Dry as Lucy's australopithecine bones. The first, 25-ish-page chapter covers everything from the Stone Age (in a sentence) to the 1600s, all but sweeping them under the rug--including Roman and Moorish presence in the region. Major personalities are flattened. No women or anyone outside the nobility of potential interest is even mentioned. And, just like with my history book about Puerto Rico, the text feels amazingly dismissive of Portugal's presence/importance in the global economy and politics. With all the continuing emphasis on its trade deficits, particularly with England, one could get the impression that Portugal was always a struggling backwater, an impression at odds with the colonial-powered displays of wealth seen in Portugal itself.

Anyway, I managed to finish the book before my trip to Portugal, and my knowledge of Pombal and Salazar did indeed come in handy, but I'm not used to having so few factoids and personalities of interest to share. Should have read "Queen of the Sea," a popular book about the history of Lisbon, but I made the mistake of going for an academic book about the entirety of Portugal.

Quote/Fact Roundup because there were plenty of interesting things, just not the kind of facts that interest your average fellow tourists.

p. 22) I would have loved more details about the 1383 revolution of the peasants against the barons and the burghers against the crown. A king was elected! A bishop was lynched! All of this was over in less than a page.

p. 27) Also wanted more info about three royal Avis brothers who seemed to perfectly represent different facets of Portuguese society: Edward/Duarte, Peter/Pedro, and Henry/Henrique.

p. 27) Fascinated to learn that up to 10% of the population of a major city was black thanks to the African slave trade. As an USian, I think of that kind of proportion as an Americas phenomenon. A lack of protection from rape meant that this population blended into the general Portuguese population over the years.

p. 57) I had no idea the Inquisition went on so long (1600s), in part because it became a tool with which landowners opposed industrialization, in part because they thought the crown might use industry as an independent source of income--which led to/exacerbated that trade deficit.

p. 86) By the time of the earthquake in 1755, Pombal used the Inquisition to target anyone he considered an enemy of the state. He also ended persecution of Jews and Portugese slavery--not out of benevolence, of course, but to keep black slaves working in Brazil and permit everyone to contribute to economic growth, regardless of their religious background.

p. 99) I only just learned about the astounding evacuation of the entire Portuguese court to Brazil...and it's over in less than a paragraph. Still, it was interesting to hear of the Portuguese rebelling not only against French occupation but, eventually, against their British allies who filled the vacuum left by the royal court while kicking Napoleon out.

p. 128) "In many respects the revolutionary era had been an unstable one. In thirty-one yars there had been forty governments." Good lord.

p. 152-153) Apparently the 1910 October revolution was barely acknowledged. From how Birmingham makes it sound, the government quietly changed overnight from monarchy to republic. "A trade union newspaper barely mentioned the event."

p. 166) "While priests, monarchists and soldiers were shrewdly incorporated into the elite which underpinned Salazar's authority, the illiterate majority were kept firmly in ignorance, not only as a policy of monetarist saving, but also as a form of social control." Always uncomfortable to find parallels with fascist countries and the present moment in the U.S.

p. 171) Classic colonial emphasis in the 1940s on cash crops (empire-domestic cotton) over needed food led to two famines and subsequent revolts, which eventually led to the rebellion that ended colonial rule. I was interested to hear how long the empire lasted. As other colonial empires were crumbling, Portugal gave one last (very unsuccessful) push toward revitalizing it. An interesting "what if" to think about, if they'd done it responsibly.

p. 209) Sadly, the 2008 economic crisis ended socialist rule and ushered in conservatives "determined to shrink the state and adopt neo-liberal fiscal retrenchment according to Brussels rules. The budgetary policies dictated by Brussels used terms such as 'flexibility' to allow enterprises to enhance profits by reducing labour protection, and 'reform' to cut the proportion of national wealth used for welfare. From being a country with one of Europe's better social and health systems, allowing 50 per cent of its national wealth to be spent on the public rather than the private sector, Portugal, in common with other nations, was driven down the rocky path to austerity." Ugh.

p. 212) I was really fascinated by the paragraph about Portugal's relationship with post-revolution Angola. As Angolan oil grew and the Portuguese economy waned, almost as many Portuguese returned to the former colony for jobs as had worked there in colonial days. Angola had oil money to invest, Portugal was in debt, and Angola started investing in its former colonial overlords. Fascinating. ( )