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41 India, Portuguese
Formerly a Portuguese colony, and all that remained of Portugal's Indian holdings of the 16th and 17th centuries, Goa, Damão, and Diu are located on the western coast of the Indian subcontinent. These three enclaves, comprising an area of about 2,473 square kilometers (1,537 square miles), were acquired by Portugal during the 16th century after the initial voyage of Vasco da Gama (1497-99), which discovered the sea route to the Indies from Portugal. Beginning in 1510, Goa was the capital of the Portuguese State of India, which had jurisdiction over Portugal's holdings in eastern Africa as well as in Asia. Goa became not only an administrative capital but a center for religion and education. Various Catholic religious orders, such as the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Jesuits, used Goa as a base for missionary efforts in Asia. Most notable among them was St. Francis Xavier. Goa had a colonial golden age in the 16th and 17th centuries, as churches, seminaries, and colleges flourished. In time, Goa was bypassed, and the capital of Portuguese India was transferred first to Mormugao and then to Pangim.For religious and political reasons, not economic, Portugal held on to Portuguese India when confronted after World War II with Indian nationalism. Pressures to leave Goa, Damão, and Diu mounted throughout the 1950s, following the independence of India in 1947. In December 1961, after numerous alarms and efforts by Indian and Goan nationalists to employ passive resistance to oust Portuguese control, India's Nehru ordered the Indian army to invade, conquer, and annex Goa, Damão, and Diu and incorporate them as part of the Indian Union. With most of its armed forces in the African territories at the time and with Britain refusing to allow the use of British bases to reinforce Portugal's small garrison in Portuguese India, Portuguese armed forces resisted only briefly. Salazar's government dealt harshly with the forces that surrendered in India and were made prisoners of war. Lisbon negotiated their release without enthusiasm. Lisbon affected to ignore the facts of India's conquest, annexation, and absorption of former Portuguese India; refused to recognize the action's legality internationally; and continued to seat "deputies" from "Portuguese India" in the National Assembly of Portugal until the Revolution of 25 April 1974. Resentment against Salazar's treatment of the army in India was one of the stated reasons later for the military conspiracy and 1974 coup of the Armed Forces Movement. -
42 Sebastião I, king
(1554-1578)The king of Portugal whose disappearance and death in battle in Morocco in 1578 led to a succession crisis and to Spain's annexation of Portugal in 1580. He is the person after whom the cult and mythology of Sebastianism is named. Sebastião succeeded to the throne of Portugal at the tender age of three, upon the death of his father King João III in 1557. With his great-uncle Cardinal Henrique, he was the only other surviving legitimate male member of the Aviz dynasty. The Spanish menace loomed on Portugal's eastern horizons, as Phillip II of Spain gathered more reasons to make good his own strong claims to the Portuguese throne. A headstrong youth, Sebastião dreamed of glory in battle against the Muslims and was certainly influenced by the example of the feats of Phillip II's half-brother Don Juan of Austria and the naval victory against the Turks at Lepanto in 1571.Sebastião's great project was a victory in Africa, and he ordered a major effort to raise a fleet and army to attack Morocco. His forces landed at Tangier and Arzila and marched to meet the Muslim armies. In early August 1578, at the battle of Alcácer- Quivir, Portugal's army was destroyed by Muslim forces, and the king himself was lost. Although he was undoubtedly killed, his body was never found. The result of this foolhardy enterprise changed the course of Portugal's history and gave rise to the cult and myth that Sebastião survived and would return one foggy morning to make Portugal great once again. -
43 São Tomé and Príncipe
Comprising a former colony of Portugal, these two islands of volcanic origin are located in the Gulf of Guinea, West Africa. The Portuguese first found these tropical islands about 1471, and efforts to settle them began in 1486 on São Tomé and about 1500 on Príncipe Island. Portugal settled them withAfrican slaves from the mainland. A significant portion of the Africans who were forced to work the coffee and cocoa plantations were from Angola, and some were from the Cape Verde Islands. The early economy of the islands was dominated by sugar as plantations were established, based on the systems pioneered earlier in Madeira and the Cape Verdes. In the 19th and 20th centuries, however, coffee and cocoa plantations were developed. The cocoa plantations, which were owned largely by Portuguese from Portugal, produced the raw material for chocolate and soon formed the principal wealth of this colony.In the early 20th century, forced labor practices and other labor abuses on the Portuguese-owned plantations drew worldwide attention through the famous writings of the British investigative reporter-writer, Henry W. Nevinson. Portugal's colonial rule there, as well as in Angola and Mozambique, whose excesses were now exposed in newspapers and books, also came under the scrutiny of leading humanitarian organizations in London and elsewhere. Although Portugal defended colonial rule in this case and made reform efforts, tragically extensive labor abuse in the islands persisted into the middle of the 20th century. The islands were not involved in a war of African insurgency. In 1975, Portugal granted independence to the archipelago, whose official language of government and instruction remains Portuguese. -
44 Costa Gomes, Francisco da
(1914-2001)Career military officer, key personality, and authority in transition from dictatorship to democracy, and president of the republic. Born in the remote, poor, Trás-Os-Montes district, Costa Gomes was trained as an army officer and gained experience and promotions in many postings in Portugal's overseas empire from Macau, China, to Angola and Mozambique. As a lieutenant colonel in the post of undersecretary of the army in April 1961, he was implicated in a military coup plot to overthrow Prime Minister Antônio de Oliveira Salazar. Although he was fired, Costa Gomes rebuilt his bridges, was promoted to brigadier general in 1964, and soon was appointed to important commands in the colonial wars in Portuguese Africa: first in Mozambique (1965-69) and then in Angola (1970-72). In September 1972, he returned to Portugal as head of the joint chiefs of staff, a post he kept until he broke with Prime Minister Marcello Caetano in early 1974.During the last part of Caetano's governance, General Costa Gomes, in tandem with his senior, more famous and charismatic colleague in arms, General Antônio de Spínola, was involved in activities that led to the organization of a successful military coup on 25 April 1974, which overthrew the 48-year-old Estado Novo. Although younger officers did most of the work organizing this action, Costa Gomes played a key role, including authorizing the publication of the sensational book by General Spínola, Portugal e o Futuro, published only two months before the Revolution of Carnations in February 1974. Spinola's book acknowledged that Portugal had to find a political not a military solution to the wars in her African colonies, and the public reception of the work helped prepare the atmosphere for a bloodless coup.After the successful coup by the Armed Forces Movement and the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Costa Gomes was appointed chief of defense staff. When General Spínola resigned in September 1974, Costa Gomes became president, a post he ably filled until June 1976, when General Ramalho Eanes was elected president of the republic. Costa Gomes soon withdrew from the public eye, but in 1981 was promoted to Portugal's highest military rank of marshal.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Costa Gomes, Francisco da
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45 Guinea-Bissau
Former West African colony of Portugal until its independence in September 1974, Guinea-Bissau (not to be confused with Guinea-Conakry, its neighbor to the east and south) was the scene of Portuguese activity, at least on the coast, since the mid-l5th century. Its area is about 22,256 square kilometers (14,000 square miles). Portugal established a few forts and trading posts on the coast of what became Guinea-Bissau, and the slave trade became the major economic activity until the mid l9th century. Portugal's coastal presence was not expanded to the tropical interior until the 19th century, when Lisbon supported various so-called "pacification" campaigns. African resistance continued, however, to 1936.With the formation of the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAICG), the principal nationalist movement, in 1956, African resistance increased. Between 1963 and 1974, a war of insurgency against Portuguese colonial rule was fought in the country. Unlike Portugal's territories in southern Africa— Angola and Mozambique — Guinea-Bissau did not have Portuguese settlement of any consequence, and the major private company that dominated the territory's economy (Companhia União Fabril) withdrew most of its assets by 1972. An important part of the alienation and radicalization of the Armed Forces Movement's officers took place in the grueling bush war in Guinea-Bissau. After the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Portugal granted independence to this colony. -
46 Luso-Tropicalism
An anthropological and sociol ogical theory or complex of ideas allegedly showing a process of civilization relating to the significance of Portuguese activity in the tropics of Africa, Asia, and the Americas since 1415. As a theory and method of social science analysis, Luso-Tropicalism is a 20th-century phenomenon that has both academic and political (foreign and colonial policy) relevance. While the theory was based in part on French concepts of the "science of tropicology" in anthropology, it was Gilberto Freyre, an eminent Brazilian sociologist-anthropologist, who developed Luso-Tropicalism as an academic theory of the unique qualities of the Portuguese style of imperial activity in the tropics. In lectures, articles, and books during the period 1930-60, Freyre coined the term Luso-Tropicalism to describe Portuguese civilization in the tropics and to claim that the Portuguese, more than any other European colonizing people, successfully adapted their civilization to the tropics.From 1960 on, the academic theory was co-opted to lend credence to Portugal's colonial policy and determination to continue colonial rule in her large, remaining African empire. Freyre's Luso-Tropicalism theme was featured in the elaborate Fifth Centenary of the Death of Prince Henry the Navigator celebrations held in Lisbon in 1960 and in a massive series of publications produced in the 1960s to defend Portugal's policies in its empire, the first to be established and the last to decolonize in the Third World. Freyre's academic theory and his international prestige as a scholar who had put the sociology of Brazil on the world map were eagerly adopted and adapted by the Estado Novo. A major thesis of this interesting but somewhat disorganized mass of material was that the Portuguese were less racist and prejudiced toward the tropical peoples they encountered than were other Europeans.As African wars of insurgency began in Portugal's empire during 1961-64, and as the United Nations put pressures on Portugal, Luso-Tropicalism was tested and contested not only in academia and the press, but in international politics and diplomacy. Following the decolonization of Portugal's empire during 1974 and 1975 (although Macau remained the last colony to the late 1990s), debate over the notion of Luso-Tropicalism died down. With the onset of the 500-year anniversary celebrations of the Portuguese Age of Discoveries and Exploration, beginning in 1988, however, a whiff of the essence of Luso- Tropicalism reappeared in selected aspects of the commemorative literature. -
47 Sá da Bandeira, the Marquis of
(1795-1876)Famous 19th-century career soldier turned politician, colonial reformer and planner, and statesman. Bernardo de Sá Nogueira de Figueiredo, later named the Marquis of Sá da Bandeira, was a soldier from the young age of 15 who fought against the armies of Napoleon in the Peninsular Wars. The historian Alexandre Herculano described him as "the most illustrious Portuguese of his century." Among the people, he was nicknamed "Sá-the one-handed or "one-armed," since he had lost his right arm in battle. Trained in engineering and mathematics, and with residence abroad, he first made a reputation as an outstanding military leader in the campaigns against the French in Portugal (1811) and in the civil wars of 1828-34.Devoted to the cause of King Pedro IV of maintaining Pedro's young daughter, Maria da Glória, on Portugal's throne, Sá da Bandei-ra's image and style seemed to be in conflict with those of a general more typical of the age of romanticism. Spare in body, methodical and frugal, and serene in spirit, he achieved the highest offices in government, following the triumph of the cause of constitutional monarchy by 1834. Concerned with Portugal's overseas empire, severely weakened by the loss of Brazil in 1822, Sá da Bandeira relentlessly pursued colonial reform plans and efforts to create for Portugal "another Brazil in Africa." Active in politics into his old age, in the 1870s, he worked to bring about reforms of the colonial economy, to move from an economy based on slave trade and slavery to one based on legitimate trade and industry, especially in Angola and Mozambique. This soldier and politician became, in effect, the heart and soul of Portugal's first modern colonial movement, 1835-75.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Sá da Bandeira, the Marquis of
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48 Almeida, Francisco de
(1450?-1510)One of the most notable conquistadores and empire builders of Portugal's early Asian empire and the first viceroy of Portuguese India. Having served the Catholic kings in the Granada campaigns, Almeida was also a skilled navigator-sailor. In 1505, King Manuel I dispatched Almeida to Portuguese India as the first viceroy, with a fleet of 21 ships and about 1,500 soldiers. A ferocious and cruel fighter, Almeida fought his way up the coast of East Africa and along the west coast of India. In early February 1509, Almeida's fleet annihilated a Muslim fleet in the harbor of Diu, ensuring Portugal's naval supremacy in the Indian Ocean for more than a century, one of the more decisive naval engagements in world maritime history. Having served as viceroy successfully during 1506-09 when replaced by Afonso de Albuquerque, under orders from King Manuel, Almeida obstinately refused to step down. Orders from Portugal arrived via a fleet in India in October 1509, and Almeida was forced to accept the fact of his dismissal. On his return to Portugal, when landing near the Cape of Good Hope, Almeida was killed in a skirmish with Africans. -
49 Balsemão, Francisco
(1937-)Lawyer, journalist, publisher, political leader, and media magnate. From a wealthy, well-connected family, Balsemão was educated as an attorney at the Law Faculty, University of Lisbon, like so many of his country's leaders in modern times. He began to practice law and write for newspapers in the early 1960s. In the 1969 general elections, he entered politics as a leader in the "liberal wing" of the regime's sole political party or movement, the Acção Nacional Popular, successor of the União Nacional. Soon discouraged by the failure of reform efforts, he resigned his seat in the National Assembly during the last years of Marcello Caetano's governance. In January 1973, he began publishing and editing a new newspaper, the independent Lisbon weekly Expresso, whose modern format, spirit, reform ideas, and muted criticism of the regime attracted much public interest.As part of a new wave of more liberal urban opinion among the better-educated classes, Balsemao's influential weekly paper helped prepare public opinion for change and for "an opening" in a closed system while Portugal moved toward revolutionary times, 1974-75. Expresso took as its models contemporary French and British investigative journalism, adapted to Portugal, and the paper was instrumental in promoting the colonial war hero General Antônio Spínola as a new leader who could solve the political impasse. The paper also featured excerpts from General Spinola's sensational book on Portugal's future and the wars in Africa, published in February 1974. Expresso thus helped prepare Portuguese public opinion for the military's intervention in the coup that brought about the Revolution of 25 April 1974. Following 1974, Balsemão became a leader in the Social Democratic Party (PSD). After the sudden death of the PSD leader, Sá Carneiro, in a mysterious air crash in 1980, Balsemão became PSD leader and served as prime minister from January 1981 to June 1983. In the 1990s, he helped finance and launch one of Portugal's first private television channels. -
50 Carreira da Índia
The roundtrip Portugal-India-Portugal voyage during the16th, 17th, and 18th centuries, in the age of sail. Undoubtedly the longest and most arduous of all such sea voyages by sail during the age of European expansion, the Carreira da Índia, including a stay in Goa, Portuguese India, lasted about a year and a half; its scheduling was conditioned by tropical winds, including the Indian Ocean monsoon. The first Carreira da Índia, in effect, was Vasco da Gama's pioneering voyage of 1497-99. Subsequent annual India fleet voyages lasted until the age of steam in the 19th century and were even longer than the similar Spanish voyage, Car-rera de Filipinas, the annual voyage of the Manila galleon across the Pacific to Mexico (1565-1815).The Carreira da Índia, which began with the voyage from Portugal to the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and on to western India (Goa), some six or seven months on the way out, with a return voyage of a similar length, covered 9,000-10,000 miles one way and was subject to complex tides, winds, and other weather conditions resulting in numerous shipwrecks. The timing of the India fleet's departure from Portugal was based on the timing of the southwest monsoon, which begins in western India in early June. India-bound fleets left Lisbon, therefore, in time to round the Cape of Good Hope in July, in order to reach Goa by September. The ships on these trade-oriented voyages were usually carracks or galleons of increasingly greater tonnage. Outward-bound fleets included from seven to 14 ships, while homeward-bound fleets often had only half that number. Built often of Indian teak or European pine or oak, the India fleet's ships carried several thousand persons on board. As this seaborne empire aged, however, recruiting skilled, experienced crews of sufficient size was increasingly a problem. There is a significant early modern literature in Portuguese that treats the subject of India fleet shipwrecks and related tragedies. -
51 Carvalho, Otelo Saraiva de
(1934-)Army major who planned and managed the military operational aspects of the military coup that overthrew the Estado Novo. A career army officer who entered his profession in the 1950s, he held important positions in several of the colonial wars in Portugal's African territories during 1961-74. Saraiva de Carvalho was born in Mozambique in 1934, and made it his life's ambition to become a stage actor. In his career, he was influenced by service with Portugal's most senior army officer, General Antônio de Spínola, who served the Estado Novo both as commissioner and commanding general of armed forces in the colony of Guinea- Bissau. Contact with African nationalist elements, as well as familiarity with increasi ngly available Marxist-Leninist literature both in Africa and in Portugal, transformed Saraiva de Carvalho into a maverick and revolutionary who sought to overthrow the Portuguese dictatorship at home by means of military intervention in politics through the Revolution of 25 April 1974.Known as "Otelo" (Othello) in the media and to much of the Portuguese public, Saraiva de Carvalho played a significant role in the period of 25 April 1974-25 November 1975, when the country experienced a leftist revolution and a trend toward a dictatorship of the Left. Eventually the head of COPCON, the Armed Forces Movement's special unit for enforcing "law and order" and for ensuring that the government was not overthrown by military insur-rectionism, Saraiva de Carvalho became a political personality in his own right. This somberly handsome figure became the darling of the radical Left, including anarchist factions.With the swing of the political pendulum away from the radical Left after the abortive leftist coup of 25 November 1975, Carvalho's military career was ended and his role in politics shifted. He was dismissed from the COPCON command, arrested, and held in prison for a period. After his release, he entered the political wilderness, unhappy that the unorthodox Marxist-Leninist revolution he envisioned for Portugal, was not happening. Still carrying the torch for the notion of a "Socialist paradise" in which the state would play only a small role, the hero of the Revolution of 25 April 1974 reentered politics and ran for president of the republic on two occasions. In 1976, he received a respectable 16 percent of the vote, but in the 1981 elections his vote was negligible. Accused of involvement in several terrorist factions' conspiracies and violence, Carvalho was arrested and imprisoned. After a long and sensational trial, "Otelo" was released and acquitted. Of all the memoirs of the 1974 Revolution, Alvorada em Abril (Reveille in April), his contribution, was the most charming and revealing.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Carvalho, Otelo Saraiva de
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52 Housing
In a country with a chronic housing shortage, it is ironic that Portugal has preserved and restored one of Europe's finest collections of historic castles and palaces. For decades, well before the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Portugal has endured a shortage of decent, affordable housing, whether rented or purchased, as well as the growth of sprawling urban shantytowns outside Lisbon, Oporto, and smaller towns such as Estoril. Known as bairros da lata, literally, "neighborhoods or boroughs of tin," these poorly constructed dwellings lack electricity, water, or sewage systems. The flimsy buildings are made of any kind of building materials, including sheets of galvanized tin that serve as roofs, walls, and doors. As of the early 1980s, it was estimated that there were at least 700,000 illegally constructed buildings in Portugal, some 200,000 of which were in the greater Lisbon area, an example of the worst kind of urban sprawl. Many of these structures were built on unused private lands or on public lands.Even after Portugal's economy began to benefit from membership in the European Economic Community (EEC; later the European Union), a significant portion of housing remained substandard, whether in rural or urban areas. By the early 1990s, electrification in rural areas was still not complete, and running water and sewage systems were lacking. As of the early 21st century, improvement in housing has occurred, but with population growth and the arrival of migrants from Europe, Brazil, and former colonies in Africa, the basic components of a housing crisis persist: shortage of decent rental or purchased housings; persistent urban shantytowns, which in some areas have expanded; and substandard living conditions.A majority of the Portuguese people (60 percent; and in Lisbon and Oporto, 80 percent) rent their housing. Improving or expanding such rental housing has been challenging in part because of rigid recent control laws that, between 1948 and 1985, tended to discourage either the maintenance and improvement or the construction of apartments. In suburbs outside Lisbon, large apartment houses were built after 1980 for the more prosperous new urbanites, but, as in the past, the supply of good, affordable housing lagged behind demand. Many Portuguese governments confronted and engaged the housing problem, and some excellent reforms were instituted. The contemporary housing crisis nevertheless persists and, after 2007, was complicated by the worldwide economic crisis. -
53 Mendes, Aristides de Sousa
(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.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Mendes, Aristides de Sousa
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54 Pessoa, Fernando
(1888-1935)Portugal's most celebrated and talented modern poet and one of Europe's greatest 20th-century poets, whose works are now translated into many languages. Pessoa was born in Portugal but was raised and educated in South Africa, and for a period, English became almost his first language. He returned to Portugal at age 12, and wrote poetry from an early age. He wrote poetry and essays both in English and in Portuguese under various names. Beyond that unusual practice, Pessoa created different personalities with names such as Alberto Caeiro, Ricardo Reis, Álvaro de Campos, and Bernardo Soares, his heteronyms. He became one of Europe's greatest modernist poets, although he did not publish much of his poetry in book form during his lifetime. His book Mensagem (Message), published in 1934 in Lisbon and receiving a government prize, appeared only a year before his premature death at age 47. Although he had published poems in scattered, ephemeral periodicals in Portugal, much of his writings remained unpublished, stored in a family trunk. -
55 Tenth of June
An official Portuguese national holiday, called "Camões Day" or "Portugal Day" in official literature. It commemorates the death, on 10 June 1578, of Portugal's national epic poet, Luís de Camões, after the Moroccan disaster of the loss of King Sebastian and his army to Muslim forces in North Africa. The Tenth of June has become the principal national independence day of Portugal, a time when Portuguese in Portugal and in overseas Portuguese communities from New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Macau, China, to Caracas, Venezuela, celebrate national independence and history. This is a day also when traditionally various honors and awards for the year are conveyed by the national leaders in ceremonies and when citizens in parades mark this historic day. -
56 Cape Verde Islands, Archipelago Of The
Consisting of 10 main islands (Santiago, Maio, Boa Vista, Sal, Fogo, São Vicente, São Nicolau, Brava, Santo Antão, and Santa Luzia), the archipelago was sighted first by a Venetian navigator in Portuguese service, Alvise de Cá da Mosto, in the late 1450s. The islands' area is about 4,030 square kilometers (1,557 square miles). Prince Henry the Navigator gave the task of colonizing the islands to the Genovese António da Noli. Actual settlement began only in 1463, under King Afonso V. Captain-Donataries were granted charters to colonize and, in 1550, the city of Praia was established on the island of Santiago and became a principal center of activity. Slaves from West Africa were brought to work the islands' plantations, and millet and coconut trees were introduced as staple foods. Following attacks on the islands by French pirates, Portugal created the post of governor of Cape Verde in 1592. Until the middle of the 18th century and the reign of King José I, these islands were governed by the private captaincies. Thereafter, they were ruled directly by the king's representatives.Due to their geography, topography, and climate, the Cape Verde Islands lack good soil for agriculture or minerals and frequently suffer long, periodic droughts. The result of this, and until recently sparse Portuguese investment, has been that the islands have one of the poorest economies in the world. Emigration to work abroad has often been the only alternative for survival. As a result, large overseas communities of Cape Verdeans reside and work in the United States (especially in the eastern states of Rhode Island and Massachusetts) and in Portugal. In July 1975, Portugal granted independence to the Cape Verde Islands, now a republic.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Cape Verde Islands, Archipelago Of The
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57 A Portuguesa
The official Portuguese national anthem since 1911. A Portuguesa, which means "The Portuguese Woman," refers to the historical symbolic female figure or "Lady Republic," a Portuguese woman who wears republican garb, including a republican banner or flag and a Phrygian bonnet. The concept and name were modeled on the similar figure from the French Revolution of 1789, and the name of the French national anthem, "The Woman from Marseilles," and republican symbols from France's Third Republic. Under the constitutional monarchy, the national anthem was called "The Hymn of the Charter," referring to the 1826 Charter or constitution drafted by Emperor Pedro I of Brazil or Pedro IV of Portugal to replace the controversial 1822 Constitution.A Portuguesa was composed during the popular frenzy and outcry generated by the English Ultimatum crisis of January 1890. Portugal capitulated to an English ultimatum presented to Lisbon by London during an Anglo-Portuguese conflict over possession of territory in central-east Africa. Intense feelings of patriotism, nationalism, and xenophobia were generated in the wake of the Lisbon government's capitulation and its subsequent resignation from office. Inspired by the popular reaction to this incident, Alfredo Keil, a Portuguese musician and opera composer of German descent, wrote the music for A Portuguesa, whose melody bears a slight resemblance to that of the stirring Internationale. The sentimental, bellicose lyrics were written by Keil's friend, Lopes de Mendonça.During the remaining years of the waning monarchy, A Portuguesa was sung as a rallying cry by republican partisans who wished to abolish the monarchy. The song's spirit is not only nationalistic, but is imbued with an imperative of Portuguese national revival in order to remind the people of their greatness of centuries ago. After the First Republic replaced the monarchy, the republic's Constituent Assembly adopted A Portuguesa as the country's national anthem in June 1911, and it has remained so ever since. The first verse with chorus imparts the spirit of the entire patriotic message of the anthem:Heroes of the sea, noble racevaliant and immortal nation,now is the hour to raise up on high once morePortugal's splendor.From out of the mists of memory,of Homeland, we hear the voicesof your great forefathersthat shall lead you on to victory!To arms, to armson land and sea!To arms, to armsto fight for our Homeland!To march against the enemy guns! -
58 Sá Carneiro, Francisco Lumbralles
(1934-1980)Important political leader in the early years of post-1974 Portugal. Trained and educated as a lawyer at the University of Lisbon Law School, he was an up-and-coming young lawyer and liberal Catholic activist in the 1960s. A practicing lawyer in Oporto, Sá Carneiro was selected to be one of a number of younger deputies in the National Assembly during the brief "opening" phase of Prime Minister Marcello Caetano's period of the Estado Novo. He became a deputy upon consenting to adhere to two conditions for his selection; namely, maintaining Portugal's colonial policy in Africa and advocating "social peace" through reforms. But he refused to join the regime's official movement, the União Nacional. Soon discouraged by the continued intransigence of the conservative forces still controlling regime policy, despite the efforts of Caetano during 1968-70, Sá Carneiro and several others of the recently appointed deputies resigned their posts and went into opposition.Following the Revolution of 25 April 1974, Sá Carneiro and colleagues founded the Social Democrat Party (PSD). The highly respected lawyer and spokesman for centrist views became fully involved in the unstable politics of the early Revolutionary period. Named prime minister in January 1980, Sá Carneiro became the political man of the hour in Portugal. The PSD under Sá Carneiro leadership formed the core of a right of center electoral coalition named the Democratic Alliance (AD), which was composed of the PSD, Christian Democratic Party (CDS), and PPM during theDecember 1979 interim parliamentary elections. The AD won the election and Sá Carneiro became prime minister. The regular October 1980 legislative elections, which the AD won, reaffirmed the AD's strength as a coalition. Anxious to consolidate political power by having a president who favored AD policies in office and eager to have the AD candidate, General Soares Carneiro, defeat the incumbent, President Ramalho Eanes, Sá Carneiro undertook a vigorous campaign in the presidential elections set for 7 December 1980. On 4 December, bound for Oporto campaign stops, Sá Carneiro's plane crashed and burned only a short distance from the Lisbon airport. Seven official investigations of the crash have not reached definitive conclusions, and the cause of the crash remains a mystery.Historical dictionary of Portugal > Sá Carneiro, Francisco Lumbralles
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59 Batalha, Monastery of
A prime example of Portuguese Gothic architecture, Batalha Monastery was ordered built by King João I of Aviz in gratitude for his victory over the army of Castile at the battle of Aljubarrota (1385). Located at the town of Batalha, Leiria district, Batalha's style was influenced by earlier constructions including Alcobaça Monastery, which is not far away. Begun in 1387-88, it was mostly completed by the middle of the 15th century, but there were later works on it as well. The so-called "Imperfect Chapels" remain unfinished to this day. This monastery-church includes the Royal Tomb in the Chapel of the Founder, the double tomb of King João I and Queen Philippa of Lancaster, the parents of Prince Henry of Aviz (Prince Henry the Navigator). Batalha is formally known as the "Monastery of Santa Maria of Victory" in Portugal, but in Britain the building is usually referred to as the Battle Abbey. Batalha also contains Portugal's Tombs of the Unknown Soldiers, from World War I, where two soldiers—one killed in Europe and one killed in Africa—with unknown identities were buried. Members of the armed forces perpetually guard the site. -
60 Camacho, Manuel Brito
(1862-1934)A leading political figure of the First Republic, leader-founder of a principal pre-1919 party and high commissioner of Portuguese East Africa in the l920s. Brito Camacho was trained as a medical doctor, but became noteworthy first as the editor of a fighting republican newspaper, A Luta (The Struggle), which played a role in the republican propaganda era in the years before the 5 October 1910 republican revolution. Camacho became one of the principal republican leaders during 1906-12 and, when he dissented from the radical line of the Portuguese Republican Party (PRP), he split from that party and formed his own Republican Union (UR) party, which lasted from 1912 to 1918.A major policy issue for Camacho and his UR followers was opposition to Portugal's active intervention in World War I on the Allied side. When Portugal did enter the war in March 1916, Camacho lent his political influence through his newspaper and his following to opposition to the PRP's policy of war intervention. Camacho played an important role in the preparation of political and military support for Sidônio Pais's December 1917 coup, which succeeded in overthrowing the PRP and ousting Afonso Costa. After the assassination of Sidónio Pais and the brief civil war of early 1919, Brito Camacho withdrew from domestic politics and sought rest and escape abroad. In a brief but important period (1921-23), Camacho served as the republic's high commissioner in Mozambique. He spent much of the remainder of his life in research and writing.
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