17 - Portugal’s Social and Political Change from the Ancien Régime to Liberalism

Summary

The cycle of Atlantic revolutions reached the intercontinental Portuguese monarchy according to a specific chronology. Between the first French invasion (1807) and the ultimate triumph of liberalism (1834), the fate of the Portuguese kingdom hung in the balance as it was tied in large part either to the interaction between Brazil and Portugal or to more global connections. The independence of the American territory, after sketches failed attempts of a constitutional integration between 1820 and 1822, precipitated a sharp internal political polarization between absolutists and liberals in the European kingdom. For the latter, the collapse of the empire forcibly had as an alternative a radical break with the civil order of the Ancien Régime. After successive political contexts and a civil war, this model, with a marked anti-aristocratic stamp, would ultimately triumph.