Coimbra University

   Portugal's oldest and once its most prestigious university. As one of Europe's oldest seats of learning, the University of Coimbra and its various roles have a historic importance that supersedes merely the educational. For centuries, the university formed and trained the principal elites and professions that dominated Portugal. For more than a century, certain members of its faculty entered the central government in Lisbon. A few, such as law professor Afonso Costa, mathematics instructor Sidônio Pais, anthropology professor Bernardino Machado, and economics professor Antônio de Oliveira Salazar, became prime ministers and presidents of the republic. In such a small country, with relatively few universities until recently, Portugal counted Coimbra's university as the educational cradle of its leaders and knew its academic traditions as an intimate part of national life.

   Established in 1290 by King Dinis, the university first opened in Lisbon but was moved to Coimbra in 1308, and there it remained. University buildings were placed high on a hill, in a position that

   physically dominates Portugal's third city. While sections of the medieval university buildings are present, much of what today remains of the old University of Coimbra dates from the Manueline era (1495-1521) and the 17th and 18th centuries. The main administration building along the so-called Via Latina is baroque, in the style of the 17th and 18th centuries. Most prominent among buildings adjacent to the central core structures are the Chapel of São Miguel, built in the 17th century, and the magnificent University Library, of the era of wealthy King João V, built between 1717 and 1723. Created entirely by Portuguese artists and architects, the library is unique among historic monuments in Portugal. Its rare book collection, a monument in itself, is complemented by exquisite gilt wood decorations and beautiful doors, windows, and furniture. Among visitors and tourists, the chapel and library are the prime attractions to this day.

   The University underwent important reforms under the Pombaline administration (1750-77). Efforts to strengthen Coimbra's position in advanced learning and teaching by means of a new curriculum, including new courses in new fields and new degrees and colleges (in Portugal, major university divisions are usually called "faculties") often met strong resistance. In the Age of the Discoveries, efforts were made to introduce the useful study of mathematics, which was part of astronomy in that day, and to move beyond traditional medieval study only of theology, canon law, civil law, and medicine. Regarding even the advanced work of the Portuguese astronomer and mathematician Pedro Nunes, however, Coimbra University was lamentably slow in introducing mathematics or a school of arts and general studies. After some earlier efforts, the 1772 Pombaline Statutes, the core of the Pombaline reforms at Coimbra, had an impact that lasted more than a century. These reforms remained in effect to the end of the monarchy, when, in 1911, the First Republic instituted changes that stressed the secularization of learning. This included the abolition of the Faculty of Theology.

   Elaborate, ancient traditions and customs inform the faculty and student body of Coimbra University. Tradition flourishes, although some customs are more popular than others. Instead of residing in common residences or dormitories as in other countries, in Coimbra until recently students lived in the city in "Republics," private houses with domestic help hired by the students. Students wore typical black academic gowns. Efforts during the Revolution of 25 April 1974 and aftermath to abolish the wearing of the gowns, a powerful student image symbol, met resistance and generated controversy. In romantic Coimbra tradition, students with guitars sang characteristic songs, including Coimbra fado, a more cheerful song than Lisbon fado, and serenaded other students at special locations. Tradition also decreed that at graduation graduates wore their gowns but burned their school (or college or subject) ribbons ( fitas), an important ceremonial rite of passage.

   The University of Coimbra, while it underwent a revival in the 1980s and 1990s, no longer has a virtual monopoly over higher education in Portugal. By 1970, for example, the country had only four public and one private university, and the University of Lisbon had become more significant than ancient Coimbra. At present, diversity in higher education is even more pronounced: 12 private universities and 14 autonomous public universities are listed, not only in Lisbon and Oporto, but at provincial locations. Still, Coimbra retains an influence as the senior university, some of whose graduates still enter national government and distinguished themselves in various professions.

   An important student concern at all institutions of higher learning, and one that marked the last half of the 1990s and continued into the next century, was the question of increased student fees and tuition payments (in Portuguese, propinas). Due to the expansion of the national universities in function as well as in the size of student bodies, national budget constraints, and the rising cost of education, the central government began to increase student fees. The student movement protested this change by means of various tactics, including student strikes, boycotts, and demonstrations. At the same time, a growing number of private universities began to attract larger numbers of students who could afford the higher fees in private institutions, but who had been denied places in the increasingly competitive and pressured public universities.

   Located on the north bank of the Mondego River, in what was the Beira Litoral province on old maps. Now capital of Coimbra district, Coimbra is a city of about 60,000 people and is Portugal's third largest, after Lisbon and Oporto. It is also the site of one of Portugal's most important and most ancient universities, the University of Coimbra. Coimbra lies on the Lisbon-Oporto highway and, during much of the Reconquest era (ca. 850-1250), was on the southern edge of the emerging kingdom of Portugal. Coimbra was the capital of Portugal from 1139 to 1385, and six kings were born in the city. It takes its name from the Roman town of Conimbriga, which is nearby.

(1889-1970)

   The Coimbra University professor of finance and economics and one of the founders of the Estado Novo, who came to dominate Western Europe's longest surviving authoritarian system. Salazar was born on 28 April 1889, in Vimieiro, Beira Alta province, the son of a peasant estate manager and a shopkeeper. Most of his first 39 years were spent as a student, and later as a teacher in a secondary school and a professor at Coimbra University's law school. Nine formative years were spent at Viseu's Catholic Seminary (1900-09), preparing for the Catholic priesthood, but the serious, studious Salazar decided to enter Coimbra University instead in 1910, the year the Braganza monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the First Republic. Salazar received some of the highest marks of his generation of students and, in 1918, was awarded a doctoral degree in finance and economics. Pleading inexperience, Salazar rejected an invitation in August 1918 to become finance minister in the "New Republic" government of President Sidónio Pais.

   As a celebrated academic who was deeply involved in Coimbra University politics, publishing works on the troubled finances of the besieged First Republic, and a leader of Catholic organizations, Sala-zar was not as modest, reclusive, or unknown as later official propaganda led the public to believe. In 1921, as a Catholic deputy, he briefly served in the First Republic's turbulent congress (parliament) but resigned shortly after witnessing but one stormy session. Salazar taught at Coimbra University as of 1916, and continued teaching until April 1928. When the military overthrew the First Republic in May 1926, Salazar was offered the Ministry of Finance and held office for several days. The ascetic academic, however, resigned his post when he discovered the degree of disorder in Lisbon's government and when his demands for budget authority were rejected.

   As the military dictatorship failed to reform finances in the following years, Salazar was reinvited to become minister of finances in April 1928. Since his conditions for acceptance—authority over all budget expenditures, among other powers—were accepted, Salazar entered the government. Using the Ministry of Finance as a power base, following several years of successful financial reforms, Salazar was named interim minister of colonies (1930) and soon garnered sufficient prestige and authority to become head of the entire government. In July 1932, Salazar was named prime minister, the first civilian to hold that post since the 1926 military coup.

   Salazar gathered around him a team of largely academic experts in the cabinet during the period 1930-33. His government featured several key policies: Portuguese nationalism, colonialism (rebuilding an empire in shambles), Catholicism, and conservative fiscal management. Salazar's government came to be called the Estado Novo. It went through three basic phases during Salazar's long tenure in office, and Salazar's role underwent changes as well. In the early years (1928-44), Salazar and the Estado Novo enjoyed greater vigor and popularity than later. During the middle years (1944—58), the regime's popularity waned, methods of repression increased and hardened, and Salazar grew more dogmatic in his policies and ways. During the late years (1958-68), the regime experienced its most serious colonial problems, ruling circles—including Salazar—aged and increasingly failed, and opposition burgeoned and grew bolder.

   Salazar's plans for stabilizing the economy and strengthening social and financial programs were shaken with the impact of the civil war (1936-39) in neighboring Spain. Salazar strongly supported General Francisco Franco's Nationalist rebels, the eventual victors in the war. But, as the civil war ended and World War II began in September 1939, Salazar's domestic plans had to be adjusted. As Salazar came to monopolize Lisbon's power and authority—indeed to embody the Estado Novo itself—during crises that threatened the future of the regime, he assumed ever more key cabinet posts. At various times between 1936 and 1944, he took over the Ministries of Foreign Affairs and of War (Defense), until the crises passed. At the end of the exhausting period of World War II, there were rumors that the former professor would resign from government and return to Coimbra University, but Salazar continued as the increasingly isolated, dominating "recluse of São Bento," that part of the parliament's buildings housing the prime minister's offices and residence.

   Salazar dominated the Estado Novo's government in several ways: in day-to-day governance, although this diminished as he delegated wider powers to others after 1944, and in long-range policy decisions, as well as in the spirit and image of the system. He also launched and dominated the single party, the União Nacional. A lifelong bachelor who had once stated that he could not leave for Lisbon because he had to care for his aged mother, Salazar never married, but lived with a beloved housekeeper from his Coimbra years and two adopted daughters. During his 36-year tenure as prime minister, Salazar engineered the important cabinet reshuffles that reflect the history of the Estado Novo and of Portugal.

   A number of times, in connection with significant events, Salazar decided on important cabinet officer changes: 11 April 1933 (the adoption of the Estado Novo's new 1933 Constitution); 18 January 1936 (the approach of civil war in Spain and the growing threat of international intervention in Iberian affairs during the unstable Second Spanish Republic of 1931-36); 4 September 1944 (the Allied invasion of Europe at Normandy and the increasing likelihood of a defeat of the Fascists by the Allies, which included the Soviet Union); 14 August 1958 (increased domestic dissent and opposition following the May-June 1958 presidential elections in which oppositionist and former regime stalwart-loyalist General Humberto Delgado garnered at least 25 percent of the national vote, but lost to regime candidate, Admiral Américo Tomás); 13 April 1961 (following the shock of anticolonial African insurgency in Portugal's colony of Angola in January-February 1961, the oppositionist hijacking of a Portuguese ocean liner off South America by Henrique Galvão, and an abortive military coup that failed to oust Salazar from office); and 19 August 1968 (the aging of key leaders in the government, including the now gravely ill Salazar, and the defection of key younger followers).

   In response to the 1961 crisis in Africa and to threats to Portuguese India from the Indian government, Salazar assumed the post of minister of defense (April 1961-December 1962). The failing leader, whose true state of health was kept from the public for as long as possible, appointed a group of younger cabinet officers in the 1960s, but no likely successors were groomed to take his place. Two of the older generation, Teotónio Pereira, who was in bad health, and Marcello Caetano, who preferred to remain at the University of Lisbon or in private law practice, remained in the political wilderness.

   As the colonial wars in three African territories grew more costly, Salazar became more isolated from reality. On 3 August 1968, while resting at his summer residence, the Fortress of São João do Estoril outside Lisbon, a deck chair collapsed beneath Salazar and his head struck the hard floor. Some weeks later, as a result, Salazar was incapacitated by a stroke and cerebral hemorrhage, was hospitalized, and became an invalid. While hesitating to fill the power vacuum that had unexpectedly appeared, President Tomás finally replaced Salazar as prime minister on 27 September 1968, with his former protégé and colleague, Marcello Caetano. Salazar was not informed that he no longer headed the government, but he never recovered his health. On 27 July 1970, Salazar died in Lisbon and was buried at Santa Comba Dão, Vimieiro, his village and place of birth.

    See also Corporativism; Integralism; Salazarism.

   Before Romans described western Iberia or Hispania as "Lusitania," ancient Iberians inhabited the land. Phoenician and Greek trading settlements grew up in the Tagus estuary area and nearby coasts. Beginning around 202 BCE, Romans invaded what is today southern Portugal. With Rome's defeat of Carthage, Romans proceeded to conquer and rule the western region north of the Tagus, which they named Roman "Lusitania." In the fourth century CE, as Rome's rule weakened, the area experienced yet another invasion—Germanic tribes, principally the Suevi, who eventually were Christianized. During the sixth century CE, the Suevi kingdom was superseded by yet another Germanic tribe—the Christian Visigoths.

   A major turning point in Portugal's history came in 711, as Muslim armies from North Africa, consisting of both Arab and Berber elements, invaded the Iberian Peninsula from across the Straits of Gibraltar. They entered what is now Portugal in 714, and proceeded to conquer most of the country except for the far north. For the next half a millennium, Islam and Muslim presence in Portugal left a significant mark upon the politics, government, language, and culture of the country.

   Islam, Reconquest, and Portugal Created, 714-1140

   The long frontier struggle between Muslim invaders and Christian communities in the north of the Iberian peninsula was called the Reconquista (Reconquest). It was during this struggle that the first dynasty of Portuguese kings (Burgundian) emerged and the independent monarchy of Portugal was established. Christian forces moved south from what is now the extreme north of Portugal and gradually defeated Muslim forces, besieging and capturing towns under Muslim sway. In the ninth century, as Christian forces slowly made their way southward, Christian elements were dominant only in the area between Minho province and the Douro River; this region became known as "territorium Portu-calense."

   In the 11th century, the advance of the Reconquest quickened as local Christian armies were reinforced by crusading knights from what is now France and England. Christian forces took Montemor (1034), at the Mondego River; Lamego (1058); Viseu (1058); and Coimbra (1064). In 1095, the king of Castile and Léon granted the country of "Portu-cale," what became northern Portugal, to a Burgundian count who had emigrated from France. This was the foundation of Portugal. In 1139, a descendant of this count, Afonso Henriques, proclaimed himself "King of Portugal." He was Portugal's first monarch, the "Founder," and the first of the Burgundian dynasty, which ruled until 1385.

   The emergence of Portugal in the 12th century as a separate monarchy in Iberia occurred before the Christian Reconquest of the peninsula. In the 1140s, the pope in Rome recognized Afonso Henriques as king of Portugal. In 1147, after a long, bloody siege, Muslim-occupied Lisbon fell to Afonso Henriques's army. Lisbon was the greatest prize of the 500-year war. Assisting this effort were English crusaders on their way to the Holy Land; the first bishop of Lisbon was an Englishman. When the Portuguese captured Faro and Silves in the Algarve province in 1248-50, the Reconquest of the extreme western portion of the Iberian peninsula was complete—significantly, more than two centuries before the Spanish crown completed the Reconquest of the eastern portion by capturing Granada in 1492.

   Consolidation and Independence of Burgundian Portugal, 1140-1385

   Two main themes of Portugal's early existence as a monarchy are the consolidation of control over the realm and the defeat of a Castil-ian threat from the east to its independence. At the end of this period came the birth of a new royal dynasty (Aviz), which prepared to carry the Christian Reconquest beyond continental Portugal across the straits of Gibraltar to North Africa. There was a variety of motives behind these developments. Portugal's independent existence was imperiled by threats from neighboring Iberian kingdoms to the north and east. Politics were dominated not only by efforts against the Muslims in

   Portugal (until 1250) and in nearby southern Spain (until 1492), but also by internecine warfare among the kingdoms of Castile, Léon, Aragon, and Portugal. A final comeback of Muslim forces was defeated at the battle of Salado (1340) by allied Castilian and Portuguese forces. In the emerging Kingdom of Portugal, the monarch gradually gained power over and neutralized the nobility and the Church.

   The historic and commonplace Portuguese saying "From Spain, neither a good wind nor a good marriage" was literally played out in diplomacy and war in the late 14th-century struggles for mastery in the peninsula. Larger, more populous Castile was pitted against smaller Portugal. Castile's Juan I intended to force a union between Castile and Portugal during this era of confusion and conflict. In late 1383, Portugal's King Fernando, the last king of the Burgundian dynasty, suddenly died prematurely at age 38, and the Master of Aviz, Portugal's most powerful nobleman, took up the cause of independence and resistance against Castile's invasion. The Master of Aviz, who became King João I of Portugal, was able to obtain foreign assistance. With the aid of English archers, Joao's armies defeated the Castilians in the crucial battle of Aljubarrota, on 14 August 1385, a victory that assured the independence of the Portuguese monarchy from its Castilian nemesis for several centuries.

   Aviz Dynasty and Portugal's First Overseas Empire, 1385-1580

   The results of the victory at Aljubarrota, much celebrated in Portugal's art and monuments, and the rise of the Aviz dynasty also helped to establish a new merchant class in Lisbon and Oporto, Portugal's second city. This group supported King João I's program of carrying the Reconquest to North Africa, since it was interested in expanding Portugal's foreign commerce and tapping into Muslim trade routes and resources in Africa. With the Reconquest against the Muslims completed in Portugal and the threat from Castile thwarted for the moment, the Aviz dynasty launched an era of overseas conquest, exploration, and trade. These efforts dominated Portugal's 15th and 16th centuries.

   The overseas empire and age of Discoveries began with Portugal's bold conquest in 1415 of the Moroccan city of Ceuta. One royal member of the 1415 expedition was young, 21-year-old Prince Henry, later known in history as "Prince Henry the Navigator." His part in the capture of Ceuta won Henry his knighthood and began Portugal's "Marvelous Century," during which the small kingdom was counted as a European and world power of consequence. Henry was the son of King João I and his English queen, Philippa of Lancaster, but he did not inherit the throne. Instead, he spent most of his life and his fortune, and that of the wealthy military Order of Christ, on various imperial ventures and on voyages of exploration down the African coast and into the Atlantic. While mythology has surrounded Henry's controversial role in the Discoveries, and this role has been exaggerated, there is no doubt that he played a vital part in the initiation of Portugal's first overseas empire and in encouraging exploration. He was naturally curious, had a sense of mission for Portugal, and was a strong leader. He also had wealth to expend; at least a third of the African voyages of the time were under his sponsorship. If Prince Henry himself knew little science, significant scientific advances in navigation were made in his day.

   What were Portugal's motives for this new imperial effort? The well-worn historical cliche of "God, Glory, and Gold" can only partly explain the motivation of a small kingdom with few natural resources and barely 1 million people, which was greatly outnumbered by the other powers it confronted. Among Portuguese objectives were the desire to exploit known North African trade routes and resources (gold, wheat, leather, weaponry, and other goods that were scarce in Iberia); the need to outflank the Muslim world in the Mediterranean by sailing around Africa, attacking Muslims en route; and the wish to ally with Christian kingdoms beyond Africa. This enterprise also involved a strategy of breaking the Venetian spice monopoly by trading directly with the East by means of discovering and exploiting a sea route around Africa to Asia. Besides the commercial motives, Portugal nurtured a strong crusading sense of Christian mission, and various classes in the kingdom saw an opportunity for fame and gain.

   By the time of Prince Henry's death in 1460, Portugal had gained control of the Atlantic archipelagos of the Azores and Madeiras, begun to colonize the Cape Verde Islands, failed to conquer the Canary Islands from Castile, captured various cities on Morocco's coast, and explored as far as Senegal, West Africa, down the African coast. By 1488, Bar-tolomeu Dias had rounded the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and thereby discovered the way to the Indian Ocean.

   Portugal's largely coastal African empire and later its fragile Asian empire brought unexpected wealth but were purchased at a high price. Costs included wars of conquest and defense against rival powers, manning the far-flung navel and trade fleets and scattered castle-fortresses, and staffing its small but fierce armies, all of which entailed a loss of skills and population to maintain a scattered empire. Always short of capital, the monarchy became indebted to bankers. There were many defeats beginning in the 16th century at the hands of the larger imperial European monarchies (Spain, France, England, and Holland) and many attacks on Portugal and its strung-out empire. Typically, there was also the conflict that arose when a tenuously held world empire that rarely if ever paid its way demanded finance and manpower Portugal itself lacked.

   The first 80 years of the glorious imperial era, the golden age of Portugal's imperial power and world influence, was an African phase. During 1415-88, Portuguese navigators and explorers in small ships, some of them caravelas (caravels), explored the treacherous, disease-ridden coasts of Africa from Morocco to South Africa beyond the Cape of Good Hope. By the 1470s, the Portuguese had reached the Gulf of Guinea and, in the early 1480s, what is now Angola. Bartolomeu Dias's extraordinary voyage of 1487-88 to South Africa's coast and the edge of the Indian Ocean convinced Portugal that the best route to Asia's spices and Christians lay south, around the tip of southern Africa. Between 1488 and 1495, there was a hiatus caused in part by domestic conflict in Portugal, discussion of resources available for further conquests beyond Africa in Asia, and serious questions as to Portugal's capacity to reach beyond Africa. In 1495, King Manuel and his council decided to strike for Asia, whatever the consequences. In 1497-99, Vasco da Gama, under royal orders, made the epic two-year voyage that discovered the sea route to western India (Asia), outflanked Islam and Venice, and began Portugal's Asian empire. Within 50 years, Portugal had discovered and begun the exploitation of its largest colony, Brazil, and set up forts and trading posts from the Middle East (Aden and Ormuz), India (Calicut, Goa, etc.), Malacca, and Indonesia to Macau in China.

   By the 1550s, parts of its largely coastal, maritime trading post empire from Morocco to the Moluccas were under siege from various hostile forces, including Muslims, Christians, and Hindi. Although Moroccan forces expelled the Portuguese from the major coastal cities by 1550, the rival European monarchies of Castile (Spain), England, France, and later Holland began to seize portions of her undermanned, outgunned maritime empire.

   In 1580, Phillip II of Spain, whose mother was a Portuguese princess and who had a strong claim to the Portuguese throne, invaded Portugal, claimed the throne, and assumed control over the realm and, by extension, its African, Asian, and American empires. Phillip II filled the power vacuum that appeared in Portugal following the loss of most of Portugal's army and its young, headstrong King Sebastião in a disastrous war in Morocco. Sebastiao's death in battle (1578) and the lack of a natural heir to succeed him, as well as the weak leadership of the cardinal who briefly assumed control in Lisbon, led to a crisis that Spain's strong monarch exploited. As a result, Portugal lost its independence to Spain for a period of 60 years.

   Portugal under Spanish Rule, 1580-1640

   Despite the disastrous nature of Portugal's experience under Spanish rule, "The Babylonian Captivity" gave birth to modern Portuguese nationalism, its second overseas empire, and its modern alliance system with England. Although Spain allowed Portugal's weakened empire some autonomy, Spanish rule in Portugal became increasingly burdensome and unacceptable. Spain's ambitious imperial efforts in Europe and overseas had an impact on the Portuguese as Spain made greater and greater demands on its smaller neighbor for manpower and money. Portugal's culture underwent a controversial Castilianization, while its empire became hostage to Spain's fortunes. New rival powers England, France, and Holland attacked and took parts of Spain's empire and at the same time attacked Portugal's empire, as well as the mother country.

   Portugal's empire bore the consequences of being attacked by Spain's bitter enemies in what was a form of world war. Portuguese losses were heavy. By 1640, Portugal had lost most of its Moroccan cities as well as Ceylon, the Moluccas, and sections of India. With this, Portugal's Asian empire was gravely weakened. Only Goa, Damão, Diu, Bombay, Timor, and Macau remained and, in Brazil, Dutch forces occupied the northeast.

   On 1 December 1640, long commemorated as a national holiday, Portuguese rebels led by the duke of Braganza overthrew Spanish domination and took advantage of Spanish weakness following a more serious rebellion in Catalonia. Portugal regained independence from Spain, but at a price: dependence on foreign assistance to maintain its independence in the form of the renewal of the alliance with England.

   Restoration and Second Empire, 1640-1822

   Foreign affairs and empire dominated the restoration era and aftermath, and Portugal again briefly enjoyed greater European power and prestige. The Anglo-Portuguese Alliance was renewed and strengthened in treaties of 1642, 1654, and 1661, and Portugal's independence from Spain was underwritten by English pledges and armed assistance. In a Luso-Spanish treaty of 1668, Spain recognized Portugal's independence. Portugal's alliance with England was a marriage of convenience and necessity between two monarchies with important religious, cultural, and social differences. In return for legal, diplomatic, and trade privileges, as well as the use during war and peace of Portugal's great Lisbon harbor and colonial ports for England's navy, England pledged to protect Portugal and its scattered empire from any attack. The previously cited 17th-century alliance treaties were renewed later in the Treaty of Windsor, signed in London in 1899. On at least 10 different occasions after 1640, and during the next two centuries, England was central in helping prevent or repel foreign invasions of its ally, Portugal.

   Portugal's second empire (1640-1822) was largely Brazil-oriented. Portuguese colonization, exploitation of wealth, and emigration focused on Portuguese America, and imperial revenues came chiefly from Brazil. Between 1670 and 1740, Portugal's royalty and nobility grew wealthier on funds derived from Brazilian gold, diamonds, sugar, tobacco, and other crops, an enterprise supported by the Atlantic slave trade and the supply of African slave labor from West Africa and Angola. Visitors today can see where much of that wealth was invested: Portugal's rich legacy of monumental architecture. Meanwhile, the African slave trade took a toll in Angola and West Africa.

   In continental Portugal, absolutist monarchy dominated politics and government, and there was a struggle for position and power between the monarchy and other institutions, such as the Church and nobility. King José I's chief minister, usually known in history as the marquis of Pombal (ruled 1750-77), sharply suppressed the nobility and the

   Church (including the Inquisition, now a weak institution) and expelled the Jesuits. Pombal also made an effort to reduce economic dependence on England, Portugal's oldest ally. But his successes did not last much beyond his disputed time in office.

   Beginning in the late 18th century, the European-wide impact of the French Revolution and the rise of Napoleon placed Portugal in a vulnerable position. With the monarchy ineffectively led by an insane queen (Maria I) and her indecisive regent son (João VI), Portugal again became the focus of foreign ambition and aggression. With England unable to provide decisive assistance in time, France—with Spain's consent—invaded Portugal in 1807. As Napoleon's army under General Junot entered Lisbon meeting no resistance, Portugal's royal family fled on a British fleet to Brazil, where it remained in exile until 1821. In the meantime, Portugal's overseas empire was again under threat. There was a power vacuum as the monarch was absent, foreign armies were present, and new political notions of liberalism and constitutional monarchy were exciting various groups of citizens.

   Again England came to the rescue, this time in the form of the armies of the duke of Wellington. Three successive French invasions of Portugal were defeated and expelled, and Wellington succeeded in carrying the war against Napoleon across the Portuguese frontier into Spain. The presence of the English army, the new French-born liberal ideas, and the political vacuum combined to create revolutionary conditions. The French invasions and the peninsular wars, where Portuguese armed forces played a key role, marked the beginning of a new era in politics.

   Liberalism and Constitutional Monarchy, 1822-1910

   During 1807-22, foreign invasions, war, and civil strife over conflicting political ideas gravely damaged Portugal's commerce, economy, and novice industry. The next terrible blow was the loss of Brazil in 1822, the jewel in the imperial crown. Portugal's very independence seemed to be at risk. In vain, Portugal sought to resist Brazilian independence by force, but in 1825 it formally acknowledged Brazilian independence by treaty.

   Portugal's slow recovery from the destructive French invasions and the "war of independence" was complicated by civil strife over the form of constitutional monarchy that best suited Portugal. After struggles over these issues between 1820 and 1834, Portugal settled somewhat uncertainly into a moderate constitutional monarchy whose constitution (Charter of 1826) lent it strong political powers to exert a moderating influence between the executive and legislative branches of the government. It also featured a new upper middle class based on land ownership and commerce; a Catholic Church that, although still important, lived with reduced privileges and property; a largely African (third) empire to which Lisbon and Oporto devoted increasing spiritual and material resources, starting with the liberal imperial plans of 1836 and 1851, and continuing with the work of institutions like the Lisbon Society of Geography (established 1875); and a mass of rural peasants whose bonds to the land weakened after 1850 and who began to immigrate in increasing numbers to Brazil and North America.

   Chronic military intervention in national politics began in 19th-century Portugal. Such intervention, usually commencing with coups or pronunciamentos (military revolts), was a shortcut to the spoils of political office and could reflect popular discontent as well as the power of personalities. An early example of this was the 1817 golpe (coup) attempt of General Gomes Freire against British military rule in Portugal before the return of King João VI from Brazil. Except for a more stable period from 1851 to 1880, military intervention in politics, or the threat thereof, became a feature of the constitutional monarchy's political life, and it continued into the First Republic and the subsequent Estado Novo.

   Beginning with the Regeneration period (1851-80), Portugal experienced greater political stability and economic progress. Military intervention in politics virtually ceased; industrialization and construction of railroads, roads, and bridges proceeded; two political parties (Regenerators and Historicals) worked out a system of rotation in power; and leading intellectuals sparked a cultural revival in several fields. In 19th-century literature, there was a new golden age led by such figures as Alexandre Herculano (historian), Eça de Queirós (novelist), Almeida Garrett (playwright and essayist), Antero de Quental (poet), and Joaquim Oliveira Martins (historian and social scientist). In its third overseas empire, Portugal attempted to replace the slave trade and slavery with legitimate economic activities; to reform the administration; and to expand Portuguese holdings beyond coastal footholds deep into the African hinterlands in West, West Central, and East Africa. After 1841, to some extent, and especially after 1870, colonial affairs, combined with intense nationalism, pressures for economic profit in Africa, sentiment for national revival, and the drift of European affairs would make or break Lisbon governments.

   Beginning with the political crisis that arose out of the "English Ultimatum" affair of January 1890, the monarchy became discredtted and identified with the poorly functioning government, political parties splintered, and republicanism found more supporters. Portugal participated in the "Scramble for Africa," expanding its African holdings, but failed to annex territory connecting Angola and Mozambique. A growing foreign debt and state bankruptcy as of the early 1890s damaged the constitutional monarchy's reputation, despite the efforts of King Carlos in diplomacy, the renewal of the alliance in the Windsor Treaty of 1899, and the successful if bloody colonial wars in the empire (1880-97). Republicanism proclaimed that Portugal's weak economy and poor society were due to two historic institutions: the monarchy and the Catholic Church. A republic, its stalwarts claimed, would bring greater individual liberty; efficient, if more decentralized government; and a stronger colonial program while stripping the Church of its role in both society and education.

   As the monarchy lost support and republicans became more aggressive, violence increased in politics. King Carlos I and his heir Luís were murdered in Lisbon by anarchist-republicans on 1 February 1908. Following a military and civil insurrection and fighting between monarchist and republican forces, on 5 October 1910, King Manuel II fled Portugal and a republic was proclaimed.

   First Parliamentary Republic, 1910-26

   Portugal's first attempt at republican government was the most unstable, turbulent parliamentary republic in the history of 20th-century Western Europe. During a little under 16 years of the republic, there were 45 governments, a number of legislatures that did not complete normal terms, military coups, and only one president who completed his four-year term in office. Portuguese society was poorly prepared for this political experiment. Among the deadly legacies of the monarchy were a huge public debt; a largely rural, apolitical, and illiterate peasant population; conflict over the causes of the country's misfortunes; and lack of experience with a pluralist, democratic system.

   The republic had some talented leadership but lacked popular, institutional, and economic support. The 1911 republican constitution established only a limited democracy, as only a small portion of the adult male citizenry was eligible to vote. In a country where the majority was Catholic, the republic passed harshly anticlerical laws, and its institutions and supporters persecuted both the Church and its adherents. During its brief disjointed life, the First Republic drafted important reform plans in economic, social, and educational affairs; actively promoted development in the empire; and pursued a liberal, generous foreign policy. Following British requests for Portugal's assistance in World War I, Portugal entered the war on the Allied side in March 1916 and sent armies to Flanders and Portuguese Africa. Portugal's intervention in that conflict, however, was too costly in many respects, and the ultimate failure of the republic in part may be ascribed to Portugal's World War I activities.

   Unfortunately for the republic, its time coincided with new threats to Portugal's African possessions: World War I, social and political demands from various classes that could not be reconciled, excessive military intervention in politics, and, in particular, the worst economic and financial crisis Portugal had experienced since the 16th and 17th centuries. After the original Portuguese Republican Party (PRP, also known as the "Democrats") splintered into three warring groups in 1912, no true multiparty system emerged. The Democrats, except for only one or two elections, held an iron monopoly of electoral power, and political corruption became a major issue. As extreme right-wing dictatorships elsewhere in Europe began to take power in Italy (1922), neighboring Spain (1923), and Greece (1925), what scant popular support remained for the republic collapsed. Backed by a right-wing coalition of landowners from Alentejo, clergy, Coimbra University faculty and students, Catholic organizations, and big business, career military officers led by General Gomes da Costa executed a coup on 28 May 1926, turned out the last republican government, and established a military government.

   The Estado Novo (New State), 1926-74

   During the military phase (1926-32) of the Estado Novo, professional military officers, largely from the army, governed and administered Portugal and held key cabinet posts, but soon discovered that the military possessed no magic formula that could readily solve the problems inherited from the First Republic. Especially during the years 1926-31, the military dictatorship, even with its political repression of republican activities and institutions (military censorship of the press, political police action, and closure of the republic's rowdy parliament), was characterized by similar weaknesses: personalism and factionalism; military coups and political instability, including civil strife and loss of life; state debt and bankruptcy; and a weak economy. "Barracks parliamentarism" was not an acceptable alternative even to the "Nightmare Republic."

   Led by General Óscar Carmona, who had replaced and sent into exile General Gomes da Costa, the military dictatorship turned to a civilian expert in finance and economics to break the budget impasse and bring coherence to the disorganized system. Appointed minister of finance on 27 April 1928, the Coimbra University Law School professor of economics Antônio de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970) first reformed finance, helped balance the budget, and then turned to other concerns as he garnered extraordinary governing powers. In 1930, he was appointed interim head of another key ministry (Colonies) and within a few years had become, in effect, a civilian dictator who, with the military hierarchy's support, provided the government with coherence, a program, and a set of policies.

   For nearly 40 years after he was appointed the first civilian prime minister in 1932, Salazar's personality dominated the government. Unlike extreme right-wing dictators elsewhere in Europe, Salazar was directly appointed by the army but was never endorsed by a popular political party, street militia, or voter base. The scholarly, reclusive former Coimbra University professor built up what became known after 1932 as the Estado Novo ("New State"), which at the time of its overthrow by another military coup in 1974, was the longest surviving authoritarian regime in Western Europe. The system of Salazar and the largely academic and technocratic ruling group he gathered in his cabinets was based on the central bureaucracy of the state, which was supported by the president of the republic—always a senior career military officer, General Óscar Carmona (1928-51), General Craveiro Lopes (1951-58), and Admiral Américo Tómaz (1958-74)—and the complicity of various institutions. These included a rubber-stamp legislature called the National Assembly (1935-74) and a political police known under various names: PVDE (1932-45), PIDE (1945-69),

   and DGS (1969-74). Other defenders of the Estado Novo security were paramilitary organizations such as the National Republican Guard (GNR); the Portuguese Legion (PL); and the Portuguese Youth [Movement]. In addition to censorship of the media, theater, and books, there was political repression and a deliberate policy of depoliticization. All political parties except for the approved movement of regime loyalists, the União Nacional or (National Union), were banned.

   The most vigorous and more popular period of the New State was 1932-44, when the basic structures were established. Never monolithic or entirely the work of one person (Salazar), the New State was constructed with the assistance of several dozen top associates who were mainly academics from law schools, some technocrats with specialized skills, and a handful of trusted career military officers. The 1933 Constitution declared Portugal to be a "unitary, corporative Republic," and pressures to restore the monarchy were resisted. Although some of the regime's followers were fascists and pseudofascists, many more were conservative Catholics, integralists, nationalists, and monarchists of different varieties, and even some reactionary republicans. If the New State was authoritarian, it was not totalitarian and, unlike fascism in Benito Mussolini's Italy or Adolf Hitler's Germany, it usually employed the minimum of violence necessary to defeat what remained a largely fractious, incoherent opposition.

   With the tumultuous Second Republic and the subsequent civil war in nearby Spain, the regime felt threatened and reinforced its defenses. During what Salazar rightly perceived as a time of foreign policy crisis for Portugal (1936-45), he assumed control of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. From there, he pursued four basic foreign policy objectives: supporting the Nationalist rebels of General Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and concluding defense treaties with a triumphant Franco; ensuring that General Franco in an exhausted Spain did not enter World War II on the Axis side; maintaining Portuguese neutrality in World War II with a post-1942 tilt toward the Allies, including granting Britain and the United States use of bases in the Azores Islands; and preserving and protecting Portugal's Atlantic Islands and its extensive, if poor, overseas empire in Africa and Asia.

   During the middle years of the New State (1944-58), many key Salazar associates in government either died or resigned, and there was greater social unrest in the form of unprecedented strikes and clandestine Communist activities, intensified opposition, and new threatening international pressures on Portugal's overseas empire. During the earlier phase of the Cold War (1947-60), Portugal became a steadfast, if weak, member of the US-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization alliance and, in 1955, with American support, Portugal joined the United Nations (UN). Colonial affairs remained a central concern of the regime. As of 1939, Portugal was the third largest colonial power in the world and possessed territories in tropical Africa (Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe Islands) and the remnants of its 16th-century empire in Asia (Goa, Damão, Diu, East Timor, and Macau). Beginning in the early 1950s, following the independence of India in 1947, Portugal resisted Indian pressures to decolonize Portuguese India and used police forces to discourage internal opposition in its Asian and African colonies.

   The later years of the New State (1958-68) witnessed the aging of the increasingly isolated but feared Salazar and new threats both at home and overseas. Although the regime easily overcame the brief oppositionist threat from rival presidential candidate General Humberto Delgado in the spring of 1958, new developments in the African and Asian empires imperiled the authoritarian system. In February 1961, oppositionists hijacked the Portuguese ocean liner Santa Maria and, in following weeks, African insurgents in northern Angola, although they failed to expel the Portuguese, gained worldwide media attention, discredited the New State, and began the 13-year colonial war. After thwarting a dissident military coup against his continued leadership, Salazar and his ruling group mobilized military repression in Angola and attempted to develop the African colonies at a faster pace in order to ensure Portuguese control. Meanwhile, the other European colonial powers (Britain, France, Belgium, and Spain) rapidly granted political independence to their African territories.

   At the time of Salazar's removal from power in September 1968, following a stroke, Portugal's efforts to maintain control over its colonies appeared to be successful. President Americo Tomás appointed Dr. Marcello Caetano as Salazar's successor as prime minister. While maintaining the New State's basic structures, and continuing the regime's essential colonial policy, Caetano attempted wider reforms in colonial administration and some devolution of power from Lisbon, as well as more freedom of expression in Lisbon. Still, a great deal of the budget was devoted to supporting the wars against the insurgencies in Africa. Meanwhile in Asia, Portuguese India had fallen when the Indian army invaded in December 1961. The loss of Goa was a psychological blow to the leadership of the New State, and of the Asian empire only East Timor and Macau remained.

   The Caetano years (1968-74) were but a hiatus between the waning Salazar era and a new regime. There was greater political freedom and rapid economic growth (5-6 percent annually to late 1973), but Caetano's government was unable to reform the old system thoroughly and refused to consider new methods either at home or in the empire. In the end, regime change came from junior officers of the professional military who organized the Armed Forces Movement (MFA) against the Caetano government. It was this group of several hundred officers, mainly in the army and navy, which engineered a largely bloodless coup in Lisbon on 25 April 1974. Their unexpected action brought down the 48-year-old New State and made possible the eventual establishment and consolidation of democratic governance in Portugal, as well as a reorientation of the country away from the Atlantic toward Europe.

   Revolution of Carnations, 1974-76

   Following successful military operations of the Armed Forces Movement against the Caetano government, Portugal experienced what became known as the "Revolution of Carnations." It so happened that during the rainy week of the military golpe, Lisbon flower shops were featuring carnations, and the revolutionaries and their supporters adopted the red carnation as the common symbol of the event, as well as of the new freedom from dictatorship. The MFA, whose leaders at first were mostly little-known majors and captains, proclaimed a three-fold program of change for the new Portugal: democracy; decolonization of the overseas empire, after ending the colonial wars; and developing a backward economy in the spirit of opportunity and equality. During the first 24 months after the coup, there was civil strife, some anarchy, and a power struggle. With the passing of the Estado Novo, public euphoria burst forth as the new provisional military government proclaimed the freedoms of speech, press, and assembly, and abolished censorship, the political police, the Portuguese Legion, Portuguese Youth, and other New State organizations, including the National Union. Scores of political parties were born and joined the senior political party, the Portuguese Community Party (PCP), and the Socialist Party (PS), founded shortly before the coup.

   Portugal's Revolution of Carnations went through several phases. There was an attempt to take control by radical leftists, including the PCP and its allies. This was thwarted by moderate officers in the army, as well as by the efforts of two political parties: the PS and the Social Democrats (PPD, later PSD). The first phase was from April to September 1974. Provisional president General Antonio Spínola, whose 1974 book Portugal and the Future had helped prepare public opinion for the coup, met irresistible leftist pressures. After Spinola's efforts to avoid rapid decolonization of the African empire failed, he resigned in September 1974. During the second phase, from September 1974 to March 1975, radical military officers gained control, but a coup attempt by General Spínola and his supporters in Lisbon in March 1975 failed and Spínola fled to Spain.

   In the third phase of the Revolution, March-November 1975, a strong leftist reaction followed. Farm workers occupied and "nationalized" 1.1 million hectares of farmland in the Alentejo province, and radical military officers in the provisional government ordered the nationalization of Portuguese banks (foreign banks were exempted), utilities, and major industries, or about 60 percent of the economic system. There were power struggles among various political parties — a total of 50 emerged—and in the streets there was civil strife among labor, military, and law enforcement groups. A constituent assembly, elected on 25 April 1975, in Portugal's first free elections since 1926, drafted a democratic constitution. The Council of the Revolution (CR), briefly a revolutionary military watchdog committee, was entrenched as part of the government under the constitution, until a later revision. During the chaotic year of 1975, about 30 persons were killed in political frays while unstable provisional governments came and went. On 25 November 1975, moderate military forces led by Colonel Ramalho Eanes, who later was twice elected president of the republic (1976 and 1981), defeated radical, leftist military groups' revolutionary conspiracies.

   In the meantime, Portugal's scattered overseas empire experienced a precipitous and unprepared decolonization. One by one, the former colonies were granted and accepted independence—Guinea-Bissau (September 1974), Cape Verde Islands (July 1975), and Mozambique (July 1975). Portugal offered to turn over Macau to the People's Republic of China, but the offer was refused then and later negotiations led to the establishment of a formal decolonization or hand-over date of 1999. But in two former colonies, the process of decolonization had tragic results.

   In Angola, decolonization negotiations were greatly complicated by the fact that there were three rival nationalist movements in a struggle for power. The January 1975 Alvor Agreement signed by Portugal and these three parties was not effectively implemented. A bloody civil war broke out in Angola in the spring of 1975 and, when Portuguese armed forces withdrew and declared that Angola was independent on 11 November 1975, the bloodshed only increased. Meanwhile, most of the white Portuguese settlers from Angola and Mozambique fled during the course of 1975. Together with African refugees, more than 600,000 of these retornados ("returned ones") went by ship and air to Portugal and thousands more to Namibia, South Africa, Brazil, Canada, and the United States.

   The second major decolonization disaster was in Portugal's colony of East Timor in the Indonesian archipelago. Portugal's capacity to supervise and control a peaceful transition to independence in this isolated, neglected colony was limited by the strength of giant Indonesia, distance from Lisbon, and Portugal's revolutionary disorder and inability to defend Timor. In early December 1975, before Portugal granted formal independence and as one party, FRETILIN, unilaterally declared East Timor's independence, Indonesia's armed forces invaded, conquered, and annexed East Timor. Indonesian occupation encountered East Timorese resistance, and a heavy loss of life followed. The East Timor question remained a contentious international issue in the UN, as well as in Lisbon and Jakarta, for more than 20 years following Indonesia's invasion and annexation of the former colony of Portugal. Major changes occurred, beginning in 1998, after Indonesia underwent a political revolution and allowed a referendum in East Timor to decide that territory's political future in August 1999. Most East Timorese chose independence, but Indonesian forces resisted that verdict until

   UN intervention in September 1999. Following UN rule for several years, East Timor attained full independence on 20 May 2002.

   Consolidation of Democracy, 1976-2000

   After several free elections and record voter turnouts between 25 April 1975 and June 1976, civil war was averted and Portugal's second democratic republic began to stabilize. The MFA was dissolved, the military were returned to the barracks, and increasingly elected civilians took over the government of the country. The 1976 Constitution was revised several times beginning in 1982 and 1989, in order to reempha-size the principle of free enterprise in the economy while much of the large, nationalized sector was privatized. In June 1976, General Ram-alho Eanes was elected the first constitutional president of the republic (five-year term), and he appointed socialist leader Dr. Mário Soares as prime minister of the first constitutional government.

   From 1976 to 1985, Portugal's new system featured a weak economy and finances, labor unrest, and administrative and political instability. The difficult consolidation of democratic governance was eased in part by the strong currency and gold reserves inherited from the Estado Novo, but Lisbon seemed unable to cope with high unemployment, new debt, the complex impact of the refugees from Africa, world recession, and the agitation of political parties. Four major parties emerged from the maelstrom of 1974-75, except for the Communist Party, all newly founded. They were, from left to right, the Communists (PCP); the Socialists (PS), who managed to dominate governments and the legislature but not win a majority in the Assembly of the Republic; the Social Democrats (PSD); and the Christian Democrats (CDS). During this period, the annual growth rate was low (l-2 percent), and the nationalized sector of the economy stagnated.

   Enhanced economic growth, greater political stability, and more effective central government as of 1985, and especially 1987, were due to several developments. In 1977, Portugal applied for membership in the European Economic Community (EEC), now the European Union (EU) since 1993. In January 1986, with Spain, Portugal was granted membership, and economic and financial progress in the intervening years has been significantly influenced by the comparatively large investment, loans, technology, advice, and other assistance from the EEC. Low unemployment, high annual growth rates (5 percent), and moderate inflation have also been induced by the new political and administrative stability in Lisbon. Led by Prime Minister Cavaco Silva, an economist who was trained abroad, the PSD's strong organization, management, and electoral support since 1985 have assisted in encouraging economic recovery and development. In 1985, the PSD turned the PS out of office and won the general election, although they did not have an absolute majority of assembly seats. In 1986, Mário Soares was elected president of the republic, the first civilian to hold that office since the First Republic. In the elections of 1987 and 1991, however, the PSD was returned to power with clear majorities of over 50 percent of the vote.

   Although the PSD received 50.4 percent of the vote in the 1991 parliamentary elections and held a 42-seat majority in the Assembly of the Republic, the party began to lose public support following media revelations regarding corruption and complaints about Prime Minister Cavaco Silva's perceived arrogant leadership style. President Mário Soares voiced criticism of the PSD's seemingly untouchable majority and described a "tyranny of the majority." Economic growth slowed down. In the parliamentary elections of 1995 and the presidential election of 1996, the PSD's dominance ended for the time being. Prime Minister Antônio Guterres came to office when the PS won the October 1995 elections, and in the subsequent presidential contest, in January 1996, socialist Jorge Sampaio, the former mayor of Lisbon, was elected president of the republic, thus defeating Cavaco Silva's bid. Young and popular, Guterres moved the PS toward the center of the political spectrum. Under Guterres, the PS won the October 1999 parliamentary elections. The PS defeated the PSD but did not manage to win a clear, working majority of seats, and this made the PS dependent upon alliances with smaller parties, including the PCP.

   In the local elections in December 2001, the PSD's criticism of PS's heavy public spending allowed the PSD to take control of the key cities of Lisbon, Oporto, and Coimbra. Guterres resigned, and parliamentary elections were brought forward from 2004 to March 2002. The PSD won a narrow victory with 40 percent of the votes, and Jose Durão Barroso became prime minister. Having failed to win a majority of the seats in parliament forced the PSD to govern in coalition with the right-wing Popular Party (PP) led by Paulo Portas. Durão Barroso set about reducing government spending by cutting the budgets of local authorities, freezing civil service hiring, and reviving the economy by accelerating privatization of state-owned enterprises. These measures provoked a 24-hour strike by public-sector workers. Durão Barroso reacted with vows to press ahead with budget-cutting measures and imposed a wage freeze on all employees earning more than €1,000, which affected more than one-half of Portugal's work force.

   In June 2004, Durão Barroso was invited by Romano Prodi to succeed him as president of the European Commission. Durão Barroso accepted and resigned the prime ministership in July. Pedro Santana Lopes, the leader of the PSD, became prime minister. Already unpopular at the time of Durão Barroso's resignation, the PSD-led government became increasingly unpopular under Santana Lopes. A month-long delay in the start of the school year and confusion over his plan to cut taxes and raise public-sector salaries, eroded confidence even more. By November, Santana Lopes's government was so unpopular that President Jorge Sampaio was obliged to dissolve parliament and hold new elections, two years ahead of schedule.

   Parliamentary elections were held on 20 February 2005. The PS, which had promised the electorate disciplined and transparent governance, educational reform, the alleviation of poverty, and a boost in employment, won 45 percent of the vote and the majority of the seats in parliament. The leader of the PS, José Sôcrates became prime minister on 12 March 2005. In the regularly scheduled presidential elections held on 6 January 2006, the former leader of the PSD and prime minister, Aníbal Cavaco Silva, won a narrow victory and became president on 9 March 2006. With a mass protest, public teachers' strike, and street demonstrations in March 2008, Portugal's media, educational, and social systems experienced more severe pressures. With the spreading global recession beginning in September 2008, Portugal's economic and financial systems became more troubled.

    Contemporary Portugal

   Owing to its geographic location on the southwestern most edge of continental Europe, Portugal has been historically in but not of Europe. Almost from the beginning of its existence in the 12th century as an independent monarchy, Portugal turned its back on Europe and oriented itself toward the Atlantic Ocean. After carving out a Christian kingdom on the western portion of the Iberian peninsula, Portuguese kings gradually built and maintained a vast seaborne global empire that became central to the way Portugal understood its individuality as a nation-state. While the creation of this empire allows Portugal to claim an unusual number of "firsts" or distinctions in world and Western history, it also retarded Portugal's economic, social, and political development. It can be reasonably argued that the Revolution of 25 April 1974 was the most decisive event in Portugal's long history because it finally ended Portugal's oceanic mission and view of itself as an imperial power. After the 1974 Revolution, Portugal turned away from its global mission and vigorously reoriented itself toward Europe. Contemporary Portugal is now both in and of Europe.

   The turn toward Europe began immediately after 25 April 1974. Portugal granted independence to its African colonies in 1975. It was admitted to the European Council and took the first steps toward accession to the European Economic Community (EEC) in 1976. On 28 March 1977, the Portuguese government officially applied for EEC membership. Because of Portugal's economic and social backwardness, which would require vast sums of EEC money to overcome, negotiations for membership were long and difficult. Finally, a treaty of accession was signed on 12 June 1985. Portugal officially joined the EEC (the European Union [EU] since 1993) on 1 January 1986. Since becoming a full-fledged member of the EU, Portugal has been steadily overcoming the economic and social underdevelopment caused by its imperial past and is becoming more like the rest of Europe.

   Membership in the EU has speeded up the structural transformation of Portugal's economy, which actually began during the Estado Novo. Investments made by the Estado Novo in Portugal's economy began to shift employment out of the agricultural sector, which, in 1950, accounted for 50 percent of Portugal's economically active population. Today, only 10 percent of the economically active population is employed in the agricultural sector (the highest among EU member states); 30 percent in the industrial sector (also the highest among EU member states); and 60 percent in the service sector (the lowest among EU member states). The economically active population numbers about 5,000,000 employed, 56 percent of whom are women. Women workers are the majority of the workforce in the agricultural and service sectors (the highest among the EU member states). The expansion of the service sector has been primarily in health care and education. Portugal has had the lowest unemployment rates among EU member states, with the overall rate never being more than 10 percent of the active population. Since joining the EU, the number of employers increased from 2.6 percent to 5.8 percent of the active population; self-employed from 16 to 19 percent; and employees from 65 to 70 percent. Twenty-six percent of the employers are women. Unemployment tends to hit younger workers in industry and transportation, women employed in domestic service, workers on short-term contracts, and poorly educated workers. Salaried workers earn only 63 percent of the EU average, and hourly workers only one-third to one-half of that earned by their EU counterparts. Despite having had the second highest growth of gross national product (GNP) per inhabitant (after Ireland) among EU member states, the above data suggest that while much has been accomplished in terms of modernizing the Portuguese economy, much remains to be done to bring Portugal's economy up to the level of the "average" EU member state.

   Membership in the EU has also speeded up changes in Portuguese society. Over the last 30 years, coastalization and urbanization have intensified. Fully 50 percent of Portuguese live in the coastal urban conurbations of Lisbon, Oporto, Braga, Aveiro, Coimbra, Viseu, Évora, and Faro. The Portuguese population is one of the oldest among EU member states (17.3 percent are 65 years of age or older) thanks to a considerable increase in life expectancy at birth (77.87 years for the total population, 74.6 years for men, 81.36 years for women) and one of the lowest birthrates (10.59 births/1,000) in Europe. Family size averages 2.8 persons per household, with the strict nuclear family (one or two generations) in which both parents work being typical. Common law marriages, cohabitating couples, and single-parent households are more and more common. The divorce rate has also increased. "Youth Culture" has developed. The young have their own meeting places, leisure-time activities, and nightlife (bars, clubs, and discos).

   All Portuguese citizens, whether they have contributed or not, have a right to an old-age pension, invalidity benefits, widowed persons' pension, as well as payments for disabilities, children, unemployment, and large families. There is a national minimum wage (€385 per month), which is low by EU standards. The rapid aging of Portugal's population has changed the ratio of contributors to pensioners to 1.7, the lowest in the EU. This has created deficits in Portugal's social security fund.

   The adult literacy rate is about 92 percent. Illiteracy is still found among the elderly. Although universal compulsory education up to grade 9 was achieved in 1980, only 21.2 percent of the population aged 25-64 had undergone secondary education, compared to an EU average of 65.7 percent. Portugal's higher education system currently consists of 14 state universities and 14 private universities, 15 state polytechnic institutions, one Catholic university, and one military academy. All in all, Portugal spends a greater percentage of its state budget on education than most EU member states. Despite this high level of expenditure, the troubled Portuguese education system does not perform well. Early leaving and repetition rates are among the highest among EU member states.

   After the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Portugal created a National Health Service, which today consists of 221 hospitals and 512 medical centers employing 33,751 doctors and 41,799 nurses. Like its education system, Portugal's medical system is inefficient. There are long waiting lists for appointments with specialists and for surgical procedures.

   Structural changes in Portugal's economy and society mean that social life in Portugal is not too different from that in other EU member states. A mass consumption society has been created. Televisions, telephones, refrigerators, cars, music equipment, mobile phones, and personal computers are commonplace. Sixty percent of Portuguese households possess at least one automobile, and 65 percent of Portuguese own their own home. Portuguese citizens are more aware of their legal rights than ever before. This has resulted in a trebling of the number of legal proceeding since 1960 and an eight-fold increase in the number of lawyers. In general, Portuguese society has become more permissive and secular; the Catholic Church and the armed forces are much less influential than in the past. Portugal's population is also much more culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse, a consequence of the coming to Portugal of hundreds of thousands of immigrants, mainly from former African colonies.

   Portuguese are becoming more cosmopolitan and sophisticated through the impact of world media, the Internet, and the World Wide Web. A prime case in point came in the summer and early fall of 1999, with the extraordinary events in East Timor and the massive Portuguese popular responses. An internationally monitored referendum in East Timor, Portugal's former colony in the Indonesian archipelago and under Indonesian occupation from late 1975 to summer 1999, resulted in a vote of 78.5 percent for rejecting integration with Indonesia and for independence. When Indonesian prointegration gangs, aided by the Indonesian military, responded to the referendum with widespread brutality and threatened to reverse the verdict of the referendum, there was a spontaneous popular outpouring of protest in the cities and towns of Portugal. An avalanche of Portuguese e-mail fell on leaders and groups in the UN and in certain countries around the world as Portugal's diplomats, perhaps to compensate for the weak initial response to Indonesian armed aggression in 1975, called for the protection of East Timor as an independent state and for UN intervention to thwart Indonesian action. Using global communications networks, the Portuguese were able to mobilize UN and world public opinion against Indonesian actions and aided the eventual independence of East Timor on 20 May 2002.

   From the Revolution of 25 April 1974 until the 1990s, Portugal had a large number of political parties, one of the largest Communist parties in western Europe, frequent elections, and endemic cabinet instability. Since the 1990s, the number of political parties has been dramatically reduced and cabinet stability increased. Gradually, the Portuguese electorate has concentrated around two larger parties, the right-of-center Social Democrats (PSD) and the left-of-center Socialist (PS). In the 1980s, these two parties together garnered 65 percent of the vote and 70 percent of the seats in parliament. In 2005, these percentages had risen to 74 percent and 85 percent, respectively. In effect, Portugal is currently a two-party dominant system in which the two largest parties — PS and PSD—alternate in and out of power, not unlike the rotation of the two main political parties (the Regenerators and the Historicals) during the last decades (1850s to 1880s) of the liberal constitutional monarchy. As Portugal's democracy has consolidated, turnout rates for the eligible electorate have declined. In the 1970s, turnout was 85 percent. In Portugal's most recent parliamentary election (2005), turnout had fallen to 65 percent of the eligible electorate.

   Portugal has benefited greatly from membership in the EU, and whatever doubts remain about the price paid for membership, no Portuguese government in the near future can afford to sever this connection. The vast majority of Portuguese citizens see membership in the EU as a "good thing" and strongly believe that Portugal has benefited from membership. Only the Communist Party opposed membership because it reduces national sovereignty, serves the interests of capitalists not workers, and suffers from a democratic deficit. Despite the high level of support for the EU, Portuguese voters are increasingly not voting in elections for the European Parliament, however. Turnout for European Parliament elections fell from 40 percent of the eligible electorate in the 1999 elections to 38 percent in the 2004 elections.

   In sum, Portugal's turn toward Europe has done much to overcome its backwardness. However, despite the economic, social, and political progress made since 1986, Portugal has a long way to go before it can claim to be on a par with the level found even in Spain, much less the rest of western Europe. As Portugal struggles to move from underde-velopment, especially in the rural areas away from the coast, it must keep in mind the perils of too rapid modern development, which could damage two of its most precious assets: its scenery and environment. The growth and future prosperity of the economy will depend on the degree to which the government and the private sector will remain stewards of clean air, soil, water, and other finite resources on which the tourism industry depends and on which Portugal's world image as a unique place to visit rests. Currently, Portugal is investing heavily in renewable energy from solar, wind, and wave power in order to account for about 50 percent of its electricity needs by 2010. Portugal opened the world's largest solar power plant and the world's first commercial wave power farm in 2006.

   An American documentary film on Portugal produced in the 1970s described this little country as having "a Past in Search of a Future." In the years after the Revolution of 25 April 1974, it could be said that Portugal is now living in "a Present in Search of a Future." Increasingly, that future lies in Europe as an active and productive member of the EU.

   In Portugal's early history, education was firmly under the control of the Catholic Church. The earliest schools were located in cathedrals and monasteries and taught a small number of individuals destined for ecclesiastical office. In 1290, a university was established by King Dinis (1261-1325) in Lisbon, but was moved to Coimbra in 1308, where it remained. Coimbra University, Portugal's oldest, and once its most prestigious, was the educational cradle of Portugal's leadership. From 1555 until the 18th century, primary and secondary education was provided by the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). The Catholic Church's educational monopoly was broken when the Marquis of Pombal expelled the Jesuits in 1759 and created the basis for Portugal's present system of public, secular primary and secondary schools. Pombal introduced vocational training, created hundreds of teaching posts, added departments of mathematics and natural sciences at Coimbra University, and established an education tax to pay for them.

   During the 19th century, liberals attempted to reform Portugal's educational system, which was highly elitist and emphasized rote memorization and respect for authority, hierarchy, and discipline.

   Reforms initiated in 1822, 1835, and 1844 were never actualized, however, and education remained unchanged until the early 20th century. After the overthrow of the monarchy on the Fifth of October 1910 by Republican military officers, efforts to reform Portugal's educational system were renewed. New universities were founded in Lisbon and Oporto, a Ministry of Education was established, and efforts were made to increase literacy (illiteracy rates being 80 percent) and to resecularize educational content by introducing more scientific and empirical methods into the curriculum.

   Such efforts were ended during the military dictatorship (192632), which governed Portugal until the establishment of the Estado Novo (1926-74). Although a new technical university was founded in Lisbon in 1930, little was done during the Estado Novo to modernize education or to reduce illiteracy. Only in 1964 was compulsory primary education made available for children between the ages of 6 and 12.

   The Revolution of 25 April 1974 disrupted Portugal's educational system. For a period of time after the Revolution, students, faculty, and administrators became highly politicized as socialists, communists, and other groups attempted to gain control of the schools. During the 1980s, as Portuguese politics moderated, the educational system was gradually depoliticized, greater emphasis was placed on learning, and efforts were made to improve the quality of Portuguese schools.

   Primary education in Portugal consists of four years in the primary (first) cycle and two years in the preparatory, or second, cycle. The preparatory cycle is intended for children going on to secondary education. Secondary education is roughly equivalent to junior and senior high schools in the United States. It consists of three years of a common curriculum and two years of complementary courses (10th and 11th grades). A final year (12th grade) prepares students to take university entrance examinations.

   Vocational education was introduced in 1983. It consists of a three-year course in a particular skill after the 11th grade of secondary school.

   Higher education is provided by the four older universities (Lisbon, Coimbra, Oporto, and the Technical University of Lisbon), as well as by six newer universities, one in Lisbon and the others in Minho, Aveiro, Évora, the Algarve, and the Azores. There is also a private Catholic university in Lisbon. Admission to Portuguese universities is highly competitive, and places are limited. About 10 percent of secondary students go on to university education. The average length of study at the university is five years, after which students receive their licentiate. The professoriate has four ranks (professors, associate professors, lecturers, and assistants). Professors have tenure, while the other ranks teach on contract.

   As Portugal is a unitary state, the educational system is highly centralized. All public primary and secondary schools, universities, and educational institutes are under the purview of the Ministry of Education, and all teachers and professors are included in the civil service and receive pay and pension like other civil servants. The Ministry of Education hires teachers, determines curriculum, sets policy, and pays for the building and upkeep of schools. Local communities have little say in educational matters.

   Traditional urban song and music sung by a man or woman, to the accompaniment of two stringed instruments. The Portuguese word, fado, derives from the Latin word for fate ( fatum), and the fado's usage does not distinguish the sex of the singer. Traditionally, wherever the fado is performed, the singer, the fadista—who is often but not always a woman wearing a shawl around her shoulders—is accompanied by the Portuguese guitarra, a 12-stringed mandolin-like instrument or lute, and the viola, a Spanish guitar. There are at least two contemporary variations of the fado: the Lisbon fado and the Coimbra or university student fado. While some authorities describe the song as typical of the urban working classes, its popularity and roots are wider than only this group and it appears that, although the song's historic origins are urban and working class, its current popularity is more universal. The historic origins of the fado are not only obscure but hotly debated among scholars and would-be experts. Some suggest that its origins are Brazilian and African, while others detect a Muslim, North African element mixed with Hispanic.

   After the Revolution of 25 April 1974, there was talk that the fado's days were numbered as a popular song because it seemed an obsolete, regime-encouraged entertainment, which, like a drug or soporific, encouraged passivity. In the new Portugal, however, the fado is still popular among various classes, as well as among an increasingly large number of visitors and tourists. The fado is performed in restaurants, cafes, and special fado houses, not only in Portugal and other Lusophone countries like Brazil, but wherever Portuguese communities gather abroad. Although there do not appear to be schools of fado, fadistas learn their trade by apprenticeship to senior performers, both men and women.

   In fado history, Portugal's most celebrated fadista was Amália Rodrigues, who died in 1999. She made her premier American debut in New York's Carnegie Hall in the 1950s, at about the same time Americans were charmed by a popular song of the day, April in Portugal, an American version of a traditional Portuguese fado called Fado de Coimbra, about Coimbra University's romantic traditions. The most celebrated fadista of the first decade of the 21st century is Marisa dos Reis Nunes, with the stage name of Mariza, who embodies a new generation of singers' contemporary interpretation of fado. The predominant tone of the Lisbon variation of the fado, sung often in the areas of Alfama, Mouraria, Bairro Alto, and Alcântara, is that of nostalgia and saudade — sadness and regret. Traditionally, the Coimbra version has a lighter, less somber tone.

    See also Santos, José Manuel Cerqueira Afonso.

   The only major river in Portugal with its sources entirely inside Portugal. The Mondego River rises in the Estrela mountain range, flows through Coimbra and into the Atlantic Ocean north of the Tagus River. Associated with the romantic songs (including fado) and poetry of Coimbra University students in tradition, the Mondego is a picturesque sight as it flows to the sea through Beira Alta and Beira Baixa districts. The Mondego is about 280 kilometers (130 miles) long.

    See also Coimbra, University of.

   A generation of Portuguese writers and intellectuals and a postregeneration phase of the country's intellectual history in the last third of the 19th century. Many of them graduates of Coimbra University, these writers, whose work challenged conventional wisdom of their day, included J. Oliveira Martins, economist and social scientist; Eça de Queirós, novelist; Antero de Quental, poet; Ramalho Ortigão, editor and essayist; Teófilo Braga, literary historian; and the geographer and diplomat abroad, Jaime Batalha Reis. Coming of political age at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, the French Commune, and the French Third Republic (1870-71), these Portuguese intellectuals believed that economically weak Portugal had a polity and society in the grip of a pervasive decadence and inertia. They called for reform and renewal.

   Critical of romanticism, they were realists and neorealists and espoused the ideas of Karl Marx, Pierre Proudhon, and Auguste Comte. They called for revolution through the establishment of republicanism and socialism, and they were convinced that Portugal's backwardness and poverty were due primarily to the ancient influences of a weakened monarchy and the Catholic Church. This group of like-minded but also distinctive thinkers had an important impact on Portuguese letters and elite culture, but only a minor effect on contemporary politics and government.

   Like so many other movements in modern Portugal, the Generation of 1870's initiatives began as essentially a protest by university students of Coimbra, who confronted the status quo and sought to change their world by means of change and innovation in action and ideas. In certain respects, Portugal's Generation of 1870 resembled neighboring Spain's Generation of 1898, which began its "rebellion" in ideas following a disastrous foreign war (the Spanish-American War, 1898).

(19061980)

   Marcello Caetano, as the last prime minister of the Estado Novo, was both the heir and successor of Antônio de Oliveira Salazar. In a sense, Caetano was one of the founders and sustainers of this unusual regime and, at various crucial stages of its long life, Caetano's contribution was as important as Salazar's.

   Born in Lisbon in 1906 to a middle-class family, Caetano was a member of the student generation that rebelled against the unstable parliamentary First Republic and sought answers to Portugal's legion of troubles in conservative ideologies such as integralism, Catholic reformism, and the Italian Fascist model. One of the most brilliant students at the University of Lisbon's Law School, Caetano soon became directly involved in government service in various ministries, including Salazar's Ministry of Finance. When Caetano was not teaching full-time at the law school in Lisbon and influencing new generations of students who became critical of the regime he helped construct, Caetano was in important government posts and working on challenging assignments. In the 1930s, he participated in reforms in the Ministry of Finance, in the writing of the 1933 Constitution, in the formation of the new civil code, of which he was in part the author, and in the construction of corporativism, which sought to control labor-management relations and other aspects of social engineering. In a regime largely directed by academics from the law faculties of Coimbra University and the University of Lisbon, Caetano was the leading expert on constitutional law, administrative law, political science, and colonial law. A prolific writer as both a political scientist and historian, Caetano was the author of the standard political science, administrative law, and history of law textbooks, works that remained in print and in use among students long after his exile and death.

   After his apprenticeship service in a number of ministries, Caetano rose steadily in the system. At age 38, he was named minister for the colonies (1944 47), and unlike many predecessors, he "went to see for himself" and made important research visits to Portugal's African territories. In 1955-58, Caetano served in the number-three position in the regime in the Ministry of the Presidency of the Council (premier's office); he left office for full-time academic work in part because of his disagreements with Salazar and others on regime policy and failures to reform at the desired pace. In 1956 and 1957, Caetano briefly served as interim minister of communications and of foreign affairs.

   Caetano's opportunity to take Salazar's place and to challenge even more conservative forces in the system came in the 1960s. Portugal's most prominent law professor had a public falling out with the regime in March 1962, when he resigned as rector of Lisbon University following a clash between rebellious students and the PIDE, the political police. When students opposing the regime organized strikes on the University of Lisbon campus, Caetano resigned his rectorship after the police invaded the campus and beat and arrested some students, without asking permission to enter university premises from university authorities.

   When Salazar became incapacitated in September 1968, President Américo Tomás named Caetano prime minister. His tasks were formidable: in the midst of remarkable economic growth in Portugal, continued heavy immigration of Portuguese to France and other countries, and the costly colonial wars in three African colonies, namely Angola, Guinea- Bissau, and Mozambique, the regime struggled to engineer essential social and political reforms, win the wars in Africa, and move toward meaningful political reforms. Caetano supported moderately important reforms in his first two years in office (1968-70), as well as the drafting of constitutional revisions in 1971 that allowed a slight liberalization of the Dictatorship, gave the opposition more room for activity, and decentrali zed authority in the overseas provinces (colonies). Always aware of the complexity of Portugal's colonial problems and of the ongoing wars, Caetano made several visits to Africa as premier, and he sought to implement reforms in social and economic affairs while maintaining the expensive, divisive military effort, Portugal's largest armed forces mobilization in her history.

   Opposed by intransigent right-wing forces in various sectors in both Portugal and Africa, Caetano's modest "opening" of 1968-70 soon narrowed. Conservative forces in the military, police, civil service, and private sectors opposed key political reforms, including greater democratization, while pursuing the military solution to the African crisis and personal wealth. A significant perspective on Caetano's failed program of reforms, which could not prevent the advent of a creeping revolution in society, is a key development in the 1961-74 era of colonial wars: despite Lisbon's efforts, the greater part of Portuguese emigration and capital investment during this period were directed not to the African colonies but to Europe, North America, and Brazil.

   Prime Minister Caetano, discouraged by events and by opposition to his reforms from the so-called "Rheumatic Brigade" of superannuated regime loyalists, attempted to resign his office, but President Américo Tomás convinced him to remain. The publication and public reception of African hero General Antônio Spinola's best-selling book Portugal e Futuro (Portugal and the Future) in February 1974 convinced the surprised Caetano that a coup and revolution were imminent. When the virtually bloodless, smoothly operating military coup was successful in what became known as the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Caetano surrendered to the Armed Forces Movement in Lisbon and was flown to Madeira Island and later to exile in Brazil, where he remained for the rest of his life. In his Brazilian exile, Caetano was active writing important memoirs and histories of the Estado Novo from his vantage point, teaching law at a private university in Rio de Janeiro, and carrying on a lively correspondence with persons in Portugal. He died at age 74, in 1980, in Brazil.

    See also Empire, Portuguese overseas.

(1872-1918)

   Leading political figure during the First Republic, minister to Berlin for the republic, and ill-fated president of the republic (1917-18) as well as founder of the New Republic system. Born in the Minho district to a family of modest means, Sidónio Pais was one of the most brilliant students in mathematics of his generation at Coimbra University, the pre-1926 crucible for so many of Portugal's future political leaders. Following his doctorate in mathematics at Coimbra, he became a faculty member at that institution and entered republican politics. He joined Brito Camacho's moderate republican party, the Unionists, and served as Portugal's minister to Berlin, 1912-16.

   A reserve army major, Pais was ambitious as well as idealist ic, and sought to reform the republic's turbulent, inefficient system. He headed the military coup and insurrection of 5-8 December 1917, which overthrew the Afonso Costa government and ousted the Portuguese Republican Party from power. Sidónio Pais engineered a novel regime called the New Republic during 1917-18 and was elected president of the republic in the spring of 1918. This new government sought to reconcile monarchists and republicans and to stabilize politics. Described by admirers as "half prince, half condottiere" Sidónio Pais's experiment was short-lived and soon collapsed in chaos. Pais was assassinated by a fanatic republican at Rossio railroad station on 14 December 1918.

(1887-1918)

   Visionary Portuguese painter whose work was the precursor of modern art in Portugal. He was born in Amarante in 1887, into a wealthy family and studied law at Coimbra University. He left Coimbra in 1905, before finishing his law studies, and began studying architecture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lisbon. He did not find the architecture course stimulating enough and left for Paris in 1906, settling in Montparnasse. At first, he did drawings and caricatures but later dedicated himself to painting. Souza-Cardoso's work can be characterized as impressionist, expressionist, cubist, and futurist. He showed his work in 1910, in Paris, along with Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi, and Juan Gris. In 1913, eight of his paintings were displayed at the famous Armory Show in New York City. In 1914, he worked with Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona.

   His time in Spain was ended by the outbreak of the World War I, and he returned to Lisbon, where he began to experiment with new forms of expression. In 1916, he showed 114 cubist works in Oporto and Lisbon. His career was cut short when he contracted pneumonia and died on 25 October 1918. His must famous works are Saut du Lapin (1911), Cabeça (1913), Entrada (1917), and Pintura (1917). In 1935, the Portuguese state established a prize to recognize modernist painters called the "Prémio Souza-Cardoso."

   The Catholic Church and the Catholic religion together represent the oldest and most enduring of all Portuguese institutions. Because its origins as an institution go back at least to the middle of the third century, if not earlier, the Christian and later the Catholic Church is much older than any other Portuguese institution or major cultural influence, including the monarchy (lasting 770 years) or Islam (540 years). Indeed, it is older than Portugal (869 years) itself. The Church, despite its changing doctrine and form, dates to the period when Roman Lusitania was Christianized.

   In its earlier period, the Church played an important role in the creation of an independent Portuguese monarchy, as well as in the colonization and settlement of various regions of the shifting Christian-Muslim frontier as it moved south. Until the rise of absolutist monarchy and central government, the Church dominated all public and private life and provided the only education available, along with the only hospitals and charity institutions. During the Middle Ages and the early stage of the overseas empire, the Church accumulated a great deal of wealth. One historian suggests that, by 1700, one-third of the land in Portugal was owned by the Church. Besides land, Catholic institutions possessed a large number of chapels, churches and cathedrals, capital, and other property.

   Extensive periods of Portuguese history witnessed either conflict or cooperation between the Church as the monarchy increasingly sought to gain direct control of the realm. The monarchy challenged the great power and wealth of the Church, especially after the acquisition of the first overseas empire (1415-1580). When King João III requested the pope to allow Portugal to establish the Inquisition (Holy Office) in the country and the request was finally granted in 1531, royal power, more than religion was the chief concern. The Inquisition acted as a judicial arm of the Catholic Church in order to root out heresies, primarily Judaism and Islam, and later Protestantism. But the Inquisition became an instrument used by the crown to strengthen its power and jurisdiction.

   The Church's power and prestige in governance came under direct attack for the first time under the Marquis of Pombal (1750-77) when, as the king's prime minister, he placed regalism above the Church's interests. In 1759, the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal, although they were allowed to return after Pombal left office. Pombal also harnessed the Inquisition and put in place other anticlerical measures. With the rise of liberalism and the efforts to secularize Portugal after 1820, considerable Church-state conflict occurred. The new liberal state weakened the power and position of the Church in various ways: in 1834, all religious orders were suppressed and their property confiscated both in Portugal and in the empire and, in the 1830s and 1840s, agrarian reform programs confiscated and sold large portions of Church lands. By the 1850s, Church-state relations had improved, various religious orders were allowed to return, and the Church's influence was largely restored. By the late 19th century, Church and state were closely allied again. Church roles in all levels of education were pervasive, and there was a popular Catholic revival under way.

   With the rise of republicanism and the early years of the First Republic, especially from 1910 to 1917, Church-state relations reached a new low. A major tenet of republicanism was anticlericalism and the belief that the Church was as much to blame as the monarchy for the backwardness of Portuguese society. The provisional republican government's 1911 Law of Separation decreed the secularization of public life on a scale unknown in Portugal. Among the new measures that Catholics and the Church opposed were legalization of divorce, appropriation of all Church property by the state, abolition of religious oaths for various posts, suppression of the theology school at Coimbra University, abolition of saints' days as public holidays, abolition of nunneries and expulsion of the Jesuits, closing of seminaries, secularization of all public education, and banning of religious courses in schools.

   After considerable civil strife over the religious question under the republic, President Sidónio Pais restored normal relations with the Holy See and made concessions to the Portuguese Church. Encouraged by the apparitions at Fátima between May and October 1917, which caused a great sensation among the rural people, a strong Catholic reaction to anticlericalism ensued. Backed by various new Catholic organizations such as the "Catholic Youth" and the Academic Center of Christian Democracy (CADC), the Catholic revival influenced government and politics under the Estado Novo. Prime Minister Antônio de Oliveira Salazar was not only a devout Catholic and member of the CADC, but his formative years included nine years in the Viseu Catholic Seminary preparing to be a priest. Under the Estado Novo, Church-state relations greatly improved, and Catholic interests were protected. On the other hand, Salazar's no-risk statism never went so far as to restore to the Church all that had been lost in the 1911 Law of Separation. Most Church property was never returned from state ownership and, while the Church played an important role in public education to 1974, it never recovered the influence in education it had enjoyed before 1911.

   Today, the majority of Portuguese proclaim themselves Catholic, and the enduring nature of the Church as an institution seems apparent everywhere in the country. But there is no longer a monolithic Catholic faith; there is growing diversity of religious choice in the population, which includes an increasing number of Protestant Portuguese as well as a small but growing number of Muslims from the former Portuguese empire. The Muslim community of greater Lisbon erected a Mosque which, ironically, is located near the Spanish Embassy. In the 1990s, Portugal's Catholic Church as an institution appeared to be experiencing a revival of influence. While Church attendance remained low, several Church institutions retained an importance in society that went beyond the walls of the thousands of churches: a popular, flourishing Catholic University; Radio Re-nascenca, the country's most listened to radio station; and a new private television channel owned by the Church. At an international conference in Lisbon in September 2000, the Cardinal Patriarch of Portugal, Dom José Policarpo, formally apologized to the Jewish community of Portugal for the actions of the Inquisition. At the deliberately selected location, the place where that religious institution once held its hearings and trials, Dom Policarpo read a declaration of Catholic guilt and repentance and symbolically embraced three rabbis, apologizing for acts of violence, pressures to convert, suspicions, and denunciation.

(1871-1937)

   Leading political and government figure of the first parliamentary republic (1910-26), Portuguese Republican Party (PRP) leader, and notable lawyer. Afonso Costa, like so many Portuguese political figures in the 20th century, was trained as a lawyer and taught as a law professor at a university, in his case, Coimbra University. A brilliant student and a radical activist in student politics in his day, Costa soon both embodied and symbolized radical republican politics and the effort to replace the monarchy. As minister of justice in the 1910-11 provisional government of the turbulent First Republic, Afonso Costa was the author of radical anticlerical laws that helped to polarize the political struggles of the fledgling representative system.

   The leader of the radical wing of the PRP, known in that day as "The Democrats," Afonso Costa was the youngest cabinet officer in the provisional government, at age 39. A small but tenacious man, he was a strong speaker and debater in the noisy sessions of the republic's congress. Afonso Costa was prime minister three times during the First Republic (1913-14, 1915-16, and April-December 1917). His third premiership was abruptly ended with the Sidônio Pais military coup of 8 December 1917. Costa was arrested but soon went into exile in Paris. Except for a few visits to Portugal, Costa remained in Paris as an international lawyer with a lucrative practice. Although asked to "save the republic" by taking office again, Costa refused. Following a period in which he conspired from abroad to overthrow the dictatorship, he died in Paris in 1937.

(1845-1900)

   Nineteenth-century Portugal's greatest novelist and essayist, the author of modern classics in the form of satirical novels that are still popular and considered to be relevant to contemporary concerns in Portugal. Next to Luís de Camões and Fernando Pessoa, Eça de Queirós is the most studied, discussed, and written about Portuguese writer in modern times. He was a student at Coimbra University and a distinguished member of the so-called Generation of 1870, which challenged both the academic establishment and the governing elite of its day. This brilliant, prolific novelist and essayist spent much of his post-university life abroad in Portugal's foreign and consular service. His largely realist novels portrayed Portuguese society of 1870-1900 with wit, satire, humor, and wisdom. He died in Paris in 1900, leaving behind a large body of novels and essays, published and unpublished.

    See also Literature.

(1874-1955)

   Pioneer physician and neurosurgeon, sometime republican political figure, and minister during the First Republic, and Portugal's only Nobel Prize winner until 1998 (when the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to José Saramago). Trained as a doctor at Coimbra University's medical school, Egas Moniz was named a professor in 1902. In 1911, after having studied at several clinics in France, he was transferred to the Chair of Neurology at the University of Lisbon.

   In 1903, he began his involvement in politics when he was elected a deputy to the monarchy's parliament. During the early and middle phases of the First Republic, Egas Moniz became one of the more important moderate republican personalities in the Constituent Assembly, a leading member of José Almeida's Evolutionist Party, a founder of the Centrist Party, and a staunch supporter of presidentialism and President Sidônio Pais. In a sense a prophet without honor during some of the more difficult phases of the turbulent republic, Egas Moniz was Portugal's minister to Spain in 1917-18, then minister of foreign affairs. During 1919, he headed Portugal's delegation to the Versailles Peace Conference. Exhausted and disillusioned with politics and government service by mid-1919, he devoted the remainder of his active life to medical practice and neurological research and writing.

   In 1927, after intensive experimentation, Egas Moniz performed the first cerebral angiography on a patient; this X-ray provided vital information on the brain in terms of blood circulation within it, the most significant finding in half a century. In 1935, he pioneered a new type of brain operation. His great contributions to medicine and to neurosurgery were finally recognized in 1949, when he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Medicine for the discovery of the uses of leucotomy in certain psychoses. His two fascinating memoirs ( Confidencias de um Investigador Científico, 1949, and A Nossa Casa, 1950) are among the more significant and prescient of Portuguese memorial works in modern times. A tenacious collector of plastic arts, his collection is housed in the Egas Moniz House-Museum at Avança (near Aveiro), northern Portugal, and other memorabilia related to this outstanding scientist are located in the Egas Moniz Museum, Lisbon.

(1866-1929)

   Leading political figure in the First Republic, stalwart of republican politics, and the only president of the republic to serve a full term of office during that political experience (1910-26). Like a number of the leading political figures of his generation, Almeida was educated at Coimbra University's medical school and was a staunch republican opponent of the monarchy. Almeida was reputedly the finest speaker and debater of the republican leaders. When the provisional government was named following the Republican Revolution of 5 October 1910, Almeida was included. Compared to Afonso Costa, a moderate republican, Almeida was involved in the fragmenting of the Republican Party (PRP) in 1911-12 and formed an alternate Republican Party, the Evolutionist Republican Party (PRE) or Evolutionists. Almeida headed one government as prime minister (1916-17), but rapidly became exhausted and disillusioned by the First Republic's unstable, ineffective politics and government. After the assassination of Sidónio Pais in late 1918, and the failed right-wing revolution of 1919, Almeida declared himself nonpartisan and his party, the PRE, was dissolved. Loyal to the idea of the republic, however, Almeida wished to serve in some capacity. Due to his image of being above the political fray, he was elected by the congress as president of the republic and served his full term (1919-23). Prematurely aged by the experience, he withdrew from politics and died in Lisbon in 1929.

    See also Political parties.

   Portugal's national epic poem of the Age of Discoveries, written by the nation's most celebrated poet, Luís de Camões. Published in 1572, toward the end of the adventurous life of Camões, Os Lusíadas is the most famous and most often-quoted piece of literature in Portugal. Modeled in part on the style and format of Virgil's Aeneid, Os Lusíadas is the story of Portugal's long history, and features an evocation of the Portuguese navigator Vasco da Gama's epic discovery of the sea route from Portugal to Asia. Part of the epic poem was composed when Camões was in royal service in Portugal's Asian empire, including in Goa and Macau. While the dramatic framework is dominated by various deities from classical literature, much of what is described in Portugal, Africa, and Asia is real and accurately rendered by the classically educated (at Coimbra University) Camões, who witnessed both the apogee and the beginning of decline of Portugal's seaborne empire and world power.

   While the poet praises imperial power and greatness, Camões features a prescient naysayer: "The Old Man of Restelo," on the beach where Vasco da Gama is about to embark for Indian adventures, criticizes Portuguese expansion beyond Africa to Asia. Camões was questioning the high price of an Asian empire, and gave voice to those anti-imperialists and "Doubting Thomases" in the country who opposed more overseas expansion beyond Africa. It is interesting to note that in the Portuguese language usage and tradition since the establishment of The Lusiads as a national poem, "The Old Man of Restelo" ("O Velho do Restelo") came to symbolize not a wise Cassandra with timely warnings that Portugal would be fatally weakened by empire and might fall prey to neighboring Spain, but merely a Doubting Thomas in popular sentiment. The Lusiads soon became universally celebrated and accepted, and it has been translated into many languages. In the history of criticism in Portugal, more has been written about Camões and The Lusiads than about any other author or work in Portuguese literature, now more than a thousand years in the making.

(1885-1954)

   Career Portuguese diplomat whose extraordinary assistance to Jewish and other refugees in 1940 France led to his career's ruin, but posthumous fame and recognition. A conventional member of Portugal's governing elite and devoutly Catholic, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was educated like his twin brother, who was also a diplomat, at Coimbra University. He entered Portugal's foreign service, consular track, in 1910 and served in a variety of posts in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. Less successful as a diplomat than his brother César, who briefly served as foreign minister and attained the rank of ambassador, Aristides de Sousa Mendes was assigned to be Portuguese consul in Bordeaux, France, in 1938. When thousands of desperate refugees fleeing the German armies poured into Sousa Mendes's consulate in June 1940, Lisbon ordered him to cease signing visas to enter Portugal.

   Defying his superiors' orders, Sousa Mendes signed perhaps as many as 20,000-30,000 visas, after deciding not to charge fees to applicants. Because of his action in Bordeaux and at the Franco-Spanish frontier, where he also assisted refugees to escape the Nazi terror, Sousa Mendes was dismissed from his post and recalled to Lisbon. Following his suspension from service and the granting of a minuscule pension, the former diplomat and his family fell into poverty and obscurity. Through the efforts of his family and helpful foreign diplomats, Israel in 1967 declared Sousa Mendes a Hero of Conscience of World War II and a Righteous Gentile. In the 1980s, Portugal's government officially rehabilitated and recognized posthumously this obscure but heroic figure, and his deeds were celebrated in books, journals, newspaper articles, and TV films.

(1867-1955)

   One of Portugal's most important and influential colonial administrators of the 20th-century African empire, a central figure in the management of Portugal's dispatch of an army to Flanders in World War I, and oppositionist candidate in the 1949 presidential elections. Trained as an army engineer, he attended Coimbra University and became a stalwart republican. During much of the 1890s, he served in Portuguese India, where he came under the influence of the style and policies of the British Raj. During the First Republic, he held a number of important posts in the empire and in Portugal: governor-general of Angola (1912-15), colonial minister (1915), and minister of war (1915-17), during which service he was instrumental in organizing the mobilization and dispatch of Portugal's Expeditionary Force (CEP) to the western front in 1917. Later, he served as high commissioner and governor-general of Angola (1921-24) and was named Portugal's minister to Great Britain (1924-26).

   Dismissed from his London post by the military dictatorship in 1926, Norton de Matos never held an official post again and, as he opposed both the military dictatorship and the Estado Novo, he found it difficult to practice his engineering profession while in retirement from the army. However, he remained important in post-1926 colonial policies and concepts, and attempted to put them into practice after 1945. In 1949, General Norton de Matos was the oppositionist candidate in the presidential elections and opposed the regime incumbent, Marshal Antônio Óscar Carmona. Using the law, police harassment, and other means, the Estado Novo persecuted Norton de Matos's followers and disrupted his campaign. Just before the rigged election was to be held, the aged general withdrew his candidacy, rightfully claiming fraud and intimidation. A tough if liberal reformist in colonial affairs, the senior colonial authority wrote his final book A Nação Una in 1953, calling for the regime to implement his basic reform ideas and to improve treatment of Africans in labor and race relations. Norton de Matos's prescient warnings about African policies were largely ignored, while Lisbon followed his key strategic and development concepts.

    See also Carmona, António Óscar de Fragoso.

   Supposedly the ideology or ideologies characteristic of the Estado Novo developed and directed by Prime Minister An- tónio de Oliveira Salazar (1889-1970), who governed Portugal as premier from 1932 to 1968, and his ruling group of associates and colleagues. Scholars debate why this regime endured so long and the extent to which it was or was not fascist. As to ideologies, Salazar's own education and beliefs were strongly influenced by his Catholic education for nine years in the Seminary at Viseu, by the decrees of Popes Leo X and Pius IX, and by conservative, rural customs. Rather than one ideology, the former Coimbra University economics professor reflected various creeds including Portuguese nationalism, integralism, corporativism doctrines, and various Catholic beliefs that were derived from Thomist teachings, as well as from the writings of the French ideologue Charles Maurras and his disciples. The spirit of Salazarism, if there is any truth to the notion of there being one typical ideology, is founded on a reaction against basic ideas from the French Revolution of individual liberty, fraternity, and equality; against the revolutionary collectivist doctrines including socialism and communism; and against the excesses of politics and government during the ill-fated First Republic (1910-26). Salazar, nevertheless, was not only a man of thought but also a man of action.

    See also Catholic church.