Portuguese economic retardment under a historical perspective, 1860-1913

Abstract

Between the middle of the nineteenth century and the beginning of World War I Europe had a quick growth of production and an even quicker growth of its external trade. In Portugal that period also was of development and expansion, but, if we compare the terms, the results were much less significant in our country. In such an extent that it is difficult not to recognize that the great economic retardment in Portugal has its roots exactly in the second half of the nineteenth century. Resumed by several Portuguese historians along the last years, the discussion about the causes of such a retardment, almost so old as the issue itself, finds a new contribution in this article. After having dealt with the different studies on the problem, in the first part of the article, the author shows how, according to him, it is possible to reach a better understanding of which were the obstacles to the Portuguese economic growth at long term: a) not to go on studying Portugal as an isolated case and, on the contrary, to put forward a rigorous and realistically comparative method, based not only in similar countries but also, and mainly, in those having different economic results; b) to quantify, as much as possible, the characteristics and consequences of the different development courses that might plausibly be adequated for Portugal in the nineteenth century, including those models formulated by the current Portuguese historiography in an implicit or explicit way. As a conclusion, we may essentially consider the necessity of introducing a re-orientation in the way of looking at the Portuguese economic history of last century - a re-orientation that will make it possible to clarify the difficult issue of the impact of social and political factors, external and internal, on the economic retardment, including the inadequacyof the entrepreneurial component or the poorness of the bourgeois mind.