Portugal of the Portuguese

by Aubrey F. G. Bell

War of the Spanish Succession.

In the war of the Spanish Succession Portugal at first maintained neutrality in spite of the offer of ships and men made to her by the Allies if she declared war against Spain, and the promise that whatever territory she won from Spain should be guaranteed to her after the war ended. Although Portugal’s duty and interests alike seemed to require that she should join the alliance against Spain without hesitation, it was not till May, 1703, that she finally threw in her lot with them. The alliance between Great Britain and Portugal has more than once shown a strange capacity to simmer down into neutrality at the very moment when it might have been expected to be most active. Yet war between Great Britain and another Power was not so remote a contingency that Portugal’s attitude and obligations might not have been clearly defined beforehand. Of the force of 28,000 men which Portugal now engaged to bring into the field, nearly a half, 13,000, were to be maintained by the Allies.

The Methuen Treaty.

The Methuen commercial treaty between Great Britain and Portugal was signed in the same year (27th December, 1703). On the strength of this treaty. Great Britain has been accused, and is still sometimes accused, of deliberately planning Portugal’s ruin, as if Great Britain were to blame because her woollen goods were superior to those of Portuguese manufacture, or because the Portuguese, in a short-sighted desire for immediate profits, planted more than a due proportion of their land with vines, till wine became commoner than water, while agriculture and pasture lands were neglected. But it is certain that the neglect and lack of enterprise of the Portuguese allowed a great part of Portuguese trade to fall into the hands of the English.

Pombal’s Attitude towards England.

The Marquez de Pombal, who lived in England as Portuguese Ambassador for six years, was able to compare England’s active business methods with the lazy laisser-aller of the Portuguese. England, he said, has become master of the whole of Portugal’s trade. But however much he might deplore and seek to remedy this fact, he recognised that the British alliance must be the basis of all Portugal’s foreign policy. England and Portugal, he said, were like man and wife: they might quarrel, but, if a third party interfered, they would unite against the common foe.

The Peninsular War.

In 1805 the threats of Napoleon induced Portugal to declare war formally against England and to close her harbours to British ships. Three hundred English families, settled in business in Portugal, left the country. Great Britain was willing to accept these measures as the results of a necessity that knew no law, and although war was formally declared, the British Ambassador, Lord Strangford, remained at Lisbon. But when Portugal went still further, and at the bidding of France confiscated the property of those English families that had remained, Lord Strangford demanded his passports, and an English fleet blockaded the mouth of the Tagus. Before the British Ambassador could leave the country Junot had approached rapidly nearer to Lisbon. When Strangford received the Moniteur in which it was announced that “the House of Braganza has ceased to reign,” he was able to induce the Prince Regent to sail for Brazil. Portugal’s lot was now once more closely united with that of Great Britain. The Peninsular War, in which Portuguese and English troops fought side by side on many a field, could not fail to strengthen the old alliance, however much individual differences of character might come to the surface.

Allies and Strangers.

Yet, after seven centuries of constant intercourse between English and Portuguese, it is indeed astonishing that in intellectual and social relations they should have remained almost strangers. The blame for this disappointing fact may be equally apportioned between them. Certainly England cannot be acquitted of a certain narrowness and angularity—whether it be the result of stupidity or pride—which has driven Portugal, intellectually, into the hands of France or Germany. It is to be regretted, in this respect, that the Commercial Treaty between Portugal and Great Britain negotiated by Sir Arthur Hardinge and Mr. Lancelot Carnegie, and signed in 1914, should not have included a clause by which English books might share the favourable treatment as regards Customs duties which is given to French books. A knowledge of English literature would do much to increase the regard or diminish the dislike of the Portuguese towards England. Latin nations give more importance to literature than is perhaps attributed to it in England, and the fact that Portuguese literature and Portuguese history meet with little sympathy or study in England undoubtedly has its effect in Portugal when it is compared with the attitude of Germany. The difference leaps to the eyes of all educated persons in Portugal, and it must not be forgotten that in Portugal the uneducated people—apart from the trained demagogues’ bands in the cities—has no part or parcel in the affairs of the nation.