Countries of the World/COUNTRYS.BIN/dp/0296/02966.txt

Text File | 1991-06-25 | 42KB | 680 lines

$Unique_ID{COW02966}
$Pretitle{381}
$Title{Portugal
Chapter 2C.   The Constitutional Monarchy (1822-1910)}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Robert Rinehart}
$Affiliation{HQ, Department of the Army}
$Subject{portuguese
portugal
government
political
salazar
new
cortes
colonial
parliamentary
war}
$Date{1976}
$Log{Figure 6.*0296601.scf
Figure 7.*0296602.scf
}
Country:     Portugal
Book:        Portugal, A Country Study
Author:      Robert Rinehart
Affiliation: HQ, Department of the Army
Date:        1976

Chapter 2C.   The Constitutional Monarchy (1822-1910)

     The war passed from Portugal, but the royal family stayed in Brazil,
which in 1815 was the political center of the so-called United Kingdom of
Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarve. In 1816 Joao VI succeeded to the Portuguese
throne-in Rio de Janeiro.

     In Portugal itself discontent at Beresford's regency, the absence of the
king, and the country's diminished status in the empire was expressed by the
small middle-class intelligentsia and commercial oligarchy, who were
identified as liberals and called for constitutional government. The officer
corps, which had gained self-esteem during the war, also demanded a larger
role in national life. Both groups had confidence that a constitution and a
responsible parliamentary government were the remedies needed for curing the
country's economic and social ills. Although they wanted to emulate Great
Britain's political example, they chafed at the influence exerted by the
British in Brazil. It was the army, however, that took the lead in 1820 by
demanding the reestablishment of the Cortes and the writing of a constitution.
What followed were years of experimentation with constitutions, a succession
of attempts to provide stable government, and repeated foreign intervention in
Portuguese affairs.

     The 1822 Constitution, written by a Cortes composed mainly of civil
servants, academics, and army officers, called for strong central government,
a limited monarchy, and ministerial responsibility to a unicameral legislature
elected by literate males. Joao VI, accepting his status as a constitutional
monarch in Portugal, returned from Brazil, leaving his heir Dom Pedro behind
as co-king. The Cortes was willing to accept representatives from Brazil but
would not concede autonomous status within an imperial framework. Having won
the fight for a parliament vested with executive authority, the Portuguese
liberals did not believe that they could relinquish any sovereignty without
compromising the sum of it. More representative of commercial interests than
its predecessor, the first Cortes elected under the new constitution attempted
to reassert Lisbon's economic control over Brazil. With British support Pedro
declared Brazil an independent state and took the title of emperor, but he
remained heir to the Portuguese throne.

     Opinion was polarized in Portugal in reaction to the loss of Brazil.
Politically aware moderates were caught between those who gravitated toward
the militantly anticlerical radicals, who demanded a continuing political
revolution, and the traditionalists, who were allied with the church and
hostile to the drift in affairs under the rule of an urban, middle-class
Cortes. Traditionalist juntas, supported by smallholders and peasants, were
formed in the north to protect the communal liberties threatened by the
liberal central government. Calling for a return to absolutism, the
traditionalists found a champion in Dom Miguel, younger son of Joao VI, who
was seen to exult in martial, rural, and Catholic virtues.

     If the new emperor of Brazil chose to remain in America, his brother
Miguel would succeed their father in Portugal, and there was no doubt that
Pedro preferred Brazil. When Joao VI died in 1826, Pedro reluctantly returned
to Portugal, pressured by the British to leave his prosperous Brazilian empire
for an impoverished country with an unstable constitutional regime. Backed by
the army, which was easily disenchanted by civilian rule, Pedro demanded an
accommodation from the liberal Cortes in the form of the compromise Charter of
1826, which replaced the 1822 Constitution and remained substantially in force
until 1910. The charter returned executive authority to the king, who governed
through a ministry responsible to him. It provided for a bicameral Cortes,
consisting of the Chamber of Deputies, elected indirectly by a reduced
electorate, and an upper house appointed by the crown.

     After the charter was adopted, Pedro returned to Brazil, leaving title
to the Portuguese throne to his young daughter Maria da Gloria, later Maria II
(reigned 1834-54). Miguel was to act as regent on condition that he accept the
new constitution. Miguel duly swore to abide by the settlement, was given
command of the army, and promptly seized power, abolished the charter, and
appointed an absolutist government that offered him the Portuguese crown.

     There had been little resistance to Miguel, but Pedro abdicated his
Brazilian throne and recrossed the Atlantic determined to restore the charter
and remain in Portugal as constitutional monarch. Leading an expeditionary
force from the Azores, where he had established a provisional government.
Pedro landed near Porto in 1832 and defeated Miguel with substantial British
assistance in a two-year-long civil war that pitted liberals against
traditionalists.

     The church had overwhelmingly supported Miguel. The government under
Mosinho da Silveira, which carried on the regency for Maria II after her
father died, purged the hierarchy and abolished the religious orders, about
one-third of Portugal's 30,000 clergy. In 1834 the government ordered the
expropriation of church property. Intended to raise funds to pay the debt of
the civil war, the lands and buildings of 500 religious houses were sold at
auction at prices below their market value to approximately 600 new owners who
used government credits to make their purchases. The sale of church property
resulted in a shift in the ownership of more than one-fourth of all land and
created a new class-wealthy landholders who were drawn from the ranks of the
liberal political oligarchy and were indebted to the policies of the
constitutional monarchy for their position. This group had the dominant
influence in the political life of the country throughout the rest of the
nineteenth century. Meanwhile local administration was restructured around
regional urban centers to increase the power of the liberal urban middle class
against that of more conservative smallholders in the countryside.

The Liberal Oligarchy

     Anticlericalism, economic freedom achieved through unregulated trade,
and an overweening confidence that national honor could be restored through
constitutional government were the chief tenets of Portuguese liberalism in
the nineteenth century. In reality the governments that it supported came to
office through manipulated elections. Revolts by an activist army divided in
its political sympathies were regular occurrences. British and French
intervention was required to forestall civil war and protect investments.
Despite anticlerical legislation the country remained officially Roman
Catholic, and royal patronage in nominating bishops was confirmed in a
succession of concordats with Rome. The Cortes was representative of a social
and economic elite, middle class in its origins, that was determined to retain
its position by restricting suffrage. One percent of the population was
enfranchised. Property qualifications for candidates limited to 4,500 the
number eligible to sit in the Chamber of Deputies. From the Senate, or upper
house of the Cortes, a new bourgeois aristocracy emerged, the product of an
inflation of titles to encompass the wealthiest of the elite.

     Parliamentary politics consisted of working out personal rivalries within
the liberal oligarchy. Large working majorities set the stage for arbitrary
government by successive liberal ministries that interpreted constitutional
guarantees very flexi