Portuguese History and Spanish

1. Introduction

Because of the geographical reason, early Portugal turned their focus on out of Europe. Most of their history concerned with Atlantic for real. From 15th century they focused on advancing into the Atlantic ocean for colonization and discovering new world. Portugal definitely made their heyday by making inroads into Atlantic in that time. But it didn't last long. As Spain, The United Kingdom, France and Holland expanded their strength, Portugal got weakened. There was also internal problem in Portugal for example poor colony management, incompetent army and prevalent dissipations in their colony. And at last, from 1580 to 1640, Portugal subjugated to Spain by Philip II. In the 16th 17th century, they isolated themselves by preventing the influx of new studies and trends under the Inquisition's justification and suppressing creating activity and arts. Moreover under the world power's scramble for Africa, Portugal got interruption for managing their colony. This influenced their colonial policy and finally to their future history. Portugal continuously turned over in the flow of world history.

For me, Portugal can be depicted as the country that lost its brilliant history. And for real what I mentioned above was all that I know before I came here. My curiosity of the Portuguese authoritarian system started from that. I wondered how and why they lost and just stayed in their brilliant history. What happened to the Portugal after making several colonies in Africa? Now let’s see my answer to my own curiosity by comparing Portugal’s neighbor country, Spain.

2. The process of creation of Portugal's politic system

As Linz had proposed, each country has its own tradition in the formation process of Authoritarian regimes. We can also find typical tradition in Portugal's authoritarian regimes. First one is the culture of Roman Catholic which makes able to practice theocracy that is based on divine right of kings. Second one is inquisition which suppresses protestant reformation. This second tradition, inquisition, is highly evaluated that it played prominent role in defending and maintaining of Portuguese's absolute monarchy system. The last one is absolute monarchy. Especially in case of Portugal, in spite Portugal is the country where early established its own absolute monarchy system but the development of civil-class was very weak. And their absolute monarch system developed as unprogressive and feudalistic way for the necessity of against economically and politically to the capitalist countries in Europe in that time. Moreover Portugal reached 20th century before experiencing any people's revolution.

In 1910, Portugal established the Portuguese first republic after deposing. King Manuel II. But the principal force of revolution was the middle class not the bourgeoisie. In addition,