First Portuguese Republic
Portuguese Republic República Portuguesa (Portuguese) | |||||||||
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1910–1926 | |||||||||
Motto: Ordem e Trabalho ("Order and Work") | |||||||||
Anthem: President | | ||||||||
• 1911–1915 (first) | Manuel de Arriaga | ||||||||
• 1925–1926 (last) | Bernardino Machado | ||||||||
Prime Minister | |||||||||
• 1911 (first) | João Pinheiro Chagas | ||||||||
• 1925–1926 (last) | António Maria da Silva | ||||||||
Legislature | Disestablished | 29 May 1926 | |||||||
Currency | Portuguese real (1910–1911) Portuguese escudo (1911–1926) | ||||||||
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The First Portuguese Republic (
The sixteen years of the First Republic saw
Early years of the Republic
After the republican uprising of 5 October 1910 that overthrew King
The
The power vacuum created after the assassination of Sidónio Pais on 14 December 1918 led the country into a brief civil war. In northern Portugal the restoration of the monarchy was proclaimed on 9 January 1919 and four days later a monarchical insurrection took place in
Search for stability
It was during this republican restoration that a reform was attempted to provide the regime with greater stability. In August 1918 a conservative President was elected – António José de Almeida (whose Evolutionist Party had joined during the war with the Portuguese Republican Party , to form the "Sacred Union") – and his government was given the power to dissolve parliament. The relations with the Holy See that had been restored by Sidónio Pais, were preserved. The president used his new power to resolve the government crisis of May 1921, appointing the Liberal Party (the result of the postwar merger between the Evolutionists and the Unionists) to prepare for the next election.
The Portuguese Republican Party won again by an absolute majority, but discontent with this situation did not disappear. There were many accusations of political corruption, and the opposition's attacks increased. At the same time, all political parties suffered from infighting, especially the ruling party. The party system was discredited because the government of the Portuguese Republican Party that had emerged from the polls was not really stable. The presidents' opposition to single-party governments that disagreed with the Portuguese Republican Party and everyone's desire to monopolize power caused the virtual absence of stability in the nation's government. Several different formulas were tried, including single-party governments, coalitions and presidential executives but none of them had any effect, causing the use of force to be considered "the only way" for the opposition to prevail if it wanted to enjoy the fruits of the can.
Religion
The First Republic was intensely
The republicans were anticlerical and had a
The Republic repelled a royalist attack on Chaves in 1912.
Decline of the Republic
In the mid-1920s the national and international political scene was favorable to the emergence of an authoritarian solution, through which a strengthened government could impose public order and restore the political situation. The armed forces, whose political interest had increased due to the
There were links between conservative politicians and military officials, who added their political and corporate demands to the situation. Finally, on 28 May 1926 the Portuguese Revolution of 1926 took place, a coup d'état by the armed forces supported by almost all the political parties that had given up on their plans to establish a stable government and conferred that mission on the army.
As had happened with the coup d'état of Sidónio Pais in 1917, the population of Lisbon did not try to protect the Republic, and the left parties themselves and their unions refused to resist the coup, allowing authority to pass into the hands of the army. With this began a military dictatorship that would maintain the formal structure of the Republic, but whose authoritarianism would slowly lead to the autocratic regime known as Estado Novo in the year 1932. The Estado Novo would remain in power without interruptions until 1974, when it would be overthrown by the Carnation Revolution and the Third Portuguese Republic would be established and democracy established in the country.
Heads of state and government
The First Portuguese Republic was an unstable period in the History of Portugal. In a period of 16 years (1910–1926) Portugal had 8
-
Manuel de Arriaga
(1911–1915) -
Teófilo Braga
(1915) -
Bernardino Machado
(1915–1917; 1925–1926) -
Sidónio Pais
(1918) -
João do Canto e Castro
(1918–1919) -
António José de Almeida
(1919–1923) -
Manuel Teixeira Gomes
(1923–1925)
Evaluation of the republican experiment and legacy
Most historians have emphasized the failure and collapse of the republican dream by the 1920s. José Miguel Sardica in 2011 summarized the consensus of historians:
"… within a few years, large parts of the key economic forces, intellectuals, opinion-makers and middle classes changed from left to right, trading the unfulfilled utopia of a developing and civic republicanism for notions of "order," "stability" and "security." For many who had helped, supported or simply cheered the Republic in 1910, hoping that the new political situation would repair the monarchy’s flaws (government instability, financial crisis, economic backwardness and civic anomie), the conclusion to be drawn, in the 1920s, was that the remedy for national maladies called for much more than the simple removal of the king … The First Republic collapsed and died as a result of the confrontation between raised hopes and meager deeds."[6]
Sardica, however, also points up the lasting effects of the republican experiment:
"Despite its overall failure, the First Republic endowed twentieth-century Portugal with an insurpassable and enduring legacy—a renewed civil law, the basis for an educational revolution, the principle of separation between State and Church, the overseas empire (only brought to an end in 1975), and a strong symbolic culture whose materializations (the national flag, the national anthem and the naming of streets) still define the present-day collective identity of the Portuguese. The Republic’s prime legacy was indeed that of memory."[7]
References
- ^ (in Continental Portugal, Madeira and Azores, official in the Portuguese Empire)
- ^ Payne, A history of Spain and Portugal (1973) 2: 559
- ^ "Portugal – The First Republic, 1910–26". Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved 16 July 2021.
- ^
Maier, Hans (2004). Totalitarianism and Political Religions. trans. Jodi Bruhn. Routledge. p. 106. ISBN 0-7146-8529-1.
- ^ IAMDUDUM: ON THE LAW OF SEPARATION IN PORTUGAL Papal Encyclicals Online
- ^ E-Journal of Portuguese History. (2011). 9 (1): pp. 1–27.
- ^ José Miguel Sardica. The Memory of the Portuguese First Republic throughout the Twentieth Century. (2011).
Further reading
- Leal, Ernesto Castro. "Parties and political identity: the construction of the party system of the Portuguese Republic (1910–1926)." E-journal of Portuguese History 7#1 (2009): 37–44. Online[permanent dead link]
- Meneses, Filipe Ribeiro De. Afonso Costa (London: Haus Publishing, 2010); 227 pp. excerpt
- Sardica, José Miguel. "The Memory of the Portuguese First Republic throughout the Twentieth Century," E-Journal of Portuguese History (Summer 2011) 9#1: 1–27. online
- Wheeler, Douglas L. "The Portuguese revolution of 1910." Journal of Modern History (1972): 172–194. in JSTOR
- Wheeler, Douglas L. Republican Portugal: a political history, 1910–1926 (U of Wisconsin Press, 1999)