Believers and converted: the Republic in provinces (October 1910-May 1911)

Abstract

The Portuguese Republican Party, that assumed the government after the fall of Monarchy, was a petty-bourgeois movement, the force of which was concentrated mainly in the two most important towns in the country. In order to be practicable, the Republic needed to find or build a larger support basis, either in the whole territory or among the working classes. In a previous article it was shown that the Provisional Government's policy made impossible the cooperation of trade unions and the Socialist Party with the new political régime. In this article it is shown that the policy adopted as to the provinces, being perhaps necessary in the immediate
circumstances, had also, in the long run, disastrous consequences concerning the Republic stability. As a matter of fact, it reduced, instead of widening it,its social basis of support, made divisions between the forces themselves that supported it and promoted a higher and more aggressive hostility from its enemies.