Carl Hanson’s book on Portugal, 1668-1703, is especially welcome because a new study of this period has long been needed. The book is arranged topically around three main themes: (1) Portugal’s class structure; (2) New Christian and mercantile elements in general; and (3) Portugal’s evolving national and imperial economy in the late seventeenth century. The author’s main purpose is to place Portugal firmly within the sphere of European mercantilist thought during a time of significant economic change in Europe.
The most valuable feature of the book is the manner in which the author presents the New Christians’ plight in seventeenth-century Portuguese society. Hanson skillfully handles the complexities of this religious holdover from earlier times, and he demonstrates that the declining fortune of the New Christians in the face of renewed inquisitorial activity was but a reflection of the challenge of the merchant class and its wealth to the privileged position of the old order with its increasingly antiquated feudal social hierarchy. Despite powerful allies like Antonio Vieira, the merchants’ challenge to the established order was thwarted, with disastrous consequences for that nation’s nascent capitalism. Instead of making way for an expanding middle class, the old order emerged triumphant under the protection of an absolutist regime. Lack of capital was to hinder greatly the introduction of new manufacturing proposed by D. Luis de Menezes, third Count of Ericeira.
Hanson considers Ericeira “the Portuguese Colbert,” showing how Ericeira followed his French counterpart’s example in supporting a multitude of projects for internal development. Hanson admits, however, that Ericeira’s industrial program was but a brief interlude of prosperity and that “Ironically, Portuguese manufacturing, having withstood years of economic stagnation, was not to be favorably affected by the new prosperity that followed the devaluation of 1688” (pp. 183-184).
The author’s central thesis in the economic discussion of Portugal’s imperial fortunes is the manner in which the Luso-Atlantic empire enjoyed a renewed prosperity despite a decline in Brazil’s sugar industry and an increasing dependence on England. Portugal’s signing of the Methuen Treaty in 1703 marked the abandonment of a domestic manufacturing program and a firm binding of the Luso-Atlantic world to English industrialization. Though the Anglo-Portuguese economic relationship brought short-term gains for Portugal, it stifled fundamental forces of economic modernization that had struggled for decades against an increasingly entrenched old order.
Carl Hanson’s book is well researched, with major archival collections in Lisbon and London forming the basis of his documentation. A lengthy and comprehensive bibliography completes this fine work on the social and economic growth of Portugal on the eve of the modern industrial and capitalist world.
