Josephine model. It seemed undeniable, though, that for society to progress Portugal had to admit to itself that its citizens had unalienable rights which protected them against authoritarian cabinets and shady migration offices like the PRP, lest a constant war of generations continue and events like the Tagus Declaration become cyclical and ever more violent.

With the collapse of slavery in non-Brazilian Portugal, the debate over the citizens status only became hotter. Striking differences between Portuguese and Brazilian mentality began to surface, putting cohesion in the population in danger. Without a united outlook on what it meant to be a citizen in the country, King Joseph II believed that the colony he grew up in was destined to sever its ties with the motherland in the near future, following the American example.

The King’s comprehensive reforms to Brazilian state division and rights had gone a long way to separate the cancer from the boon in the territory, allowing the population to debate within themselves how they should act as part of the empire without seeing Lisbon as an impediment to their future. Older policies like the CPD and MAD also assured Brazilians that the Portuguese were their allies, for better or for worse.

Adding further to the philosophical complication was the muddy relationship between church and state; the Verneyists argued that while the church was not to be tied to ‘human powers’, it still demanded certain symbolic privileges like the christening and coronation of the heads of state in order to protect its power from rival religions inside the Portuguese Empire. The population in general was also not ready to embrace deism, much less secularism or even atheism.

The complete removal of it from universities (non-Catholic ones, at least) had, however, liberated philosophical debate completely, allowing Portuguese philosophers to develop and preach ideas regarding natural law, society and the country.

Anglicanism, Germanism, Frenchism, Dutchism & Lusitanism​

“It’s just a fad.”
-popular saying​

It was known in the big cities that both the king and the burgher elite were, for various reasons, followers of Germanic and Anglican cultures. The Pombaline period had also been remarked for its obsessive relationship with British advancements of all kinds, seeking to emulate both machinery and politics in London. It ought to follow that at the end of the 1770s, Portuguese society had developed a gratitude and fascination for northern European ideas as opposed to Mediterranean ones.

The removal of Inquisition allowed many previously banned works and books to circulate with freedom never seen before. This included texts from the highly insightful Voltaire but also books from American revolutionaries like Thomas Paine, reviled as he was by colonialists, German artists like the Prussian writer Christian Wolff and even the proto-Romanticist poems of Johan von Herder. It could be said that it was almost too much philosophical information flowing in all at once.

Philosophical trends therefore went through a series of phases in just a few years:

• Anglicanism: Boiling over from previous periods in which English ideas were dominant in Portugal, the early years of this era still saw much literature development on concepts from British economists and philosophers, culminating in the publishing of the ‘General Theory of Productivity’, the most influential economic treatise of the epoch. It would be supplanted by Germanism as most Portuguese high society members considered it a natural progression from studies on English language and scriptures;
• Germanicism: Peaking around the peaceful period of 1778-1779 thanks to increased commerce with Hamburg and a trendy interest from the King and the legacy of Count Lippe, Germanism was the fascination felt in Portuguese society for not only German and Prussian culture, but also their rising prominence as a language of philosophy, with Herder’s ideas of individualism being particularly provocative;
• Frenchism: Also mixed with interest in American revolutionary theories, the focus on French revolutionary ideas was at its apex between 1779 and 1781, just as the war with France itself occurred, and was a hotly contested debate with half considering them as threat and half considering them as the next vital step in reforming society;
• Dutchism: This was the short-lived obsession in 1783-1785 about Dutch society and practices following the signing of the Luso-Dutch Alliance. After centuries of rivalry, the victory over Amsterdam and the preceding events between Luanda and Kapstaad allowed roots of mutual interest to bloom in this short period and for an interchange of thoughts and interests to occur;
• Lusitanism: This was the idea with which the country departed to the next era (1784-1799) and consisted of a mix of all previous trends consolidated by the effects of the Portuguese victory in the Three-Years War, the philosophical flag of death penalty abolishment and its seeming return to colonial prominence;

These five philosophical trends influenced the evolution of Portuguese society. Originally departing from a sort of offshoot of Spanish society beliefs in the early 1760s, philosophical Anglicanism had swept the nation thanks to Prime Minister Pombal’s heavy investments towards rivaling it. Anglicanism had challenged and changed Portuguese society in the following ways:

• It had fomented a growing interest towards capitalism, banking, trade good valuing and new forms of commerce, allowing the nation to abandon its traditional and counterproductive ambitions;
• It implanted the idea and importance of innovation from society, proving to the citizens that antiquated institutions like the Inquisition had hurt them immensely and allowing for the patronage of the Scientific Revolution to finally occur;
• It borderline revolutionized colonialism and statehood in Portugal, with politicians adopting new methods like the CPD and the MAD to change the way colonies and the country structured themselves, starting the conversation about the relationship between the state and church and putting the idea of ‘state’ ahead of ‘the personal property of kings’;
• It reinvented Portuguese cultural fascination with the sea and its war machines, allowing the Navy to quickly reform itself with previously unseen ambition;

These changes all started in the early 1760s and propagated to the 1770s. After 1777, with the passing of the war hero Count Lippe and the coronation of the Germanophile Joseph II, society began moving more towards German ideas, propelled by the newfound commerce between Portugal and the Holy Roman Empire states, including Prussia, but also Scandinavian countries like Sweden.[1] They were also popular amongst the anti-authoritarian citizens of the metropolis, both in the aristocracy and the people, who hoped that the many decades of dictatorship in Portugal would catapult society in the opposite direction now that Pombal seemed to be approaching the end of his life. The most important immediate changes to Portuguese politics during the 1777-1783 period were due to these ideas. Under the umbrella of interest in German trends, Portuguese society began debating the following:

• Introduced a humanistic stance on individualism that believed that pursuing the empowerment ‘self’ as opposed to the collective had constructive and moral consequences, as well as many other ideas popular in Prussia and codified by Emmanuel Kant being recited in the Portuguese cities. Kant was extremely popular and influential to new politicians to the point many tried to invite him to give classes in Lisbon despite his ongoing isolation;
• Codified the anti-organized-religion sentiment growing in Portugal through the rational approach towards Christianity defended by Wilhelm Teller;
• Sowed more seeds of interest on not only classicism but also northern European themes of antiquity;
• Continued the defense of the scientific method in all political practices as opposed to traditionalism. As the pre-earthquake generations began dying off, Portugal shined a more and more negative light on the old methods;

But the focus on German philosophy would not last long. By 1779, the current cabinet’s most profound reforms like the MLE began cementing themselves in society and creating big backlashes, especially in agricultural communities. At the same time, hostilities with France began rising, contact with German commercial partners began growing more difficult and the American Revolution exploded. The main source of revolutionary ideas for Portugal was France, though. At the time, Necker was in charge of France’s finances and kept regular contact with his Portuguese homologue Jacques Ratton.

Necker proposed important tax reforms that alleviated the financial situation in France but antagonized him to the Ancién Regime. Combined with him being Protestant, Necker’s positions made him an enemy of the status quo and not only he was barred from becoming minister, but he was eventually dismissed, something that many argued was one of the powder kegs for the future revolution. In Portugal, the repeal of blood cleanliness laws removed religion impediments to high offices, so much that half the late Pombaline cabinet was non-Catholic. This created a high level of sympathy for people in Portugal towards the little they heard about the events in France, creating interest in their more volatile ideas.

The fact that most proponents of these ideas were Free Masons probably helped make a connection.

• The elimination of the estate system began growing in popularity, even after the Tagus Declaration announced the clergy as being no longer sponsored by society as one in Portugal and aristocrats having grown more symbolic than factual;
• Liberty, Equality and Fraternity began circulating in flyers as soon as 1780 in Oporto, rousing many to bad mouth the status quo and pursue political agendas;
• The rising tensions and climate of threats, not to mention the stabilization of immigrant communities in the cities, propelled a strange sense of ‘Nouveau nationalism’ in Portugal with many questioning what it meant to live in a common state;
• Underground republican ‘gangs’ began appearing, with the censored ‘Partido Republicano’ dating its founding to college campus groups in Coimbra just before the Luso-Franco War;

The interest in French philosophy continued even throughout the Third Years War, exacerbated even by its harshest periods, as many believed that the path to progress was in emulating French ideas, not antagonizing them, as opposed to following British or German ones blindly. The true influence of this was limited, however, especially as the last two new fads of the epoch made their claims to Portuguese mindset.

One particular proponent of this movement had been the Scottish-born expatriate James Ferrier, who first came to Portugal to help reform fortification and artillery sectors under the efforts of the late Count Lippe. A Huguenot mason, he served between 1762 and 1780 and due to his reading habits, he would discuss with fellow military officers the ideas of Voltaire, Montesquieu and Rousseau, allowing him to influence high-ranking soldiers in the eve of the Tagus Declaration.

Dutchism was the fad in Metropolitan Portugal and its African and Asian possessions that began in 1782 to 1783 as a direct result of the conclusion of the Three Years War and the signing of the controversial and unexpected Luso-Dutch Alliance. The reopening of markets between Dutch and Lusitanian ports all throughout the globe allowed for a new interchange of goods and political projects which caused the influx of Dutch-designed goods from all things ranging from clothes to architecture to permeate Portugal. This was more of a material fad than philosophical one, but it still had its odd influence:

• The continued propagation of Dutch financial methods, allowing Portuguese treatises on productivity to root even deeper;
• The increased investment towards stock exchanges. The years of 1780 to 1784 saw an increase of stock issuing of almost a whopping 150%;
• The studying of methods of indirect colonization and how they failed in Indonesia and what this ultimately meant for statehood. This would allow the Navy Ministry to reform colonization yet again in the next decade;
• The simple fascination in some areas in Portugal for Dutch engineering and products, from the way they built houses to the way they conducted agriculture;

The ‘Gafanha’ towns in Ilhavo, next to Aveiro, became the hotspot of development themed around the fascination for Dutch ideas. Originally settled as places to conduct treatment for leprosy, the strings of settlements around the fluvial geography of the Haff-Delta became the entry point of Dutch ships selling products and work from Amsterdam and The Hague. Combined with the Jewish Emancipation Act of 1780, it also became the entry point of many old Sephardic Jews interested in returning and investing into their ancestral country.

The porcelain industry of Vista Alegre in particular saw its biggest pre-industrial boom in this decade, gaining a great new number of investors that allowed even the town itself to develop a viable port for privately-controlled exports.

The many fluvial towns in the Aveiro Haff-Delta became throughout the rest of the century the nucleus of Dutch influence seeping into Portugal. Note the placement of Vista Alegre just southeast of Ilhavo itself​

The four foreign fads of ideas and influences had a lasting impact in post-Pombaline Portugal to the point that much of the architectural development occurring in areas throughout the mainland in these decades was themed around the strongest foreign influence in the respective area, or simply by the liberation of minority rights passed by Joseph II at the start of the 1780s. The inner territories saw a lot of transformation towards the synagogue and Sephardic architectures in particular, since many hidden Jews had lived there in secrecy away from the scrutiny of city persecutors.

Registered Architectural Style Development between 1750-1783
Dark Green: Earthquake Pombaline[2]
Light Green: Irish Neighborhood
Purple: Mirandese/Leonese Influence
Cyan Blue: Sicilian/Genovese
Orange: Dutch urban style[3]
Blue: French gentry style[4]
Yellow: Open Sephardic style[5]​

But as the country moved away from the early Josephine Era into the fully-transitioned government of the mid Josephine Era (namely as the dust of the Three Years War settled and the death of Pombal began showing its effects), the ideas began shifting towards a great introspection into the country’s own identity. Influenced by massively important philosophers like Theodore Almeida, Bento Farinha and even the ever-present figure, the diplomat Correia da Serra, Lusitanism began surging in the eve of 1784 as a final sedimentation of all previous ideas but also as the result of the work of the most important thinkers of the age in the country.

Lusitanism, as it was known later in 1790, as a whole was a form of layered nationalist fad and initially called for the following doctrines:

• The evolution of national identity in marriage with a specific and limited set of philosophical flags: This basically meant permanently attaching the idea of being a citizen of the Portuguese kingdom to certain unalienable values. In turn, this, of course, had as a consequence a deep-rooted constitutionalist thought;
• Said flags to include codified citizen rights (the definition of who is citizen was pending approval), the fight against slavery and the demonization of the death penalty: Adopting these three flags would allow the people, according to the philosophers, to have a personal principle to stand on in an age of flooding idealism. In more skeptic analysis, it called for having something to act as a higher moral platform as opposed to French Revolutionaries, which Portuguese philosophers were increasingly viewing as rivals or even enemies;
• The fight of enlightened ideas against self-admitted ideological inertia in Portugal: Using both recent and long history as basis, the debaters seemed to agree that the country had problems innovating in all areas due to a lingering specter of conformism. Lusitanism admitted the problem of conformism as a constant detriment, meaning it could not be solved and therefore should be kept in mind about itself;
• General Amorphousness: In all other areas, the ideology defended debate and open mind, taking no strong stance in things like power distribution, wealth or the government. Correia da Serra, a diplomat, defended it allowed to consider opposing ideas that would satisfy multiple sides simultaneously, leading to better social peace and progress;

Theodore and Serra fought to develop and cement Lusitanism as a lasting mentality by arming it with time-tested ideas of battling perceived barbarism and constantly seeking to detach itself from most ideological anvils, making it ultimately amorphous​

Lusitanism, therefore, did not surge to replace previous fads. Instead it surged as a way to try to understand their movements while defending the maintenance of a set of basic, unique principles to the natives, namely the fight against slavery and the death penalty and allow new movements to seep in in a sort of more sophisticated philosophical platform. It did not promote secularism, for example, which, albeit a growingly popular idea, it still made more conservative sides seethe. Radicalism, as a result, also was not mentioned in good light. The philosopher Bento de Sousa Farinha argued that it represented popular mentalities that had lasted throughout the convoluted Pombaline period pretty well, like a national personality code.

Its impact is debatable, since it was written as a sort of stance with which to take other ideas in, rather than an idea in itself. Critics called it a “poor excuse for a gentleman’s guide” or even “a mutated form of proto-nationalism”. It was also more strongly demonstrable in younger generations as opposed to older ones, meaning its significance was highly contextual and the product of forced social influence that the Pombaline age was known for, instead of humanly universal.

The behavior of its defenders, even highly influential ones, certainly seemed to defend the idea that it was merely nationalism, since they mostly called for the status of the state to be once and for all cemented on a modern codex. This was furthered by the fact that it seemed to be inspired by the victory in the Three Years War and recent unexpected colonial successes. The opening of the port of Ponta d’Albuquerque in Nova Zelândia to new colonists and land seekers seemed to create the idea that there was a future to being Portuguese in this age of European expansion. Combined with the rebirth of national branding in the previous era in mercantile products, a new expanded navy, a unique military code and the apparent eminence of a new code of law, Lusitanism began to grow as the belief that there was value in pursuing their own ideas for life and law in the world, something that would influence generations between 1790 and 1820.

In shorter term, it was part of the explanation of why there was opposition to Revolutionary France and, later on, the Napoleonic empire, even though it’s homologue American idealism was more well accepted. The rest of the causes laid in topics explained below.

Value Void Years (1775-1780), Death Penalty Discussion & The Theodore Arguments​

“The message that the Lusitanians took as their main banner for this age of upheaval, when so many of our nations lost the values the Ancién Regime leached them with since the days of Charlemagne and were left with a lack of obvious principles, was not liberty like the French, nor gentlemanly like the British, nor even chivalry like the Spaniards or religious morality like the Austrians; it was a fervent belief in human dignity. The belief that the citizen was weak and fragile and should be protected from one another, and that no man had the right to claim another was to be put to death. This was both their sword against the bourgeoisie, their shield against the Revolution and the brush with which they painted Iberia after (the treaty of) Vienna.”
-Thomas Carlyle, speaking of Theodore on ‘The French Revolution: A History’ (ITTL)​

As already stated,[6] the years following the Tagus Declaration were of conversation about what should be the popular set of beliefs sacred to everyone, as to many, including the government, there seemed to be too much eagerness to challenge the norms and the powers-that-be. There was no reason to obey Pombal if it was so easy to turn sword at his enemies, for example. What truly defined righteous power and what was important for the collective? The ongoing French and American revolutions seemed to favor the idea that Republicanism could give you the answer, as it tried to put the power, even if just a modicum of it, in the hands of the people and away from partial tyrants.

One thing that the Portuguese seemed to be growingly sure to be incorrect and even counterproductive was slavery. This was thanks to many arguments saying that society wasted more resources maintaining the literal chain of command of it than it would, for example, in indentured servitude or even free labor, not to mention the obvious moral qualms. The shortage of labor manpower surely played a part in developing this conversation, but the important thing to retain was that, as of 1775, this seemed to be only obvious thing to be wrong in the collective point of view.

In order to cement this idea, many thinkers and professors attempted to codify the anti-slavery argument on logical terms, so as to be able to universally argue them to any member of society and perhaps use the same arguments and their techniques to press other new matters. Simultaneously, the anti-slavery debate seemed to be hitting a major problem in the Portuguese Empire; it was seen as not unique by the British and hard to gather support in Brazil, making it a poor national flag. This weakened its power to rouse the reformers in the country who sought to expand society in truly new ways and feel they were part of a cutting edge culture.

Seeking to stay ahead of their Spanish, French and ultimately the American ideological counterparts, elites invested into their own prestige and education wanted a message to call their own, to be the country’s contribution to the world. This was partly in consequence to the recoveries in prestige of recent years in other matters; the new gains in the empire brought military and economic glory, but the country was still seen as backwater. With the Inquisition gutted and the clergy no longer empowered to hoard all the knowledge, the ‘Novas Classes’ felt free to discuss what their mission in society was. Only by staying ahead of the curve in something could the aristocrats, burghers and doctors feel equal to their European counterparts, or so they felt.

With the repression of the clergy gone, the Portuguese bourgeoisie and aristocracy sought to be culturally innovative and often conversed throughout the 1770s about how could they collectively pursue a new avenue in society​

This was more often sprouted by local rivalries between households than not. With empiricism in fad thanks to French philosopher influence and new industrial sponsors baiting the educated to compete for their favor, the amount of lip spent debating the national course increased exponentially in this epoch.

At the same time, there were concerns in the country regarding the volatile nature of politics in recent decades and how it resulted in events like the Távora Affair and the OOC conspiracy. It was understood that Pombal had set a terrifying precedent for future Prime Ministers, reformist as he may have been. The high-standing people who survived his regime and even profited from it now feared that in the future that sword be turned against them. Combined with the increasing outrages felt by both liberals and authoritarians in society as a result of events in America and France, this spawned the discussion in educated people about whether there should be death penalty for political crimes.

There was also the naturally mild nature in the populace that rarely sought to pursue justice harshly in metropolitan Portugal, the historical exception being religion, piracy and treason. In 1780, Vice-Admiral Rebelo captured the pirate William Piranha, but did not bring him to court of law to be trialed for the death penalty, instead hiring him as a privateer. This decision, initially reviled, was celebrated in 1783 after the massive victory in the Battle of Timor Sea.[7] This helped form the question in the population if the death penalty should be applied for civil crimes, too.

With these two doubts growing throughout the 1777-1783 period, the foundation was set for truly influential conversation amongst thinkers and politicians, but also amongst the people. New coming politicians wished to debate with free speech and no specter of the guillotine so, also wishing to prove their defense of enlightenment didn’t make them Pombalists, began criticizing perceived despotism in other countries as a way to vouch for their nationalism. Needless to say that people at the bottom of society didn’t like the prospect of being hanged by a sudden trial.

The alternative of life imprisonment, however, wasn’t appealing since it carried implications of having to feed hated rogues indefinitely. Another force biding against the idea of abolishing the Death Penalty had been the Marquis of Pombal and his fiercest supporters. The Prime Minister stood to lose much face if he defended the repeal of Death Penalty at the same time as being famously responsible for the Távora Affair tortures and executions, not to mention all the shootings and hangings of criminals and looters after the Lisbon Earthquake. The Pombalists also stood to lose strength of argument in the public plaza of debate if they took up an anti-death-penalty position at the same time they defended extreme interventionism and authoritarian implementation of law.

With the military now employing a far more sophisticated legal code than the population itself, however, the number of former members of the army now in powerful social positions demanding reform in civil code as well was increasing. Many soldiers and lieutenants found themselves leaving a life of discipline protected by a comprehensive new military court only to join a society that seemed comparatively barbarian, especially as they tried to buy land and solve difficult disputes.

The same displeasure was true to men of law. The conservative magistrate Pina Manique, a known political opponent of Pombal, for example, argued that the repeal of the Death Penalty was essential to “forming an acceptable revolutionary code of law for these unacceptable revolutionary times”. The fact that he was at the time concerned with the fate of the King’s interned mother, Maria Pia, a figure hated by Pombalists, progressives and liberals alike, that he feared would be assassinated by the Tagus Signers probably was his motivation for such a position.

Pina Manique exemplified the conservative wing of the anti-death-penalty movement and how it was motivated mainly by fear of the current government’s potential extremism​

Another main figure was Queen Charlotte. Known to be a sort of trend-setter[8] in the Lisbon court and displeased by the less sophisticated aspects of her husband’s nation as opposed to Britain, she jumped at the idea of vocally defending citizens that argued against executions, seeing it as a sign of daring innovation and something that would set her domain aside from those of her younger sisters. However, the defenders felt that although the idea was up in the air, it lacked a solid, organized argument, something they could cite whenever the topic was brought up to whomever may challenge them on it.

This continued until 1779.

Right before the Rope Busting Incident and the start of the Luso-Franco Maritime War (and the Three Years War in general), Theodore de Almeida, a cleric and writer embittered by Pombal’s persecution of Jesuits but protected by the Verneyist church, decided to tackle the issue of the Death Penalty in the philosophical optic so he could present a complete argument against it in society. The work on this had really started in 1770, when he was invited back to Portugal from France by Louis Verney, but it was only later on as the issue became hotter that he was able to take part in enough discussions and debates to truly deepen his literature on it. In the year of 1779, he completed the collection of testimonies and arguments he needed to make a thesis against the Death Penalty in Portugal in particular. It was a multi-branched work that addressed concerns in Portuguese society’s various sectors, from the clerics to the politicians to the people, regarding the defense of the Death Penalty in an effort to portray it as counterproductive as slavery had been in the 1760s, during Joseph I’s realm.

Theodore argued mostly on the presumption that the human being was flawed, a perspective that seemed natural, popular and even obvious to most people. Departing from this, he systematically wrote how the Death Penalty could only be unfair in any situation, drawing upon his own feelings regarding the Pombalist Age, feelings that were shared by many of his compatriots.

Teodoro de Almeida, the Solitary Philosopher
Born 7 January 1722
Death 18 April 1804
Writer, Philosopher and Priest that codified the Portuguese argument against slavery and the death penalty​

Theodore’s Arguments, as the philosophical attack became known, were multiple, but the most important were the following:

• The Argument of God: Speaking to the Clergy, Theodore argued that only God could judge with full wisdom and claim any man was truly unredeemable, and that any man who sentenced another to death over heresy or heathenism could only be infringing on the belief that no man was absolutely infallible, as death was the final solution that must be given with absolute certainty;
• The Argument of Science: Speaking to Rationalists, Theodore argued that the capital punishment was a final solution to problems intelligent men refused to face for fear, hate, spite or laziness, and therefore no rationalist could claim that merely sentencing an opposite viewpoint or problematic voice to the ‘ultimate silence’ was the scientific decision to make;[9]
• The Argument of Law: Speaking to the Jurists, Theodore argued that no fundament could speak of Man having legitimate obligations and rights without rule of civil law agreed to by social contract, parliament and constitution agreed to by all, and because no civilization could accurately claim that all its citizens stood in one mind on any matter, they also could not fully present any man should be given capital punishment with unanimous consent, even without the possibility of later regret (see Argument of Man);
• The Argument of Politics: Speaking to Politicians, Theodore argued that the capital punishment was an unacceptable sweeping of undesirables that on all accounts refused to explore the possibility of redemption, rehabilitation or mercy and, therefore, was ultimately counterproductive to society’s productive growth or its moral upbringing, as well as promoting rebellion in cultures. This also presented the Death Penalty as the weapon of tyrants;
• The Argument of Man: Speaking to Humanists, Theodore argued that the execution of the death penalty was a process filled with dehumanizing steps to all parties involved, the possibility for cruel and unusual punishment (either through direct intent or executioner incompetence), the possibility for killing the wrong person and the undeniably omnipresent callousness of Man, who is flawed, in a process that would be absolute. Moreover, speaking to other Philosophers, Theodore argued that the absolute nature of death, when imposed by man’s rule of law, infringed the humanistic principles that attempted to study mankind itself, equating it to a scientist destroying a healthy test sample, and that absolutism itself was destructive to the evolution of thought by destroying the fertility that impurity of ideas brought the mind;

Theodore’s arguments were problematic, to say the least, stepping on the toes of Absolutists in Portugal in particular and causing many to question if the man was a secular revolutionary like the Americans and the Jacobins. The skepticism and the anti-violence stance, however, were appealing. Theodore appealed to a belief particular to Portuguese culture which said that not only were the ones in upper class as flawed as the common man, but the common man was likely as flawed as he could possibly be, even to humorous extents. Moreover, it argued that the executions carried out by Pombal had been immoral, something that caught the eye of his enemies.

It was using Theodore’s arguments that Vice-Admiral Rebelo (holding the rank of Admiral after the Three Years War, when the court session took place) argued in favor of keeping privateer William ‘Piranha’ in the Navy on a path to redemption, instead of executing him for crimes of piracy. This became an historically notable moment because William himself went on to be a Navy legend throughout the late 18th century and early 19th century, and thus subject of popular interest.

The Death Penalty remained legal throughout the early Josephine Period, however. It would only be officially outlawed by Joseph II in 1787, during the Mid Josephine Era. This was because not only Theodore’s arguments were still too fresh, but the debate itself was still splitting the educated society down the middle due to:

• The ongoing bad code of civil law that would not be reformed till Minister Cruz e Silva became the first Minister of Justice since the Earthquake;
• The concerns over lack of compensatory infrastructure and punishment, like penal colonies or simply more prisons, to handle all the criminals that would be executed;
• The conflict between the idea and the presently in-power government of Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo, who opposed the idea of banning the Death Penalty, even branding it ridiculous;

Freemasonry & Constitutionalism on the Rise​

Throughout 1760 to 1780, the power of the South American super-colony of Brazil was on the rise within the context of the Portuguese Empire. Thanks to colonial reforms like the CPD and the MAD, there was a structure of rules between Portugal and Brazil that impeded the motherland from acting in treason or exploitation to Brazil without breaching the agreed law and compromising the increasingly-commerce-based relationship. Portugal profited way too much on selling new manufactured goods to Brazil, and Brazil profited way too much on selling plantation goods and gunpowder to Portugal and its remaining colonies. There was also a vested interest in Brazilian elites in expelling its own discontent settlers to Luanda in Angola and Bahia Nova in Tauranga. The masonry was present in many of these contracts and grew in power proportionally.

In 1780, the free masonry in Brazil and the one in Portugal were intrinsically tied, motivated by both their commerce and their mutual distaste for Pombal’s government. The collapse of the Inquisition had allowed these men to act even more freely and the signing of the Tagus Declaration gave them unprecedented mainstream liberty and power. The Grand Orient of Lusitania was officially formed somewhere along the 1769s.[10]

1869 seal celebrating 100 years of the Grand Orient of Lusitania​

These gentlemen had representatives as far away as Macau by 1780, working along the sub-continental trade line to Russian Siberia as a consequence of the Luso-Russian Treaty of Commerce and Friendship,[11] as well as the line in reverse direction to warehouses in Hamburg and St. Petersburg, and mostly defended constitutionalist and republican ideas. The events of the American Revolution had emboldened them, leading to the spread of influence to educated people about ideas of republicanism and liberty. They were poorly received, however, as their cultist demeanor inspired rumors of heresy, debauchery, fraudulence, tax dodging or even Satanism, a reaction akin to popular perception towards Jewish communities.

With the plutocrats growing in power every year, however, it was inevitable that some of their ideas seeped through the cracks of skepticism. Magistrates and lawyers, for example, believed that the state needed indeed a reform on law codification. Radicals wanted the King to sign a constitution that prevented the rise of people like Pombal forever and some fringe individuals wanted an outright republic, arguing that Portugal at its core was but a slightly bigger than normal mercantile state with an unfortunate crusader past. With profit lines growing thinner as the liberation from Pombal’s heavy mercantile restrictions grew colder, many burghers wanted more tax breaks, commerce treaties and codified guidelines to stimulate creation of wealth and productivity.

This all converged on the desire for a code of laws and principles in general. While many old states had formal codes of laws, democratic constitutions, also called enlightened constitutions, were something usually only found in England and its colonies, with the notable exception of Corsica which had one that offered universal suffrage to land owners. An attempted backed by King Charles XII of Sweden had been made in Ukrainian-Zaporozhian lands in 1710, but being a power in exile, it never materialized. The American Founding Fathers also began clamoring for one in the 1780s, but would not ratify it until 1788, in the next epoch relatively to Portuguese history.

The absolutists were still strong in Portugal, however. While King Joseph II was meek in the early phase of his government, he and his wife were popular and traditionalist or power-hungry nationalists wanted him to have as much power as possible, both to impede Pombal from continuing his regime and to serve their own philosophy regarding absolutism in itself, disregarding all arguments against its inefficiency and tendency to be corrupted or undermined. This even ignored a discrete fact that King Joseph II wanted to relieve himself of some of the responsibilities he had that he believed he could not correctly fulfill.

With the passing of laws protecting minorities in 1780 by Joseph II, the status of citizenship was put into question, furthering the challenge that Social Contract presented to politicians. In one letter sent to Lisbon, the Count of Vimioso “Afonso Miguel de Portugal e Castro”, a direct vassal of Joseph II (as the King of Portugal was, by dynasty, simultaneously the Duke of Bragança and King) who temporarily served in Bahia as colonial governor, asked the monarch how was he supposed to reconcile the conflict within the border communities that spoke Leonese offshoots regarding the apparent conflict between their ‘rights’ and the laws passed by Duke John of Lafões, the Science and Education Minister (not to mention the cousin of Joseph’s grandfather), that demanded the mother tongue to be taught in all territories with more scrutiny. Which law was he supposed to impose?

This was perhaps a question that could only be solved by laying out a definitive article on the status of minorities, rather than just a temporary Royal Decree. By extension, perhaps if that article spoke of the status of the main citizens it could only bring benefits and prevent future problems. Absolutists defended that the answer was a stricter code of law, not a constitution, and that any document akin to a bill of rights would forever compromise authority in Portugal.

Much like the Death Penalty, it would not be in this era that this question would be solved, but its events definitely contributed to bringing the point to light. With the rising of tensions all over Europe against the French Jacobins, however, drafting a document formalizing the separation of powers would be made very difficult.

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[1] See Section: Rebirth of Empire (part 2 of 2) - The last Years of Pombal (1777 – 1782) – Monarchical Orders – Early Josephine Acts – The Broken Salt Act & The Monopoly Breakdown.
[2] The placement of this development was chosen by very deliberate projects, such as the reconstruction of Lisbon/Setúbal/Faro, the establishment of the Royal Roads around the Mondego River, the development of Oporto, the first investments in Sines and finally the forced urbanization of Vila Real de Santo António.
[3] Named after how it was primarily used to develop concentrated, tall, waterside infrastructure associated with the plutocrat class.
[4] Named so after how it was associated to Lisboet gentry seeking to follow French fads in a vain way.
[5] Named so after how it was born due to the communities feeling more empowered to develop their art and symbols “out in the open” as popularity for protecting them grew in the 1770s after the Tagus Declaration.
[6] See Section: King and Country (1783) – Demographics & Culture – The ‘Confused’ Generation.
[7] See Section: The Three-Years War (1780 -1783) – The Second Luso-Dutch War (1782 - 1783) – East Indies Theatre – India & the Spice Islands – Battle of Timor (1782).
[8] See Section: Rebirth of Empire (Part 2 of 2) – The Last Years of Pombal (1777 - 1782) – Ministry of Health & Agriculture – Potato Cultivation.
[9] This argument was especially important to combat Social Darwinism in Portugal in the early 20th century.
[10] iOTL the Grand Orient of Lusitania was only founded in 1802.
[11] See Section: Rebirth of the Empire (Part 2 of 2) – Luso-Mysore War of 1777 – 1778 – War Impact – Countries and People – European Powers – Prestige and Commerce.

If we were to try and summarize this post into a single sentence it would be that the Portuguese were trying to determine who they really were. But it is really allot more than that . For a people who had just had its world turned upside down and forced to reassess what it really meant to be Portuguese and what values defined the national soul. Unfortunely or fortunately this would be a process that would repeat every generation or second one as the country and empire adapted to new circumstances and societal changes.

Questions/ Comments???

Join us on January 10 ,2021 we post the 4 and last section in the "King and Country 1783" called Politics and Imperialism

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[Lusitania]

King and Country (1783) (4 of 4)
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Politics & Imperialism​

The end of the Three Years War brought an undeniable victory to the Portuguese Empire and this had obviously very important effects in the colonies. The 1st Luso-Mysore War of 1777 and the 4th Luso-Kongo War of 1778, not to mention the campaigns against piracy between 1775 and 1780, also brought many military victories that accounted positively to Portuguese imperialism. The early Josephine Era, therefore, despite conquering less territory by square miles than the late Pombaline Era, was a net positive to jingoists and imperialists.

The Movements of the 1780s​

As already detailed,[1] due to his increasingly smaller involvement in politics, Pombal’s power, influence and charisma had been decreasing amongst the public, leading to the decline of supporters of Pombalism, the collective ideas about forceful reformation that characterized the country between 1755 and 1777. The idea in itself never held majority of favor, being supported mostly by younger elites, the king, the enlightenment absolutists or the ‘estrangeirados’ who sought to supplant the older order of affairs.

Concerns and movements in the early years of the decade of 1780 were influenced by:

• The ongoing American Revolution;
• The ongoing Three Years War;
• The effects of Joseph II’s early stewarding of the state;
• The straining of relations with the Spanish Empire;
• The return to prominence of the navy and the army;
• The reforms made in decentralized administration in many areas;
• The cooling off of the Mini-Boom;[2]
• The advances in philosophy, politics and fads;[3]

As a result, most of them were characterized by a desire to decentralize the nation even further and bring about representationalism, increasingly seen as the best way to stave off future unrest or tyranny and grow closer to European societies perceived to be more advanced. A lesser half of these movements even supported minority rights. The bourgeoisie were heavily in favor of making King Joseph’s emancipation of Jews permanent and the rights he extended to Mirandese speakers unalienable.

Going from right to left, the political beliefs beginning in the 1780s were listed as followed:

​

The departure from the 1780s onward would be of a population commonly concerned with formalization of law and codes. This was a direct result of the volatile nature of previous decades and the concerns of the ‘Confused Generation’ combined with those of the previous ‘Earthquake Generation’. It was fairly likely that even without the influence of French liberalism, the country would soon be in upheaval or simply backwards in political terms once again unless the government decided to formalize the separation of powers and evolve the state machinery to its next level.

The political needle of the population also seemed more firmly set on center, moderate policies as opposed to the either violently traditionalist or violently progressive times of the early 1770s when Verney began his campaign against Rome and the Portuguese aristocrats of the Enlightenment conspired against their more powerful and entrenched cousins. Partly in thanks to the anxiety of the Three Years War, there was a lack of desire in involving the territory into further upheaval, so progressivism cooled down to a more slothful, code-oriented form.

The mini-boom also had impact by increasing population density and the percentage of immigrant communities in cities, where politics were decided. Part of what fueled new representationalism and constitutionalism was the common understanding that Irish communities had been for the most part harmless and had visibly participated in defending the seas during the Luso-Franco Maritime War. The solidification of minority communities in certain locations, like the Mirandese line in the Bragança eastern border or the Jewish outcroppings in Beira Interior, had created open ethnic strongholds that could not be ignored in their respective regions.

This kind of settling was an optimal condition for a constitution to be peacefully drafted, fueling further desire for it. It also increased desire for a formal and modern law codex in equal proportion. Even the most conservative elements seemed to agree that, for their own protection, a common and comprehensive law and constitution was required.

The conversation about state powers, a critical aspect of any constitution or law drafting, was, however, still a controversy. Depending on whom you asked certain elements of certain sectors believed the cabinet and the king should have more or less powers during this age. Many still believed in the virtues of Absolutism tempered by the Enlightenment, believing it to be a great way of enforcing reformation. The generations that lived through it, however, tended to want a more liberal approach in government initiatives and lawmaking. Tax policy was another big controversy, with most people considering it to be an evil to pass on to others, so there was still lacking an educated, non-politicized understanding of how and to whom it should be applied. This was a contrast to more dedicated revolutionary societies, like the American one, who fully understood taxes to be a bane to be curtailed.

Naval jingoism, on the other hand, was a result of military and colonial victories of the latest two to three decades combined with a general militarization of some aspects of society. Politicians seemed more eager to argue in favor of naval assaults as a problem-solving answer to a level unseen since the apex of the first empire. Land jingoism was still tempered, but growing a few advocates that believed it was necessary, for example, to press national claims on Brazil and Nova Zelândia.

But lacking a platform to give power to their conversations, like a parliament, these many movements lacked organization and identity in the formal sense. To this day the most commonly recognized mentality was the Pombalist one, which not only was in decline and with its needle moving further and further to the right as a conservative movement, but derived its identity around a central, dying figure, the Prime Minister Sebastião de Carvalho e Melo. It was unlikely that with Pombal dead there would be a grand ideology to dominate the affairs of the public.

The political future of Portugal in 1783, therefore, was an incognita to most people. It could either revert to its old ways of traditionalism, now that the main proponent of progressivism had passed away, it could attempt to continue his efforts, or it could go an entirely new direction, perhaps in line with the ongoing American Revolution or the soon-to-explode French Revolution. Unbeknownst to the debaters, the following era would actually be dominated by the influence of the meek king himself, Joseph II, who after instituting the Ministry of Justice and formalizing the beginning of the process to constitutionalize the country would go on to act as a much more effective monarch and impact events from the aftermath of the Three Years War to the Treaty of Vienna.

The Iron Jewel of India​

In 1783, Portuguese India was a multi-branched trade-steering parasite on the western Indian Coast, or, as the Portuguese preferred to refer to it, a “collective of trade outposts enclaves politically centralized in Goa and strengthened by fortified bastions in Greater Damão and Greater Diu”, these last two now legitimate provinces of their own. The main exportations to Lisbon and Rio, asides from obvious treasuries and spices, consisted of iron, gunpowder, rocketry, sugar and dyes locally produced and a collective of Indian manufactured goods pulled from the ‘native mainland’.

As a result of the Three-Years War, Goa now dominated the entire western India Coast, as far as European colonies went. While Bombay and Surat were in British hands, Diu and Daman were so physically bigger while able to maintain the same naval power projection that these two British colonies were growing increasingly less valuable. Surat in particular was growing less and less profitable, largely in part of Bombay being a superior headquarters for the British. The strenuous relationship between the Calcutta office and the Bombay office was also prejudicial.

Proof of this dominance was that it was now politically impossible to not involve the Portuguese in any matter related the status of the Western Coast. Every region of it had either a full province or an ‘Old Port’ with special trade privileges that could be consulted by the many rivalling Indian political groups. The heavily populated region of Travancore was also now littered by Portuguese outposts re-conquered from the Dutch, meaning the Navy acted with full liberty along the entire length of the sub-continent’s western outline. While the Dutch were now much stronger in their confinement in Ceylon, the less segmented demarcation of India to different European powers was contributing to a stranglehold despite the fact that the Portuguese were numerically outnumbered.

This is to say that the Portuguese weren’t strong, but thanks to the new demarcations they probably didn’t need to be, as it was now much harder for the Indians to pit the Europeans against one another. In fact, Tipu Sultan feared that the trend would be that the Dutch, British and Portuguese would now work together to initiate a massive, decade-long political assault on their preferred slices of India, a notion that made every Indian ruler shudder. The Dutch and the Portuguese were now even allied for the first time in history. Prospects for the future seemed grim, indeed, for native independence.

Meanwhile Goa itself grew richer. With almost full naval dominance over the Gulf of Cambay and an open road to Indonesia, its political and financial power grew along with its investors. Panjim would never grow as much wealth as it would in the final years of the 18th century and its burgher class increased in numbers, forming parties to oppose the interests of the Dutch Burghers in Malabar. The caste system and indentured servitude, however, not only continued but grew in equal proportion to the wealth. The enlarged territory of Greater Goa, Daman and Diu had grown from a population of approximately 160,000 in 1750 to 300,000 in 1780.[4] This was the result of very significant conquests around the three original main colonies as well as influxes of both European and Indian people. This also meant, however, large numbers of people maladjusted to an economy not meant to favor them.

While Portuguese India developed immensely, racial inequality remained solid, strengthened by the culturally entrenched caste system​

It was understood by European settlers that the Indians only tolerated their situation in Portuguese colonies due to common faith, in some cases to common language and to a general lack of better conditions in native kingdoms. The caste system native to Indian cultures enforced the hierarchy passively. The situation in Portuguese India pushed the white settlers to a superior ‘Casta’, as they comprised the richer, politically advantaged citizens, whether they were actual nobility, plutocrats or even simple peasants and fishermen from the army.

The religion-based versions of the jāti were outlawed by the Verneyist’s church doctrines. Goan Patriarch Manuel went to extensive lengths to fight this particular form of caste. The Portuguese policy of miscegenation also opposed jāti’s general rules against marriage between sectors. The natives, however, especially those advanced over others by the caste, believed the system provided identity, stability and status to their groups.

There wasn’t a unified stance against the caste system amongst the whites, moreover, because in many situations it favored them for there to be a culture amongst the natives where they accepted the racial hierarchy. The settlement outpost of Cascata, in southeastern Greater Goa, had been formed by disadvantaged Indians resettled into the area that had no power to oppose Portuguese law, but when the Vice-Roy had been fomenting anti-Mysore sentiments based on how Tipu Sultan threatened to exterminate Goans due to their religion, it became hard to believe that the Portuguese were true to their consistency. This was an even bigger problem in Daman and Diu, where control over vast majority of the lands was very recent and Muslim population percentage was much higher.

The influence of Dutch colonial practices suggested that a hands-off attitude was best to follow. Neo-colonialists, who based their beliefs on the examples of England and Netherlands, not to mention the ones set by explorer scientists Barbosa, Ferreira and, later on, Lacerda, wished colonial policy to be based on scientific interests and statehood, not brutal conquest. They argued that the three main colonies of Portuguese India were only stable and profitable thanks to toleration and a focus on magistracy.

Political power was still undeniably in its apex, and Portuguese India slowly became known less and less as the “Great Enclave” and more and more as the “Iron Jewel of India”. It was the second biggest European possession in India, the most commercially successful per square mile, the number one political power in the western coast and more competitive than pre-Earthquake Goa had ever been. It was also likely to single-handedly dominate the strategic Cambay Gulf by the end of the century. With the alliance with Dutch Ceylon and the British Calcutta Office, not to mention the state of Hyderabad, Panjim could pull enough strings to defeat any singular Indian state should it be invaded.

This left Vice-Roy Frederick Holstein in a position of almost absolute victory in his term. He had set out to make Goa the undisputed power in the coast and, in many respects, he succeeded, even if it was partially thanks to policies and feats from his subordinates that went against his own, particularly Governor Joseph de Almeida and the Brigadier General Gomes Freire de Andrade. Thus he surpassed the previous Vice-Roy in sheer advances even though Castro was remembered by natives more positively due to his limited expansion and pro-diplomacy policies, not to mention being the main contributor to ending the Goa Inquisition. Holstein was, in turn, going down as a jingoist conqueror viewed more positively by whites not maimed by the wars he caused.

Goa, however, faced intense geopolitical challenges in the near future. With Dutch and French competition driven away and the British East India Company growing bolder and fiercer, the colonization of the mainland was likely to be contested in the near future, not to mention that both the states of Mysore and the Maratha Confederacy had reasons to antagonize Panjim.

The Round-The-World Imperialism​

“The sun sets on the Portuguese Empire, but not for very long. When it rises, only a few people notice it ahead of time, but when it sets again the vast majority of us see it coming a mile away.”
Silvestre Pinheiro Ferreira - Observações sobre o Narcimento de o primeiro Imperio Mudial[5]​

The 4th Luso-Kongo War displaced an uprising Manikongo who sought to militarize the nation against European influence and replaced it with Pedro V, a candidate that was the closest thing possible to a Portuguese puppet. The reason for so was that not only the man himself was indebted to Luanda, but the changes caused to borders and commerce in the Treaty of São Salvador rendered the colony of Luanda as the main contact the Kongo region had with the international community, even if the province of Cabinda was an autonomous free trade outpost.

Less than a decade later, intense British invasions to Dutch possessions caused Kapstaad to become a Dutch colony under British protection. This brought the region of southern Africa to the competition table once more, since it meant that interest in conquering land there, European or native, was growing. As navies grew more sophisticated and European control over Asian territories increased, the importance of Kapstaad became more critical as a controlling lock on the shipping lanes between the Indic and Atlantic Oceans.

As it stood in 1783, France, Britain, Portugal and the Netherlands all possessed either islands or coastal port territories in the region and the investment in each area varied greatly depending on the zone. With the retying of Luso-Dutch relations, it seemed unlikely that the Portuguese would rekindle any desire to take Cape territories and instead focused on making Angolan and Mozambican ports viable by intensifying relationships, whether belligerent or commercial, with the Congolese or Rozwi empires. They were not particularly concerned with maintaining shipping lanes through the Cape since both powers contesting control over it were now allied to Portugal and for as long as the Second Colonial Accord held power (which could be as long as the British needed to complete colonization of their side of the bargain) it wasn’t allowed to give any two cents on it anyway.

With the scientific wing of the colonization department growing, however, some prestige was there to be gained by continuing exploration and annexation of South African lands north of the Cunene River. In any case, the colonization market seemed to be all of a sudden open for coastal possessions on southern Africa, instead of focusing on West Africa where all the rich Muslim African empires were located. A decision as a people had to be made then as to what were to become the national destiny in this region that had been tied to Portugal for more than 250 years.

The main concern seemed to be that Portugal was lacking in geopolitically critical ports, as opposed to Spain (Panama), Britain (Gibraltar/ The Channel) and Netherlands (Kapstaad/Batavia). The only ‘lock’ in Portuguese hands was Malaca, and it was one merely in name and in the context of the modern commerce in the empire, as Malaca could easily be replaced with many other ports in the strait, like Johor or even a fishing town like Singapore. This lead to commercial lanes which not only were very long during wartime, but susceptible to interception like it had occurred during the Nightmare at Sea.

Critics of this concern argued that European maritime law made any attempt to repeat the period where Portugal held Mare Clausum over certain seas to be folly and provocative. Critics of these critics argued that not maintaining critical ports spread out among powers was staying vulnerable to a future where perhaps one of the proponents of those maritime laws would simply bring back the concept in a highly hypocritical fashion after stealing the ports it needed for it.

With sea-based transportation still being by far the most efficient way of moving cargo, however, it was unlikely that this would change. Some theorized that Portugal should invest in the opposite direction; moving interests away from Africa and into the South Pacific, where a route to Nova Zelândia awaited. This, however, was a breach of the Treaty of Tordesillas, a point of agreement between Lisbon and Madrid that was still going strong between the two despite being ignored by virtually everyone else and prevented invasions based on colonial disputes (outside the Brazilian border).

Maintaining a limited, narrow-minded approach to maritime imperialism ran the risk of Portugal neglecting one of the two southern corners of its triangular empire; Brazil or the Africa-Asia colonial collective. Because of this, establishing new ports in Malaca and New Zealand had been critical, as it helped establish a round-the-world connection between the territories. Brazil was looking westwards not only to just its immediate borders with Spanish colonies, but also the Southern Pacific, where East Timor and North Island were located.

With imperial possessions now maintaining a full around-the-world link and growing increasingly complex, the dynamics of imperialism in Portugal began to change and focus more on the central ring of commerce​

The imperial organism thus ceased to be triangular and began to take a ring-like shape, with the metropolitan involvement in colonial affairs growing increasingly irrelevant. Brazil, Africa, Goa, Timor and finally New Zealand formed a perfect path of commerce along almost the entire equator and so politics began to evolve into a schism that threatened to alienate the metropolitan cog from the rest of the machinery. Exchange of goods was simply far more efficient along the ring line, as it connected a majority of the internal markets with a much smaller total travel interval (even if counting the new South Pacific lane).

Only Brazil and Angola maintained direct networks with Lisbon due to the shared ocean, making Luanda and Rio de Janeiro the only two capitals inside the empire in permanent natural direct contact with every one of their sister territories. This was a contrast to Britain, Spain and France, for example, all which had North American possessions, especially Canada, with which to balance the direction of the arteries with. Imperialism was therefore gradually being divided in twain in Portugal, with Lisbon being at the apex of an Atlantic Empire triangle and Rio de Janeiro being the jewel of a Southern Hemisphere (including Goa) Empire ring. With the Brazilian capital being the common city between the two, the importance of Lisbon as the imperial center in the distant future became in danger.

This even affected the development of new territories; Ponta d’Albuquerque was the center of North Island only in name, appointment and proximity to other possessions, as far more development was coursing into Bahia Nova in Tauranga from the Brazilian South Atlantic route (eventually Bracara-Beatriz and Nova Coimbra would surpass the two and Nova Lisboa, near the strait between the two islands, would become the new capital).

Thus, it seemed that the trend of the imperial gravity center shifting from Portugal to Brazil was continuing despite the mini-population-boom in the Metropolis between 1763 and 1783. It became more and more common for Brazilian elites, rather than Portuguese ones, to spearhead efforts of exploration, military leadership, decision making and business creation in Asia and Africa. This perhaps was a blessing in disguise, since it meant the Brazilians had a vested interest in the stability of the joint power, but also threatened the motherland status quo. How this situation would evolve would only unfold in the early 19th century, though.

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[1] See Section: Death of Pombal – Decline of ‘Pombalism’.
[2] See Section: King and Country (1783) – Demographics & Culture – 1783 Josephine Census & The 20-year-Mini-Boom.
[3] See Section: King and Country (1783) – Philosophy, Religion & Ideology – Anglicanism, Germanism, Frenchism, Dutchism and Lusitanism.
[4] iOTL Portuguese India population in 1800 was approx. 210,000.
[5] Portuguese 19th century Philosopher, Author and Politician 1826 publication “Observation on the Birth of 1st Worldwide Empire”

With this post we have finalized the 1783 review. We wanted to provide a balanced overview that showed both the progress the country/empire had made since a virtual nobody was cast onto the largest stage the country could of provided. The individual did more than any king or commoner could of dreamed , he gave the Portuguese an empire they could be proud and that was establishing its place in the competitive imperialists' game, competing against countries much bigger than itself by redefining what it meant to be Portuguese and who could sit at the table. The country faces great challenges ahead while at same time has momentum on its side in the next phase of it existence; the post Pombal era.

Questions/ Comments???

Join us on January 24 ,2021 as we start posting the 1983-1799 Post Pombal Era.

​

 

[Lusitania]

Rebirth of an Empire

Growth of the Empire
​

The 3rd book "Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)" coincides with the 1st half of the reign of Joseph II after the death of Pombal. The main sections of book 3 are as follows:

• Growth of Empire (1783 - 1799)
  • The Mid Josephine Era (1783 - 1799)​
  • Struggling Capitalism, Technology & Neoclassicism​
  • Factory System​
  • 1780 Proto-Economic Theories​
  • Lusitanian Neoclassicism​
  • Challenges of the Age​
  • Portugal & the Patriottentijd (1784 - 1787)​
  • To be expanded....​

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)​

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

King Joseph II the Great (1788)[1]​

The designation of 1783 and 1784 as the beginning of the mid Josephine period came from the coincidence of the 1783 Census occurring simultaneously to the death of Pombal and the Treaty of Paris, contributing to the feeling of a transition of state and updating of status throughout the entire territory, even over oversea lanes, as well as the outbreak of the First Coalition War. Dotted with a population of four and a half million metropolitan people and close to the same of that spread out through colonies (with modest stabilizing growth prospects), the nation had now a host of younger people ready to be invested into many ambitious projects stemming from the arts to the military.

It was also a country rife with political intrigue stemming from the outcome of the Paris Treaty and the ongoing revolutions in France and America. The new alliance with the Dutch Republic was also a factor of change, with many Portuguese merchants and high figures now meeting with Neerlandese traders regularly to discuss profits, territory and disgruntful cooperation and the Dutch Patriot Revolt contributing to changing the nature of Portuguese diplomacy and secret services. The new unofficial political parties were solidifying with the moderate needle set at continuing the Pombalist reform mindset and an ever-increasing desire for representation, while the justice system cried for reform and commerce desperate searched for a revolution to match that of the production.

Moreover, even with the final victory over and reconciliation with the Dutch, some of Portugal’s oldest rivals still represented threats and now began to make their moves; the Spanish crown, feeling its arm twisted by Joseph II over the Gibraltar conflict and wary of the Verneyists and Pombalists deteriorating its neighbor’s conservatism, began making new demands to solve the ambassador dispute between Madrid and Lisbon that had been going on since the Order of Christ Conspiracy and the Moroccan Sultan, Yazid, still resented the outcome of the 1770 Morbeia War where his father died, Yazid himself was held hostage and the country was forced to make enough territorial concessions to turn the failing Portuguese outpost of Mazagão into the autonomous province of Morbeia, which now operated as a spy agent springboard to Berber insurrections.

Further overseas, commercial and colonial borders reformed immensely thanks to the demarcations set between London, Amsterdam and Lisbon in their shared regions, especially India. Native powers like the Mysoreans and the Marathas wished to recover their blood lands from the Europeans, who now held a triple stranglehold without the overlapping that would prevent cooperation, and increasingly felt like a drastic action was needed to rid their respective territories from strangers. Meanwhile, less aggressive nations like Hyderabad attempted to choose a European patron they could trust on, further complicating the balance of power in the sub-continent.

The Portuguese had completed their ambition of being the uncontested masters of the western shore, but the British West Office in Bombay was a major preoccupation and the Goanese now dreamed of uniting their provinces physically in order to become a true regional state, accepting further loyalty to Portuguese law in exchange for the development of their new identity as an Indian power and new wars. It would be an era of increasing involvement of native ethnicities in forging the Goanese state and using the Portuguese in their favor instead of the other way around.

In Brazil, slave landowners in the north continued to clash with industrial emancipators in the south, triggering increasingly tense state reunions and more and more calls for Portuguese arbitration. Variety of wealth increased in the same degree as variety of identity. Clergy gradually lost power to faux aristocracy and proto-plutocrats. With the completion of the acclimatization of Cisplatina as a Brazilian land, the people of Brazil clamored for new conquests and looked not only towards the west, to the other side of the La Plata, where borders with Spaniards and Incans lay, but to the south and east, where sea routes to New Zealand and the Lusophone world existed to make their own colonization.

But in all remaining territories, including the capital, commerce and coin was the name of the game. The bourgeoisie in Lisbon and Oporto continued to work towards more and more contracts and trade with northern Europe, wishing to become the suppliers of Europe once again, while the governors of African and Asian colonies sought to interlink themselves and pursue innovative areas of development, wishing to earn the opportunity to undergo colonial reforms like the MAD. Emboldened by recent victories, new captains and lieutenants stepped forward in the navy and the army, ready to serve, and the wash down of the ‘Nightmare at Sea’ filled the nation with a sense of optimism regarding its capabilities and judgement.

Yet, all this excitement revolved around the helm of a shy figure. King Joseph II, as of 1784, could very well be named “the Meek” should he suddenly die. Seemingly indecisive and timid, the monarch had been upstaged by his wife, Queen Charlotte, several times as of that year, including during the critical Nantes Negotiations and the Treaty of Paris, with his only major feat as of then being the letter sent to Madrid to coerce them to abandon the siege of Gibraltar (a gesture that would not be recognized for its importance by the general public until his later years of reign).

With the heavy construction of the Palace of Ajuda underway, it almost seemed a disservice for the fruits of Portuguese labor to be spent in the splendor and ostentation of a rather underwhelming young monarch. As of 1784, however, King Joseph II would begin a turn around when the new problems in Portugal began appealing to his more talented and passionate side; the fields of justice and constitutionalism.

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[1] Joseph II, despite the ostentation of his legacy, was a particularly shy king self-conscious of the minor deformities in his physical appearance that made him hesitant to pose for portraits, leading to there only being a small collection of minor drawings and paintings of his majesty despite his long period of reigning over the country

We now start a new era one which many scholars and historians have called "Josephine the Great Era". Till the death of Pombal in 1783 Joseph II reign had been overshadowed by the old and domineering Prime Minister. That time had actually provided the young king with the time to learn the ropes as they say while being able to rely on Pombal for guidance and support, now that Pombal was no longer there King Joseph had to shoulder on and be his own man. While the country would be led by a series of capable Prime Ministers and cabinet comprised of some of the country's best minds the era would be forever associated King Joseph II. Questions/ Comments???

I will post another section later today.

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)​

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

Struggling Capitalism, Technocracy & Neoclassicism ( 1 of 4)​

As stated in the previous period, the events of the Three Years War, the succession of Joseph II to the throne and the end of Pombal’s regime had a terrific impact in metropolitan culture, not to mention they served as a test to national resilience at many levels. Capitalism in Portugal, however, was a climbing force in a tilted race with its Anglo-Saxon, Hispanic, Frankish and Germanic rivals. Until 1783, the primary advantages in Portugal had been positional, in implementation of reforms and in terms of management technique, but not in fuel, manpower or resources.

The fact that the ‘Power Loom’, a very significant piece of machinery for the industrial revolution, was invented in Porto by João Costa Ferreira around the same time of the war had served to show that the country had grown capable of functioning in civil affairs despite ongoing military crisis. More warships had also been put to sea within those three years than in any preceding homologous period, something owed quite visibly to hardworking Irish expatriates working in dockyards. There was therefore now a reaction of “dynamizing instead of paralyzing” in times of conflict, a contrast with what had occurred in previous enemy invasions like the Fantastic War.

Division of labor was mostly to be blame; as predicted by Adam Smith, the rationalization of the productive process had turned the workforce into a machine in itself, operating with greater specialization and reduced work focus deviation. It could be said then that the state economy had grown partially mechanized, operating at acceptable efficiency regardless of external factors. This was important as it was a testament to the teachings of the General Theory of Productivity at the beginning of the previous period, which predicted that productivity could be laid down in pure scientific terms and expanded through technology against the fears and limitations of its human operators. The gradual introduction of primitive steam engines was also changing the inner workings of several richer factories, who attempted to adopt the energy provider.

As this progress developed, the mindset in the country also did. Departing from Enlightenment, society began taking an interest in a growing niche that had wormed its way in since the beginning of the century; Neo-Classicism.

In Portugal, like many other European countries, it was understood that the Antiquity had a sort of aesthetic and moral authority and attempts to return to it had been recurrent throughout history all over Europe. Its incarnation of the 18th century was founded on a number of factors, namely the exhaustion of Baroque ways and the triumph of rationalism over superstition and dogmas, a main element of the Enlightenment championed by men like the Marquis of Pombal.

It was also pertinent to say that the Josephine plutocrat class, that had slowly accumulated power since the 1760s, took a sort of cultish refuge in the ideas of the Antiquity, seeing Catholicism as an oppressive religion that targeted their comfort and ways, and inertly revolted against the tired religious art and architecture by turning to the ideas of Ancient Greece, Ancient Egypt and Ancient Rome, seeing in them a tranquil display of gentle power naked of any papal decorum. Verneyists criticized this interest, believing their particular schism as an ironically more generous attempt at compromising paradoxes with Rome.[1]

The incredible political uprisings all over the world during the late 18th century only served to enhance this desire to call back to ancient values in an attempt for high culture societies to rediscover themselves, free of the ideas of the old regimes. Many of the new powers, including the US with its “Federal Style” and the Jacobins of France, were attempting to bring neoclassicism to politics by adopting names and institutions of old, calling themselves republicans and congress advocates while flagging freedom and citizenship. Classical notions of heroism and patriotism returned and were used to describe the leaders of the new revolutions, trumping the corrupt and lavish feudalism that had appointed the importance of people based on tradition and birthright. This caused neoclassicism to obtain its aggressive edge, departing from mere art of calm Greek sceneries to fully armed pamphlet-spreading, denouncing the need to change society forever.

Returning to the Portuguese context, Neoclassicism was rising under the protective wing of capitalism; the main proponents of the new movement were wealthy funders who had built companies with new technologies and cited their loyalty to the points of the GTP as a go-to manual of why they were better than their peers, and they sought to glorify their success by distancing themselves from their religiously-minded rivals in the struggle for societal power and building their own identity. This occurred in overlap with the rise of freemasonry in Lisbon and Porto.

With the victory over France in the Three Years War, the mood only grew more inflamed and Portuguese factories became places of industrial optimism. The focus on management practices that had dominated economic progress in the earlier 20 years was now being replaced by technocracy; the most valuable member of the organization became the one who could bring new machinery and tools in.

The word “Tecnocracia” was therefore born in this way in Lisbon’s Chamber of Commerce as consequence of the collective of entrepreneurs who were painfully aware of the disadvantage they faced with their foreign rivals in terms of manpower and resources but were feeling strange successes in their investment towards securing patents and education for their workers. William Stephens described the Portuguese industrial class as “obsessive eavesdroppers and scouts, endlessly searching the news and university papers for gadgets they could call innovations, compensating the cultural anarchism that hinders them by stealing progress”.

The word would return in the 20th century to describe the goal of industrial democracy, but here it acted as a smear to industry captains who increasingly relegated basic work techniques to search for ‘mathematical models and power engines that could revolutionize their toolsheds’, a saying also from the mouth of William Stephens. This was, however, a natural consequence of the politics of the Pombaline Cabinet age, as it heavily enforced the idea that Portuguese society needed to be dominated by a group of individuals empowered by their knowledge and education on their specialty, something which translated pretty basically to a “technical elite” or “technocracy”.

This precise mindset, combined with global artistic trends, the change of government, the observed constitutionalist trends of the new King and the triumph of the Three Years War, helped bring about a liberation and proliferation of neoclassicism and the idea initially presented by the GTP that a country was empowered by mechanization, instead of just prestige and the army.

However, it’s important to understand this all occurred in the so-called “Pre-Industrial Revolution” in Portugal, where the Manufactory System was prevalent. Dominated by management techniques and availability of tools, this system was basically as industrial as it could be without a machine. The invention of the Power Loom, however, set its end in stone by 1783. From 1784 onward, the ‘Factory System’ would make its splash.

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[1] One of the principles of Verneyism defended the continued contact with the Pope despite the rejection of his decrees. Many scholars and even supporters questioned this contradiction and it was not till the Vatican Council in 1860 - 1864 that two factions of the Roman Catholic Church; the liberals championed by those inspired by the Portuguese and the conservatives led church in Italian Peninsula met and implemented real reforms both philological and structurally. It was during the Vatican Council that Verneyism notes were released in which he expressed his hopes and dreams for the reformation of the church and eventual reestablishment of direct relations with Rome. It also established guidance for Portuguese church officials to present at the Vatican Council.

We are using this post to highlight the changes that we occurring in Portugal, gone was the era of Portugal relying on trade of commodities and trade goods and importing almost all of its manufactured goods. As both newcomers and the new generation raised under Pombal's transformation of the country started industry and manufacturing that would change the mindset of country and transform it beyond what we have witnessed now. Questions/ Comments???

Please vote for this and my other TL in the poll if you have not done so yet. But more importantly I hope that being in the running for several years we gain new readers and fans. If you have ideas questions or like to contribute please feel free to contact me anytime, by either leaving a post here or email, Thanks

Next post called the Factory System will be posted on March 28. Obrigado.

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)​

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

Struggling Capitalism, Technocracy & Neoclassicism ( 2of 4)​

The Factory System​

Left: Steam-powered paper mill in Abrantes
Center: João Ferreira’s powered loom in action in Oporto’s textile industries
Right: De Rerum Natura, by João Jacinto de Magalhães​

“The defense of a single political direction is not enough to uplift the country. Every matter and issue must be brought to the next stage of civilization. The steam engine will allow us to do that, it will make conservative principles new and liberal principles newer, and the creation of wealth will be stronger because of it. It’s a matter of muscle.”
-Chairman Alexandre Rosa, advocating why the advancement of the economic engine was vital to social, liberal and imperial interests​

The Manufactory System[1] was a major tool of development during the late Pombaline period; it had cemented Pombaline-style reformism, it had replaced the Put-Out System and it introduced the population to the phenomenon of urbanism and industrialization, not to mention it helped quickly absorb the imported manpower from the colonies in the Metropolis. However, it was quickly reaching the limits of its potential.

The Economists Order, founded in 1778 by Minister Ratton, was still in its infancy and was inhabited mostly by the aforementioned proto-technocrats and advocates of De Pinto’s GTP thesis who were mainly employed by captains of industry to advise them on business strategy matters, rather than actual economics. They included men like De Pinto himself, but also industrial thinkers both transplanted and natural born like William Stephens, José Rodrigues Bandeira, Fernandes Bandeira Anselmo José da Cruz, Geraldo Wenceslão Braamcamp and Daniel Gildemeester as well as newcomers attracted to the country such like William Murdoch and Michael Stirling who for one reason or other lacked home institutions and pursued their specific pseudoscience in Portugal.[2] Around 1780, with the dawn of the British Industrial Revolution, the economists began arguing towards, as more modern historians later on put it, “putting the Portuguese engine in the next gear”. In detail, they defended the importation or invention of powered machinery to forcibly evolve Portuguese manufacturing.

To many in the Order, it was a matter of survival, to none more than so than Alexandre Rosa Batalha.

Alexandre Rosa Batalha
Born 6 February 1738
Died 9 August 1817
Portuguese Statesman, Economist, Banker and 2nd CC Chairman
Economists Order’s Professional Discipline Committee head​

Having made greater fame through his appeal to King Joseph II to mobilize the nation during the Three-Years War, the proto-economist defended the mechanization of the Portuguese economy over and over again in lectures and hearings at colleges, meetings and the Chamber itself. Making the contrarian point that liberal and imperial interests were both served by the introduction of mechanized productivity in an economy, Batalha was mostly interested in glory-hounding the wealth of the nation, seeing Portugal’s industrial rivals as enemies to overcome in every field. To this end he attempted to engage Adam Smith’s famous “Wealth of Nations” in Lisbon’s outdoor debates, but also its lesser known counterpart, the “Theory of Moral Sentiments”, but more on this below.

The invention of the Power Loom allowed the practical pursue of what Chairman Alexandre vouched for, as it was a powered machinery that was useful to many basic commodity sectors that Portugal was specializing itself in particular, mainly textiles and paper. Investment from capitalists in the public ceased to focus itself on education and manpower and instead began to go towards securing two things; the machine and the means to produce the machine. This was something that the classic workshops could accomplish. Heavy furnaces, steel, coal and more importantly the most advanced machine tools available were needed. The Put-Out system, that had more or less survived in the shadow of the Manufactory System, was now facing a new foe in the form of the “Factory System”.

The Presented Theory​

The “Sistema de Fábrica”, named after how it reinvented the ‘feitoria’ models previously used when establishing new production centers, had three main objectives:

• Bringing machines to Portugal;
• Develop work around them as efficiently as possible;
• Continue to develop the new science kicked off by the GTP, the science of Economics;

Recent history lessons suggested that Portugal suffered a “spark” start in the industrial race due to being allowed to look at British stumbles in the dark to perfect its own introduction to industrialization.[3] The leading plutocrats were also more aggressive than their predecessors, wishing to make the ‘Costa Urbana’ the main provider of manufactured goods for the entire western section of the Iberian Peninsula. The capitalists, economists and captains of industry, therefore, had a shared ambition to set up the evolution of their capital to have as high and fast-fulfilling potential as possible. Part of this overly aggressive and often careless mission was motivated by how the main figures of the movement were foreigners, mainly Minister William Stephens, and so they looked at the Iberian industrial map a bit as something to experiment with.

The plan of action seemed to be to take lessons not only of British mistakes, but also from the agricultural sector. The MLE system introduced by Aaron had tempered agricultural traditionalism and corporatism into a mixed body, attempting to combine the benefits of both, but had limited effects due to several factors unique to agriculture, such as the attachment farmers felt to the land, the fertility of the earth, the effects of weather, drought and famine, the lack of knowledge on fertilization and the essential nature of the goods produced by it. To make MLE succeed it was necessary to constantly morph it to local circumstances, but industrials were curious about how they could apply it to industry, which had bigger tool demand, but less square mile requirements, non-essential final goods and for the most part no seasonality.

The birth of new corporation organs designed to be compact, efficient but also ambitious and cooperative seemed to be the ideal the new thinkers strived for. Coupled with the advocating of mechanization of the means of production, this was the Factory System.

The Enactment & Technology​

Therefore, the first phase of the Portuguese Industrial Revolution had begun and the new system would rule for more or less the rest of the century and the first decade of the 19th. It was powered by the importation of machinery, but also a strong investment in local inventors and abroad.

To name a few, J.J Magalhães was an important projector of instruments and member of the Oporto branch of the Academy of Sciences who made contributions to astronomy and naval tools, mostly, like telescopes, lenses and micrometers, but with the start of the Factory System, he began to profit from projecting machine tools as well.[4] He helped develop many early prototypes of steam engines, looms, mills and other automated machines still in their infancy, allowing Portuguese technology and patents to grow independently from other countries.

Alessandro Volta, through the intermedium of Magalhães, also made part of his career as an electrical science and gas chemistry pioneer in Portugal during the 1780s, due to better personal comfort with Verneyism’ lax policy on irreligious people. Volta had been constantly criticized in his homeland for apparent lack of faith despite personal statements of piety and was encouraged by Magalhães to spend some time in Lisbon’s labs to research peacefully. During the late 1790s after northern Italy became under siege by French invasions led by a rather talented Corsican artillery leader.[5]

In 1789, motivated by his rivalry with Luigi Galvani and funded by the Lisbon Royal Society of Sciences, Alessandro Volta completed a major invention, the Voltaic Pile, the world’s first electrical cell and a major prestige boost for the society.

Alexandre Volta and the “Pilha Voltáica”​

The end of the century was therefore a time of strong technological toil, a result of work done in the earlier period in the fields of education, science and industry. Eventually, with the development of major travel innovations like railroads, steamboats and long distance communication, the “Factory System” would be replaced in the 1820s by the “Imperialist System”, a method that strongly involved geopolitics and the developing field of economics in Portugal to make decisions regarding work and the world of industry.

The Risks, The Philosophy & the 1798 International Symposium​

In the meantime, the Factory System motivated and guided Portuguese industrialization. The introduction of better technology began displacing workers in farms and factories, but while this created social strife, it staved off the problem predicted in the Manufactory System, the labor shortage. The Factory System was, as a replacer of older models, a doctrine that freed up manpower by reducing the labor demand of new enterprises (and causing several established workers to be fired, too). It also exacerbated urban wealth differences, with the patrons paying less long-term costs and less workers having long term gains.

In 1786, after choosing to acquire more machinery after the expiration of a major exports contract with Hamburg, the Vista Alegre glass industry triggered a worker revolt of nearly 300 people in the middle of Lisbon that was resisted against and dispersed by the GNR military police officers, who shot at the crowd and injured at least 46 people.

GNR dispersing the worker demonstration at Vista Alegre​

This event brought to light the negative effects of the rotation of industrial doctrines in Portugal, and how quickly replacing one model for the next was causing people moving in from farms to the city to work to suddenly be out of job or in precarious terms.

Surprisingly, it was none other than Chairman Alexandre that capitalized on this development; seeking to find weaknesses in rival philosophies, he brought to light in Lisbon the final, lesser known declarations of Adam Smith regarding the division of labor, that it would numb the worker and transform him into a human cog manipulated by the state engine. To explain the ethics that capitalism and mechanization would challenge in society, he cited Adam Smith’s “Theory of Moral Principles”. This was vital to characterize the Portuguese industrial revolution as not only an economic challenge, but a philosophical one and deeply set it apart from the revolutions occurring in England and that would occur in France or even Germany.

It was therefore no surprise, on the other hand, that in 1798 the first great international symposium on the matter happened not in London, but in Lisbon. This wasn’t just a prestigious feat; it was an important step towards open speech between nations about technological breakthroughs in industrialized economics at a time where the concept of patents was being greatly hogged for the sake of competitive profiting between enemy nations of Western Europe. This allowed Portuguese laboratories, factories and colleges to be where other backwater nations went to in their quest to understand how to compete with more advanced industrialized countries.

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[1] See Rebuilding Transition and Tensions (1777 – 1783) – Rebirth of the Empire (Part 2 of 2) – Manufactory Revolution & General Theory of Productivity.
[2] Both William Murdoch and Michael Stirling Jr were British inventors who were both attracted and recruited to come to Portugal. William Murdoch was a Scottish engineer and steam inventor who having been blocked by more famous British inventors in his case Boulton and Watts, to develop and perfecting steam engine came to Portugal. While Michael Stirling Jr brought to Portugal his father’s thrashing machine. Following the invention of thrashing machine in 1786 by Andrew Meikle, another Scottish farmer attempted to make his own claim to the invention. Farmer Michael Stirling claimed that he has been using a rotary threshing machine since 1758 to process all the corn on his farm at Gateside but was unable to provide any documentation. In 1796 following his dad’s death at the invitation of the Portuguese he sailed to Porto where he was successfully able to demonstrate his father’s invention.
[3] See Rebirth of the Empire (Part 1 of 2) – Pombaline Cabinet (1762 -1777) – Ministry of Finance & Commerce – Metropolitan & Brazilian Industrialization.
[4] IOTL he was mostly confined to this. After 1763 he stayed outside Portugal. http://cvc.instituto-camoes.pt/ciencia/p4.html
[5] Volta had no real trouble with Napoleon and, in IOTL, he was even made a count by him, but in ITTL he was motivated by agents claiming he would be guillotined to flee from French invasions to Lisbon. Portuguese reputation as a fighter of Death Penalty at this point became critical to unlock this.

We are continuing to use these posts to highlight the changes that we occurring in Portugal, gone was the era of Portugal relying on trade of commodities and trade goods and importing almost all of its manufactured goods. As both newcomers and the new generation raised under Pombal's transformation of the country started industry and manufacturing that would change the mindset of country and transform it beyond what we have witnessed now. Questions/ Comments???

I would also like to thank everyone who voted in the poll and welcome any new readers we may of received during the contest. For that is the real purpose in participating.

Next post called the The 1780 Proto-Economic Theories will be posted on April 25. Obrigado.

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)​

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

Struggling Capitalism, Technocracy & Neoclassicism ( 3 of 4)​

The 1780 Proto-Economic Theories​

To complement the Factory System and continuing from the General Theory of Productivity proposed in the previous decade, proto-economic theories continued to develop themselves in universities to help overcome the lag in scientific knowledge in the country and ensure the vital lessons of the industrial revolution endured, unlike the ideas of the Scientific Revolution which had suffered such an historical drag in the country.

The main figure of thinking in the country was still Joseph Aaron de Pinto, the author of the GTP, who was still considered a kook by some and a visionary by others. While he provided the only half-framework of how to think of an economic system, he lacked many of the tools necessary to fundament it scientifically, something simply not possible at the time. The proto-economic thinking he inspired, therefore, was taken over by other smaller and more numerous minds who collectively worked, formally and informally, to advance proto-economic thinking and the ideas started by French physiocrats.

Many separate reforms, acts and events of the previous epoch, and some of the current one; helped fuel the analysis and transformation of proto-economic thinking in the late 1780s and early 1790s:

• The proliferation of Mixed Enclosures;
• The Mini-Boom;
• The Magistracy Act;
• The Completion of Royal Roads;
• The actions of the PRP;
• Mineral Maps, Coal Plan and other attempts to plan out industrial resources;
• The Factory System;

The Early and Mid-Josephine cabinets were very much focused on structural economic and judicial growth, as opposed to the Late Pombaline Cabinet which was focused on heavy reformism of the State and interventionism. The new models of land enclosure imposed a mixture of ideas from the Pombalist era and the Agricultural Revolution which consolidated a lot of loose agricultural territory, creating more compact units of food production. This meant that it was easier to measure agricultural output and easier to separate it by region statistically. The census of 1783 also revealed that the Portuguese population, largely due to health and agricultural reforms but also a slightly higher fertility rate (in decimals), had suffered a 50% spike over 20 years known as the Mini-Boom, which meant that the national apparatus had to accommodate to the entry of a new generation without letting go of a larger amount of the older one.

The magistracy act had attempted to tackle this by creating more democracy and more decentralization, relatively to a regime of enlightened absolutism, and the new alliance with the Dutch caused a new interflow of ideas between the nations, creating a spur of economic thinking. The creation of this new way to command the country and the proliferation of Dutch ideas in Lisbon helped stimulate new outlooks in proto-economic thought, leading to further scientific studies on Aaron’s increasingly famous theory.

The 1780s and 1790s therefore saw a shift in economic development towards pursuing the objectives of the Factory System and studying economic logistics. This was critical to understanding how to maximize the yearly growth of the country and lead to the rise of importance in geographic and statistical studies, already on the rise in the previous decades due to several demanding government projects like the Royal Roads, which were in turn a big provider of evidence that communication and logistics were critical to growth.

In addition, the Ministries of Planning & Infrastructure and of Industry & Armament had been deeply involved in studies like the Mineral Map of Portugal and the Metropolitan Coal Plan, which further contributed to the piling of data that could be structured to support economic thinking. The actions of the PRP, finally, broke the 18th century mold that populations naturally accommodated to resources, as they artificially planted small population groups based on labor need, not nature.

This all led to the rise of economic thinking in universities, which would be critical to shape politics and tackle the 1790s recession in Portugal, as well as take vital lessons from it.

Lusitanian Neoclassicism​

But the revivalism of industry and economy in the country, not to mention the even more important resurrection of political dynamism in the form of the religious schism and the Tagus Declaration, also signified a revivalism in the arts. It would not be possible for such critical events to occur without the effects spreading to how the people interpreted the nation, the society and western civilization as a whole.

Starting from the late 1770s and then deeply influenced by the “Nightmare at Sea”, Portuguese neoclassicism solidified itself in the early 1780s and became influential through the rest of the century, particularly in regards to the debate over the death penalty, another big pillar of the national identity in the early 19th century. The progressive importance of this movement existed due to how it based itself in scientific and rationalistic ideas, rather than just empirical ones.

The fascination with classic arts brought by advances in archeology in the 1740s which allowed the establishment of a chronology of Antiquity was a natural event, as if elite Europeans were now rediscovering their roots (even if said roots involved massive miscegenation with populations that the Greeks and Romans regarded as barbarian invaders). In Portugal, neoclassicism was influenced by a number of foreign figures;

• François-Marie Voltaire: His poems after the Lisbon Earthquake were highly distributed in the 1750s as a form of an attack by Pombal towards the church, so the name rapidly entrenched itself in the capital even well before the 1770s and 1780s in philosophical debates. His ideas over enlightenment, in particular, helped shape anarchic skepticism towards old institutions;
• Charles-Louis Montesquieu: While rather late to the party, Josephine beliefs about the need for true separation of powers were very clearly based on Montesquieu’s beliefs and formed another bedrock of the new talks amongst the elites about the fundaments of power;
• Immanuel Kant: While still rather obscure and not a direct figure of neoclassicism, the Prussian philosopher’s attempts to tie morality to reason were highly popular among Portuguese burghers and even amateur Verneyists, and his apparently non-sensical explanations about the common man’s morality appealed to culturally anarchist tendencies in Portuguese citizens who wished to challenge the established dogmas of the powerful;
• The Architects of Lisbon: Of no lesser importance, the collective of engineers and architects that rebuilt Lisbon after the earthquake created a city that exposed the results of the Enlightenment in a very physical way, helping to inspire the next step towards neo-classicism;

The final result was that by 1782 the conditions were optimal for an all-encompassing evolution towards a new artistic phase in the country; that of a cultural movement inspired in Antiquity and radically against the Baroque of the previous age, affecting the new works of literature to the new projects of architecture.

Literature: ‘Bocage’​

The main figure of literature in the country under the banner of the late 18th century neoclassicism was none other than Manuel Bocage, a man that became known as one of the most important and influential writers in the language, as well as a poet rivalling Camões.

Manuel Bocage, aged 20, after leaving the army
1765-1805​

Growing up with a difficult lot in Setúbal, his lawyer father was arrested when he was six years old and his mother, a descendant of the French translator of Milton’s Paradise, passed away when Bocage made it to ten. During the 60s, the transition between humanistic studies to scientific ones in the country was occurring under the patronage of Duke John of Lafões and Bocage ended up studying both realms under the Spanish priest João de Medina, with whom he learned Latin. He was further influenced by two contemporary thinkers he admired; the military officer José Anastácio de Cunha and the Jesuit rector José Monteiro da Rocha. Bocage openly admitted his joy in reading their verses and how superior they were to his own.

With his teenage years struck by a non-corresponded love, Manuel Bocage’s poetry was much about the tragedy of affection and he endlessly expressed the pain he suffered over love and romance, as well as the sacrifices he made for dames.[1] The city of Lisbon, however, was a political hotbed in the 1770s and this propelled Bocage into also writing about the drastic changes occurring in his society, mainly the big step towards the end of religious persecution and the death penalty.

He joined the Portuguese army as a recruit in 1781, just in time to serve in the Three Years War, until 1783, the end of said conflict. His time in the military also allowed him to study sciences and he began to compose verses. His stay, however, saw little action, as the Metropolitan Army was involved mostly in fortification operations as part of the coastal defense project that characterized the Franco-Portuguese Maritime War. This was still an opportunity to experience for himself the anxiety of the “Nightmare at Sea” from the shore and one of his early texts was about the famous shipwreck of the HMS Miguel, an iconic moment of the conflict.[2]

The shipwreck of HMS Miguel inspired not only paintings, but also the early writings of Bocage​

Com o céu a arder, e noite sem terminação, De velas rasgadas e mastro partido, Cai como uma alma, um espirito perdido, E ‘Miguel’ parte, a esperança feita desolação;[3]​

With a sky burning, and night without termination, Of torn sails and broken mast, Falls like a soul, a broken spirit, And ‘Michael’ departs, hope made desolation,​

This was a period of great fear in the author that a military catastrophe was about to occur and the city would be plunged back into darker ages by reactionaries, so the eventual triumph helped inspire in the author further revolutionary ideas unique to Portugal. After the signing of the treaty of Paris, Bocage joined the Royal Navy School in order to study to become a coast guard, but deciding that his talents did not lie in the military, Bocage deserted the armed forces after finishing his course. Even so he signed up in 1784 as a sea officer to India, where he served in the second Luso-Mysore War. His fame and reputation in Lisbon as a poet continued to rise in the meantime despite his misadventures.[4]

During his travel, his ship passed by Rio de Janeiro, where he fell in love with Brazil and its main city, even dedicating poems to the reigning Vice-Roy, Count Louis of Figueiredo. Bocage identified himself greatly with the jovial happiness in Brazilian music, a stark contrast with what he saw in bleaker Portugal. Propelled by a desire to mimic Camões, however, the poet made sure he got sent right away to India.

Eventually arriving at Panjim in October, he found in the midst of the escalation towards the vicious Second Luso-Mysore War, a conflict that would take place two years later (1786) regarding the status of Portuguese Mangalore, Travancore and the protection of its Catholics from Indian persecution. This presented him social and colonial questions that helped shape his vision about Portuguese society and imperialism, especially regarding the death penalty (the sati tradition, while not a direct death penalty, was used as a major argument against tolerating Hindu religion in detriment of Catholicism).

In opposition, he was also affected by the poverty of the natives, who were subjected to mining work when not being educated in Portuguese to join bureaucracy or the army. The province of Goa challenged his naïve perceptions about the empire, seeing that the present Portuguese were more interested in assimilating or exploiting the Goans than actually uplifting their lives.[5]

Eventually in 1789 he made it to lieutenant in Daman but right after it the poet mysteriously vanished from service to be found a month later in the next stage of his journey, the city of Malacca, where he was severely reprimanded for his actions.[6] Bocage had departed for the recently reconquered port in an attempt to follow through his dream of retracing Camões’ steps as well as leave the poverty of India. Eventually the poet also made it to Macau, his final destination, where he befriended the colony’s Governor Lázaro Ferreira and the negotiator Joaquim de Almeida.

It was in 1790 that Bocage finally returned to Lisbon, around the same time that King Joseph II himself expressed sympathy for France’s transition to a constitutional monarchy while condemning the missteps that were leading to violence, a gesture that endeared the poet to the head of state. The poet began singing against foreign despotism and the fight for liberty, seeing potential in his nation to prove itself worthy of the age of revolutions.[7] It was at this point that he firmly declared himself as Acadian by joining the controversial Nova Arcádia society of poets in 1791 under the shepherd name of Elmano Sadino.

Now Bocage I am not;
To the dark cove;
My estrus ends up unmade in wind;
To the skyes I outraged! My torment;
Light makes me always, the hard land;[8]
- Poem expressing Bocage’s transition of movement in the 1790s​

Satirizing the conservative and reactionary members of society, Bocage involved himself in countless poetic controversies that steeled his art and liberal tendencies. In 1793, however, his sympathy with French ideas began to be challenged when Marie Antoinette was finally guillotined, something that affected most of Portuguese society that, by then, had more or less firmly adopted the abolition of the Death Penalty. It was from this point that his texts firmly detached themselves from the shadow of French radicals and began spearheading the narrative of Portuguese liberals.

In 1796, the Treaty of Ildefonso was signed between France and Spain, beginning an age of fear in Portugal of impending invasion. It was precisely in this period that Bocage’s neoclassicist writing flourished, producing many texts describing not only his personal changes, but also those in Europe in the light of Hellenic ideals of liberty, rationalism and science. He took an odd comfort in the refusal in the country to cede to its neighbor’s pressure to readopt moralist policies and the inquisition, believing more and more that he should stay in Portugal to register what he saw. He worked on translations to earn a wage but also continued to produce poems that circulated in underground communities that would later on greatly affect a new nationalism in the country.

It was clear by 1798 that Bocage was a great poet of his time and a recurrently sharp tongue speaking of modern events. While he was not alone in late 18th century neoclassicist literature, he would certainly become the leading figure in Portuguese memory for the work done in resurrecting the epic interpretation of Camões and adapting it to Mid-Josephine times. In 1797, disenchanted with the struggles Europe faced, he wrote the poem “Reencounter with Minerva” as a personal farewell to aspirations he had in his worth towards Camões’ style.

O céu muda para o Tejo; Outrora inimigos de Baco; Agora inimigos de Marte; Sozinhos na saia de Minerva; Com a luz presa no buraco;[9]​

The sky shifts for the Tagus; Once enemies of Bacchus; Now enemies of Mars; Alone in the skirt of Minerva; With light trapped in the hole;

-Reencounter with Minerva, 1797​

In the poem, Bocage transformed Lusíadas’ mythology to more accurately portray ideas of his time, claiming the adventurers no longer fought against the God of debauchery, but now hides under Minerva’s protection from the threats of Mars. In the starting verse, he referenced four separate mythical figures possible to associate to Camões’ style of epic (the river Tagus and three separate roman Gods) to establish the theme of his poem as a departure from Bocage’s idol’s work, as the rest of Reencounter with Minerva goes on to sing about the volatile nature of Early-Napoleonic/Mid-Josephine times that created great anxiety in Bocage about the fate of his favored ideas (particularly his bohemian and liberal ideas).

He therefore ended this epoch of Joseph II’s realm in another state of transition, but his work would continue on to the early 19th century, which would be his most productive (and provocative) life period.

By 1801, with the Medal War approaching, Bocage was the closest to a radical of liberal and neoclassicist ideas as he ever was. After the end of the conflict, King Joseph awarded him 1st Order of Liberty “Ordem da Liberdade”[10] for contributions to literature and political discourse, something that cemented freedom of speech and the sponsorship of artists as a hallmark of Joseph’s later realm phase. In 1805, however, during the tensest period leading up to the Peninsular War, Bocage was diagnosed with terminal illness. The anxiety in society around him greatly exacerbated the poet’s suffering, who spent his last years regularly visiting the Rossio Square coffee houses, particularly ‘Parras’, which supported the writer with regular donations and became historically remembered for Bocage’s preference. This harsh period was ironically the most productive of Bocage’s life.

Painting: Galveias, ‘Portuense’ and ‘Sequeira’​

The paintings accompanied literature in the steady climb towards the neoclassicist movement. The schism between the Portuguese Catholic Church and Rome caused friction between the thinkers and teachers of Italy and the students seeking to perfect their art, creating a period of difficult promotion of the field in Portugal, but the shifting ideologies, expansion of the science investments and greater political discourse in the nation enabled the generation of painters to grow anyway and make their contribution to the movement.

The two great rising stars in this period were Vieira Portuense, a painter from Oporto, and Domingos Sequeira, the son of a boatman.

Left: Vieira Portuense (1765 – 1805)
Right: Domingos Sequeira (1768 – 1837)​

Both born in the Pombaline Cabinet period to lowborn folk, Vieira and Domingos studied the practice in Lisbon, where the Casa Pia foundation began teaching crafts to impoverished families and earthquake victims. Sequeira in particular studied drawing and figures in the institution itself, and Portuense would go on to do the same after a period learning the practice under his father in Porto. The tense situation between Lisbon and Rome made scholarship for the artists difficult to guarantee and the country at the time directed efforts towards developing its own art teachings, causing both artists’ evolution to suffer, but also diverge from the typical Portuguese high-class painter.

Coming to the rescue of the Portuguese artist community was none other than the ambassador to Rome, João de Almeida Melo e Castro, the count of Galveias.

Count John of Galveias
1756-1814
Aristocrat, Politician and patron of the arts​

With little support from the government, which at the time spent resources capitalizing on the Pombaline Revolution movement and the overseas victories, Count John used a wealth gained in land acquisitions made from his disgraced aristocratic peers to fund the expansion of art schools and patronize talents. Embittered by the treatment received from his colleagues in Italian cities after the worsening of Luso-Papal relations, Count Galveias envisioned reinventing the aesthetic capacity of Lisbon and turn it into an artistic rival of Seville, the nearby Spanish arts center.

The nobility was not the only party interested in jumpstarting the arts, however; the Royal house sought to recover from the Lisbon Earthquake’s tragedy, when John V’s great collection was lost forever, and the Verneyist Church ambitioned to build a great personal capital of great works to further affirm its distinction from Rome. Added to the great tumultuous period of the Three-Years war, conditions were set to dive straight into the transition to neoclassicism.

The two aspiring painters Sequeira and Portuense were steppingstones towards Galveias’ project and became along with many other talents of the time under the wing of the Count, receiving pensions to finance travels to foreign classes where they could immerse themselves in the crossroads of European ideas. Italy, of course, was a stopping point in these studies, but also France, Spain and the German states. To help foment the development of the arts, many of these students were given posts as trainers and teachers, the ultimate objective being the founding of a great academy.

The support received from the institutions and the timing of the events eventually gave fruits and two of Sequeira’s first great works, “Allegory to Casa Pia’s Founding” and “Miracle of Ourique”, was a neoclassicial piece in direct response to his education.

Left: “Alegoria da fundação da Casa Pia de Belém”
Right: “Milagre de Ourique”
By Domingos Sequeira (1793)​

The first work of art became a clear sign of the movement’s presence in Portugal, showing off both an appreciation for Hellenic glorification of national events and a heroic presentation of characters, namely the city of Lisbon and Pina Manique. The second was a mythification of the historical event, over which little exact details on location and events remained, and attempted to cement, also in a heroic fashion, the national and religious gravity of the occurrence in picture. It was an indirect gift to modern clergy and aristocracy that sought to stockpile the celebration of their legacy so as to strengthen their claim to power in Portugal in a style very typical of this age. These two paintings alone showed off how talented Sequeira was and catapulted him to artistic relevance.

His contemporary genius, Portuense, took a different, more abstract direction; more influenced by myths themselves than the objective of mythifying, as well as by the works of Anglo-Swiss artist Angelina Kaufmann, he took Portuguese neo-classicism towards depicting immaterial concepts not necessarily related to the nation. In 1798 he completed his great masterpiece “Leda and the Swan”, depicting Zeus seducing the mortal, which he exhibited in London briefly before bringing to Porto, and in 1800 he finished his “Alegory to Painting”, an oval image in oil of a woman practicing his craft.

Left: “Leda and the Swan”
Right: “Alegory of Painting”
By Vieira Portuense (1798 and 1800)​

The second painting was believed for a while to be of Angelina Kauffman, a founder of the London Royal Arts School, drawing the face of Vieira himself in her own tile, but studiers like Carlos de Passo argued that it was Vieira’s spouse, Maria Fabbri, instead.

Being in its frail rebirth, the arts in Portugal did not have the impact literature had when attempting to express the neo-classical movement; albeit an extremely important dimension of any movement, painting and visual arts in general in Portugal could not compete with more established centers and it suffered from its peripheral position in the continent, unable to adopt different ideas and techniques easily. It was only after 1793, after all, that the first great works began appearing.

This was in great contrast with literature and poetry, with Bocage and his bohemian friends gaining notoriety as early as the 1780s, and architecture, which had been flourishing with the Pombaline style since the 1750s. The “Academia das Belas Artes” that Count Galveias helped develop, in fact, was parodied to be a greater work of art than the works held within.

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[1] IOTL a factor that further influenced him was the presence of Inquisition and Pina Manique’s strict rules, which made the ambience in Lisbon suffocating for him. ITTL the Inquisition was banned.
[2] IOTL endnote; the war obviously did not occur so said writings don’t exist.
[3] IOTL, this is fabricated from scratch by Thrudgelmir2333 based on some of his real writings later on.
[4] IOTL, this trip and its events occurred in 1786.
[5] iOTL, he spoke of Goa’s decadence. Here his attention was more caught on the ITTL limitations of the province.
[6] iOTL, he was caught only in Macau.
[7] iOTL, he sang against domestic despotism.
[8] This poem is canonical, BUT, the interpretation of it is slightly improvised by Thrudgelmir2333.
[9] IOTL, this is fabricated from scratch by Thrudgelmir2333 based on some of his real writings later on.
[10] IOTL this order was only created in 1976 after the restoration of democracy, her iTTL the creation of the order was very much in keeping with King Joseph II vision and desire to provide liberties and democracy to Portugal and all Portuguese.

As we continue to highlight the changes in Portuguese society we wanted to showcase the new Lusitanian Neoclassic art that would go on to define Portuguese arts for generations to come. Of importance is that at this time many of Portugal's greatest historical events were either for first time etched on to canvas or supplanted previous efforts and students such I would forever associate these paintings as best illustrations of the events. Questions/ Comments???

Next post called the The 1780 Proto-Economic Theories will be posted on June 25. Obrigado.

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)​

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

Struggling Capitalism, Technocracy & Neoclassicism ( 4 of 4)​

Sculpture: Castro, Vilaça & Aguiar​

Naturally, following closely behind art in the neoclassicist movement, sculptors sought to develop Portuguese construction of beautiful statues and marble pieces. The two main figures of neoclassicist sculpting in Portugal were Joaquim Machado de Castro and José de Santo António Vilaça.

Joaquim Machado de Castro
1731-1822
Master Sculptor​

Born in Coimbra, Joaquim was responsible for a number of studies made on already existing works early on in his career, over which he became a celebrated figure throughout Europe. His most famous creation to the layman was obviously the equestrian statue of Joseph I the Reformer in Lisbon, at the Commerce Plaza, which was at the time becoming an icon of the Pombaline ‘Baixa’, but he also went to great lengths to document the construction phases for posterity. Beloved at home and abroad, Joaquim Castro furthered this dimension of neoclassicism in the country, to the point that one of the most important art museums in Portugal was eventually built and named after him in his hometown of Coimbra in 1831.

A major architecture and sculpture museum in Coimbra was founded and named after Castro

The second figure, José de Santo António de Vilaça, was born in Braga and focused his work more on churches and religious figures at the dioceses. His vast production of sculpted art began in 1758 at a monastery and he was a disciple of André Soares, a Baroque Arquitecture figure who would pass away in 1762. While initially enamored with the Benedict Order’s interests in sculpture, Vilaça developed a string of neoclassicist productions in the 1780s following the Verneyst uprising, which he philosophically agreed with.

Finally, João José de Aguiar probably went the furthest in the country in exploring the beauty of neoclassicist sculpture. Born in Belas, Aguiar was considered the finest sculptor of his age. While his work on ‘Joseph II’ was his most famous statue, his “Virtues” series, where he constructed statues of figures like Providence, was nationally celebrated by his most passionate representation of the love for the Greek and Roman classics.

The ‘Virtues’
Figures like ‘Providence’ were built by the master sculptor Aguiar and brought great wealth to Portuguese art​

Architecture: ‘Costa e Silva’ & Carr​

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Architecture was perhaps the greatest expression of Neoclassicism in Portugal, and it mostly had the Lisbon Earthquake to thank for it; the Pombaline style spreading throughout the country was a result of studies done in tectonic shaking’s effects on buildings and streets, which impulsed the grid fashion into urban centers. Coupled with Mediterranean influences and a legacy proper to the country’s context, neoclassicist architecture flourished in metropolitan Portugal and recently colonized settlements in Brazil and Goa.

The first big expression of neoclassicist architecture had actually been imported to Lisbon directly from Italy in 1742, when the Chapel of St. John the Baptist was brought in by Bologne-educated ‘José Costa e Silva”.

José da Costa e Silva
1747-1819
Neoclassicist architect​

Born in Vila Franca (de Xira) in 1747, Joseph studied in Bologna, Italy, under patronage of deceased King Joseph I, the Reformer, who held a passion for opera and theater buildings inherited from John V. Accompanied by the likes of João Brunelli, Joseph studied architecture, geometry, arithmetic, mechanics and hydrostatics in order to perfect the scientific base of his knowledge. While in Italy he kept contacts in Portugal and in 1768 he returned to Lisbon at the invitation of several members of the Chamber of Commerce and was commissioned to design the Teatro Nacional do Tejo (National Theatre of Tagus).[1]

In 1770 he returned back to Italy where he was named Honorable Academic at the Academy in 1775 and he travelled all over the Italian peninsula, including the Pompeii ruins that initially inspired the neoclassicist movement on such a widespread scale.

He finally returned to Lisbon in 1782, with the grandson of his patron, Joseph II, already in power, and was employed mostly in projecting new buildings in urban expansions throughout the country. From 1785 onward, Joseph took part in grander projects, helping the renovation of the headquarters of important institutions like the Chambers of Commerce, the Mint and eventually the new wings of the Royal Palace itself, Ajuda. He would in 1792 complete the first great privately invested project of his career, the construction of the National Royal Museum in Aveiro.

National Royal Museum in Aveiro, built by ‘Costa e Silva’​

Revealing the influences of the artistic movement as well as of similar theaters in Naples and Milan, the national theater’s reconstruction was just as important to the capital’s arts as the completion of the Royal Palace was to King Joseph’s authority, furthering the belief that architecture was the primary expression of Portuguese neoclassicism. The Royal Palace of Ajuda itself would benefit from this movement, being started by Royal Architect Manuel de Sousa, but finished by Costa e Silva and Francisco Fabri using the heroic presentation of neoclassicism to glorify the Bragança household in an age of re-establishment of the status quo. It effectively helped cement the Josephine era, especially as the Napoleonic Age unfolded.

Indeed, this period helped attract many engineers and architects from abroad to contribute to Lusitanian Neoclassicist architecture. It was for this and many other reasons that architecture became the apex dimension of neoclassicism in this particular country; it was the only one internationally recognized as an artistic heavyweight in a continent filled with aesthetic titans like France and Italy.

A great foreign architect attracted by this development in Portuguese neoclassicism was John Carr.

John Carr
1723 – 1807
English Architect​

Born in Horbury, Wakefield, John Carr was the eldest of nine children of an English master mason. His career began in 1748 and his first contact with Portugal was in partially starting the construction of the Hospital of Saint Anthony in Oporto in 1770. This was due to Carr’s belief that London lacked patronage for new coming architects at the time and therefore he mostly based himself in Yorkshire and took several jobs, at home and abroad.

His personal quirks at work usually hindered his projects, though; Carr was thrifty with payments and kept the staff to a minimum to maximize personal profits, causing him to rarely delegate tasks and matters and force him to travel on horseback to meet clients and personally build contacts. His career, though, eventually propelled him to become Lord Mayor of York between 1770 and 1785, the bulk of the early Josephine period.

John specialized in creating foundations for economic sustainability for his buildings in long term, instead of aesthetic development, something the clients thanked him for. His commissions bordered on urban planning, involving mostly model villages, bridges, churches, gateways, garden temples and other contributions to estates. His most proud creation back in England was the Buxton Crescent in Derbyshire, an early example of multifunctional architecture.

This skill in sound foundation stemmed mostly from his background in stonemasonry and the use of Paladdian and Rococo styles in his works helped construct his aesthetic signature. Still, after 1785, John Carr was attracted back to Portugal due to decreasing demand for his projects in England and a boom in architectural investments occurring in Oporto. This allowed him to resume his work on St. Anthony Hospital, allowing it reach functionality in 1790.

Royal Hospital of St. Anthony in Oporto​

The hospital is an architectural landmark due to being considered, even at the time, the most Palladian building in Portugal, featuring sober symmetry that reflected empiricism defended by Pombalists and resembling a temple of antiquity. It integrated well into the growing neoclassicism in the country by featuring many characteristics brought from the Italian-born style that appealed to those fascinated by Hellenisms. John Carr continued to work for the Portuguese cities for only five more years, drafting new churches and hospitals for minorities now experiencing a revivalism under Joseph II’s protection laws. The protestant communities like Scottish expats from earlier wars benefitted the most from his contributions, building either new churches or renovating Catholic temples to a more northern style.

But the short stay still left Carr’s mark in Portuguese neoclassicist architecture by introducing major buildings that broke away from Mediterranean trends. His works were often identifiable due to resembling ‘English churches and houses’ on the eye of the urban beholder used to typical Portuguese buildings designed for warm weather.

The overall importance was therefore vast for this period; architecture has the particularly of expressing art in regular life in a more direct manner, being out in the open instead of inside a museum or an impoverished writer’s notes. It’s a direct product of what is affecting society, regardless of sensitivies. It therefore influenced national mentality the most, shaping the Lusitanist fad to more fiercely adopt the Germanic and Anglican ideas that preceded it.

The result of Portuguese neoclassicism being so stimulated was that political ideology also developed faster, shaping national mentality and commitment to war in the defense of ideals of the entire mid and late Josephine eras. One of the most important factors that would affect conflicts from 1800 onward in the country was the stark individualism that became clear in events like the Battle of Abenrey, in itself a major event. Lusitanian Neoclassicism, much like any other artistic movement, was a passing fad and would be replaced by realism in the 1820s and 1830s, but while it lasted it shaped political reforms, decision making and national mobilization and therefore cannot be understated in importance.

The History of Art: ‘Machado’​

Finally, cementing this idea of great impact of neoclassicism in Portuguese art, there is the sculptor Cyrillo Valkmor Machado to speak of.

Cyrillo Valkmor Machado
Sculptor, Architect, Art Historian and Painter
1748-1823​

Born in Lisbon, Machado was a person who honored his generation of artists in many ways. He studied in Rome before returning to Portugal and tried to create a painting academy dedicated to depicting nudity, known as the ‘Academia do Nú’ (por. Academy of the Nude), but he also had artistic contributions of his own, including church, palace and mansion panels and ceilings. He also took part in modeling the National Palace of Ajuda, where the King currently resided, and was regularly consulted in the palace’s inner art. He was also responsible for the statue of King Sebastian II in Alcácer-Quivir, built after the Redemption War.

Machado excelled in various arts, from painting, to architecture to sculpture, putting him in a unique position to become a great erudite of Portuguese arts.​

But more importantly, Machado was a recorder of the birth of Portuguese Neoclassicism. Early on he gathered an extensive collection of memories of painters, sculptors and architects in Portugal, which were published posthumously, a work so without peer at the time that the editor wrote an extensive note honoring its importance. This was because it allowed Portuguese society to cement its reattachment to the arts, particularly the new classicism, and use it as a basis to embark on new eras of culture.

Volkmar reached such renown with his contributions to this era of Portuguese art that he was referenced in Prussian letters about the subject.

Said work also gave birth to the practice in Portugal of studying the history of art more closely, and therefore rely less on outside influence for more creativity. While not a leader of his generation, Volkmar was perhaps the most important member in a subtler way, as without his deep understanding of his peers and desire to express it, Lusitanian Neoclassicism would likely have not had as deep an impact.

The Challenges of the Age​

“More and more our national enclosure is a small wooden boat in a swelling political storm. Soon there will be no more space for water and cargo. Decisions must be made.”
Thomas Aloysius Finlay – Portuguese Irish philosopher, historian and Portuguese Catholic Bishop​

It was important to consider the new concerns the elites faced in the country regarding the new geo-political realities and the winds of change. Both America and Europe faced an era of revolutions; not only had the United States broken free from the top maritime power in the world, ending the belief that European naval might had guaranteed control over their colonies, but France was currently embroiled in rising civil unrest, with the conservative class struggling to rein into submission an ever more unsatisfied population.

Portugal in particular faced a series of interesting challenges within its own premises:

• The solidification of its own revolutionary agenda, mainly the fight against slavery and the death penalty;
• Keeping the industrialization and economic dynamism afloat while paying off the debts of major Pombaline cabinet investments;
• The development of Verneyism, the national cult;
• The continuation of imperial ambitions and defense of its colonies, mainly expansion into India;
• The relationship with its newest ally, the Dutch state;
• The handling of the current diplomatic crisis with Spain regarding the diplomat incarcerated in Madrid over the death of Spanish dignitaries in Lisbon during the OOC Conspiracy outbreak;

Overall, it faced the following problems surpassing its limits:

• The industrial resource problem, namely the lack of clean coal to fuel machinery development;
• The projection of power during a time when Spain, France, England and Prussia wished to settle accounts between themselves to the detriment of minor powers around them;
• The instability of Portuguese alliances, particularly the Luso-Dutch alliance in the context of growing Patriot resentment in Amsterdam;
• The shifting nature of Brazil;

In a sense, despite its progress, the metropolis was growing increasingly isolated. It had severed ties with Rome, with Spain, with France, with any chance of Moroccan reconciliation and finally with British protectionism, all in one way or another, in other to pursue its own path of rationalization. The writer Francisco José de Oliveira, colloquially known as the ‘Knight of Oliveira”, an “estrangeirado” who passed away in 1783 and was particularly enamored with underappreciated cultural virtues, had commented that “the Portuguese state should pursuit a double conjugated policy of Europeism and Lusophoneism, both at times passive and at times active, to live out its role as the gateway between a tumultuous Old World and an erupting New World”. This spoke against an earlier mentality that was completely focused on exploiting colonial resources and neglecting metropolitan industrialization, but also in favor of developing a more sophisticated political dualism.

The year of 1783 presented the opportunity to such development, but the weight of the Brazilian colonial problem threatened to sink the empire’s attention and resources. Looking at the American example, disgruntled settlers sought to foment Brazilian independence, while the motherland attempted to inspire them to pursue the Canadian path of mutual benefits. It seemed undeniable that further decentralization was needed to prevent a major colonial catastrophe.

One measure that had done wonders was working towards involving Brazil in Portuguese investments, namely its colonies. The eastern-coast string of Brazil’s cities, which formed the backbone of the supercolony, were in 1783 doing active commerce with their twins in Africa’s western coast and their distant cousins in Asia. Were it not for the diagonal transit crossing towards India from other powers, the South Atlantic would be a sea region of almost exclusive Luso-Brazilian horizontal commerce. Moreover Cisplatina had been a major appeasement contest and had made Brazil interested in pursuing commerce towards the southern lanes, not just the La Plata river itself. Brazil was also interested in participating in the Nova Zelândia colonization, which progressed rather slowly but surely.

However, without new major expansions it was unlikely that colonial resentment could be settled. Minister Castro believed it was possible to make Brazilians feel proud members of the Lusophone world by properly feeding their own ambitions (drawing mostly from the theory that American resentment stemmed from the concessions made to British Quebec to appease French colonists). The expedition of Alexandre Ferreira along the ‘La Plata-Amazon’ fluvial path laid the groundwork for the next major colonial race in South America, over which the Portuguese intended to have superiority. The acquisition of Malacca had also stabilized incursions to the Far East and Terra Australis from the Indic lane, opening new highways.

It was therefore time to organize the government, but right as the period started, a nearby conflict already drew Portuguese attention.

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[1] See King and Country 1777 – Legacy of the Reformer – Cultural Contribution.

As we continue to highlight the changes in Portuguese society we continue with the some of the major figures in the 1780s and beyond remaking the country and showcasing the empire's wealth and strength in arts and architecture. Majority of these items were built in Portugal but at much later period. Here new wealth and desire to showcase it has accelerated these project decades in some cases. Questions/ Comments???

Next post called the Portugal & The Patriottentijd (1784-1787) will be posted on July 31. Obrigado.

 

[Lusitania]

Growth of the Empire (1783-1799)

The Mid Josephine Era (1783 to 1799)​

Portugal & The Patriottentijd (1784-1787) (1 of 2)​

“We have committed a great hypocrisy, seeking to intrude in the domestic affairs of Holland, but it’s likely, however, that the alliance would have ended before it could have drawn its first breath otherwise.”
-Diplomat José Correia da Serra​

The Netherlands were the newest ally of Portugal, according to the provisions of the 1783 Paris Treaty, and this friendship was tense, being the result of an unfavorable stalemate result of the conflicts lost to Lisbon in the South East Asian seas and the Portuguese offer to safeguard Dutch interests in South Africa against the British. The benefits of the alliance were promising, however; albeit not what it used to be, the Dutch Navy was formidable and professional enough to operate independently of the integrity of the Dutch mainland, meaning they were stout sea allies to the Portuguese against British and French power. With a demarcated control more or less achieved in their common spheres of influence overseas, it benefitted Amsterdam to be able to count on Portuguese naval cooperation to help protect Dutch India, Dutch Africa and even Suriname.

Setting​

But while this ‘Little Coalition’ seemed to be forming, it did not mean that fervent Dutch citizens appreciated the results of the war; the empire lost much of its political territory, its power projection got cut down harshly and the writing on the wall spelled pretty clearly that their Golden Age was over. The Orangists in power, therefore, came under political assault and their leader, Prince William V of Orange, became the target of national grievance.

Prince William V of Orange
Stadtholter of the Dutch Republic, leader of the pro-monarchic (Orangist) party
The failures of the Three-Years War made him the enemy of many patriots​

The source of the chaos preceded the treaty itself, however; already in 1781, the Patriot Joan Derk Van Der Capellen anonymously published the pamphlet “To the people of the Netherlands” in which he called upon the people to raise weapons and form civic militias (à laUSA and Sweden) so as to form an armed resistance against the Orangist policies. These bodies increased in number and size throughout the country along with new Patriot political clubs and as the situation overseas worsened, the more acerbated the population became against perceived government incompetence.

It did not help that William was a rather weak leadership figure; the Prussian envoy Phillipe Charles, count of Alvensleben, was in Holland from 1787 onward and eventually described William as ‘theoretical in rule, away from practical work and with a tendency to swamp conversations about public affairs while being indecisive about every subject’. The Count of Barca, who represented the Portuguese at the signing of the Luso-Dutch Alliance, also confessed to Queen Charlotte, another important figure in it, that “it was preferable if we dealt exclusively with their representatives, and not the stadtholder himself.”

The economy had also been in dire straits; while the GDP remained relatively stable till 1780, it got cut rather dramatically with the collapse of power in eastern seas of Indonesia, ruining the Dutch monopoly over its products, and the domestic fishing and industry sectors suffered direct, absolute declines. Moreover, the 18th century saw a period of de-industrialization and de-urbanization beginning to occur, contributing to the added bad news that their population remained stale at a time where most of Europe (including Portugal) was booming in numbers. Poverty increased and radicalized the population despite the banks thriving in Amsterdam, causing skepticism to grow very strongly by 1776.

Said skepticism was also present in the head of state, but more so towards republicans. When receiving news of the American Proclamation of Independence, the Stadtholder himself described it as a “poor parody of our declaration against Phillip II”. The inherent analogy, however, still planted the seed of advancing republicanism in Dutch minds as a potential solution for their problems. Said seeds faced a series of growth challenges, namely the interests of the British in supporting the Orangists and the royal marriage between William V and Wilhelmina, making Prussia a royalist ally.

However, these were still thriving circumstances for lack of satisfaction with the political system, but it was only after 1785 did the Patriots harness enough strength to go against him, taking away power in cities and eventually managing to push reforms to replace the old “regenten” co-option system with a more democratic model with elected representatives. The result was a domino effect in which their effective representation increased dramatically and eventually Holland, Groningen and Utrecht all had Patriot governors in the States General, the final consequence being of William V losing control of most of the Dutch States Army.

Foreign Intervention​

The situation was followed closely by all neighbors and otherwise foreign interested parties. Representing Portuguese naval interests at the time in the area was Admiral Bernardo Esquivel, a veteran from the dreaded Luso-French Maritime War.

Admiral Bernardo Esquivel
Commander of Portugal’s North Atlantic sea forces
Viscount of Estremoz (non-her.)​

Admiral Esquivel had been amicably stationed in Amsterdam since the signing of the new peace treaty with Holland. The objective had been to safeguard the formal transition of courtesies and cooperation pacts involved in an alliance as recent and unexpected as the Luso-Dutch treaty. While holding no sway among the Dutch themselves, he was for all intents the top representative of Lisbon in all matters involving the Paris Treaty in Holland. With the country being at the center of a lot of Great Power intrigue, especially as Republicanism grew in nearby France, the Dutch King had to turn to his royalist foreign allies, mainly the British but also now the Portuguese. Anglo-Dutch relationships, however, were now scalded by the recent events of the American Revolutionary War, the 4th Anglo-Dutch War and the Three-Years War, where Amsterdam supported the American uprising and London repeatedly attacked and seized Dutch colonies.

While the Portuguese were complicit in the partition of Dutch India, Africa and Indonesia, they had also turned out to be unexpected friends in protecting their colonists in said takeovers, especially in Kaapstad, which was now under British administration, and in securing the transition of the Dutch capital in the Indian Subcontinent to nearby Colombo, in Ceylon. They were a far lesser threat than the British and more willing to meet the Dutch Royalists half-way, and Admiral Esquivel, seeing tensions rise in Holland very quickly, had repeatedly assured William V that he was there to further Dutch interests to the best of his ability.

In the meantime, he attempted to further the establishment of a stronger diplomatic presence in The Hague. To oversee the first year of this, he picked Ambassador José Francisco Correia da Serra, a relatively young co-founder of the Lisbon Academy of Science. It was a choice of fancy, as, while Serra was no stranger to diplomacy, he was far better known for his paleontological and botanical contributions, something Esquivel hoped would endear his party to the Dutch Royalists. Here, Ambassador Serra met his British counterpart to The Hague, Sir Francis Harry, a man convinced that the French conspired everywhere.

José Correia da Serra & Sir James Harris
The two ambassadors formed the representation of the Royalists’ foreign allies at The Hague​

Sir James’ fears, which he shared with Correia da Serra, were not entirely unfounded; the French took great comfort in the ineptitude of the Dutch Stadtholder and there seemed to be some movement from their part to ally themselves with the Patriot movement as a way to supplement their growing friendship with some segments of Dutch society. The British Secret Service, in particular, which backed James Harris, suspected that a Dutch agent named Gerard Brantsen, a Patriot who had helped secure peace for the Anglo-Dutch War and even honored French Admiral Saint Tropez for his services to Holland, would soon formalize a deal. This shadowy republican coalition was seen with great fear by the Royalists and their allies, who attempted to manipulate William V to assert his rights.

Without the Royalists in power, it was likely the Luso-Dutch alliance would die before it could ever bear fruit, so, with the assistance of the PRP and SIMP, Correia da Serra and Esquivel concluded that their objective was to make sure William V either held on to total power or remained a legitimate figurehead over the Dutch Navy and its colonies. Intervention in Dutch affairs from Portuguese agents, therefore, became unavoidable.

Supporting the Royalists & Growing Fusion of PRP and SIMP​

The task of influencing the intricacies of Dutch politics was a challenge to the SIMP’s limited offensive capacities, especially. The diplomatic ties were still fresh, unlike with British possessions, and unlike with the growing friendship with North German states, Portugal had a history of grievances with the Netherlands which included the extremely recent Three-Years War. In order to pool their resources, the PRP, the SIMP and the diplomatic embassies began pooling their efforts and, notoriously, began to occupy a pension in the beach town of Estoril, just west of Lisbon.

A simple pension in Estoril became historically associated with the growing fusion between the secret defense service department and the demographic resettlement office​

To supplement these efforts, Ambassador Correia da Serra, along with Francis Harry, began conspiring in conjunction with Prussia, namely the minister Johan von Goertz. Unfortunately, Frederick the Great did not wish at the time to embitter relations with France so soon and Prussia at first attempted to mediate the conflict together with France, not to mention the situation south of Portugal, in Morocco, unexpectedly began to require the attention of Admiral Esquivel. With the decrease of naval presence in Amsterdam being forecast, Correia da Serra understood he would have to adopt a new strategy, one which he believed would pass in securing the support of the Dutch Navy.

Admiral Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen
1735-1819​

Jan Hendrik van Kinsbergen, also known as the Count of Doggersbank, was a Dutch lieautenant-admiral who had recently, in 1781, obtained heroic status fighting the Royal Navy in the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War. His only contact with the Portuguese at this point had been in 1770 when, as a captain, he got stuck on the rocks of the Cape Verde island of Boa Vista, the first of a few embarrassing accidents in his early career. The difficulties the Netherlands faced in the 1760s pushed him down, like many others, to careers in the merchant fleet and writing naval theory papers, but his contacts earned him temporary service under the Russian navy, for which he fought against the Ottomans. This eventually allowed him to not only become the first Western European to charter the Masmara sea, but also to score the first Christian victory in the Black Sea in four centuries, earning him the nickname “Hero of the Black Sea”.

While Jan eventually returned to the Low Countries, for which he would score the victory over the English at Dogger’s Bank in 1781 that earned him his medal and title, to the point Stadtholder William made him his privileged Admiral-General, Jan’s career became strained. Blamed by the failure of the Brest Affair and with the Dutch naval policy constantly criticized, Jan repeatedly considered leaving for Russia again, but William convinced him time and time again to remain. His political status made him an enemy of the Patriots during this crisis, though, which combined with the rest said about him made Jan the perfect target for Correia.

Ambassador Correia began swaying Admiral-General Jan towards forming a stronger naval coalition with Portugal, citing the new alliance and predicting William would eventually sanction it. Sensing that Jan was against William’s conversations with Sir James Harry for numerous reasons, Correia was able to convince him that they should ally forces to influence the Stadtholder more positively away from English influence. While Jan was initially hesitant towards this idea, events would conspire to sway him towards it.

In 1784, however, tragedy struck when Portugal had to go to war with Morocco once more. Barely out of the Three-Years War, the state now had to divert resources and agents towards supporting the classified Operation Hercules, which would be paramount to the conflict’s success, and Ambassador Correia was one of many summoned back to Lisbon to help speed said resolution. The Portuguese Navy in particular was called en masse to be part of the war, virtually emptying the Netherlands of Lusitanian agents. Admiral Jan also departed in the same year to the Mediterranean to investigate suspicions of a possible attack from Venice, leaving William completely isolated from Lusitanian influence.

This gave Sir James Harry freedom to act unabated towards influencing the Stadtholder for nearly two years, something the Portuguese would have to endure in the meantime.

During the Admiral’s absence, a case began piling up against Jan that he was responsible for the collapse of negotiations during the Brest affair of the Fourth Anglo-Dutch War to form an anti-English naval coalition. The accusations embittered Jan so much that he attempted to resign from servicing the Dutch navy, but William insisted for him to remain, but In 1785, the following year, William left The Hague and removed his court to Het Loo Palace in Gelderland, a province remote from the political center, a move that was interpreted by many as a set up for tensions with the Patriots to climax.

It was in February of 1786 that, coincidentally, the war between Portugal and Morocco ended with the fabled Treaty of Tangiers and Correia da Serra returned to Amsterdam with a very bolstered diplomatic reputation at the same time Jan’s squadron also arrived from the Mediterranean. This restarted the race for influence in the Netherlands, but Sir James Henry had too much of an advantage over the Portuguese at this point and Stadtholter William was ready to fully antagonize the Patriots; in September of 1786, he sent States-Army troops to Hattem and Elburg to overthrow the cities' Patriot ‘vroedschap’, despite the defense by Patriot Free Corps, organized by Herman Willem Daendels.

This belligerence from William provoked the states under Patriot influence and they began depriving Orangists of offices in the army in retaliation. The Stadtholter himself was fired by the States of Holland from the role of Captain-General of their troops, putting William at odds with a central chunk of his own people. An open conflict now looked unavoidable and Jan’s faith in William was irreparably shaken, but the worst was yet to come for him.

We are not dead, today we post the first part of the Dutch civil war and Portuguese intervention. We would like to thank “Martynios” for beta-reading the Dutch Patriot Crisis. Questions/ Comments???

Next post conclusion of the Portugal & The Patriottentijd (1784-1787) will be posted on June 30. Obrigado.