The Rest Is History - 229. Portugal: Gold, Earthquakes, and Brazil

Episode Date: September 7, 2022

Earthquakes, gold rush, and Brazil. Join Tom and Dominic for the third episode in this history of Portugal series. *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. And can you then impute a sinful deed to babes who on their mother's bosoms bleed? Was then more vice in fallen Lisbon found than Paris, where voluptuous joys abound? Was less debauchery to London known, where opulence luxurious holds the throne. That is, I think, a rather good English translation of Voltaire's poem on the Lisbon disaster, which he wrote in December 1755, one month after an earthquake on the 1st of November, which was All Saints Day, had levelled Lisbon, reducing about 85% of the city to ruins, killing perhaps

some 50,000 people. And Voltaire would return to the same question of how was it that such a disaster could happen? Were the philosophical explanations for why a good God could have permitted it to happen, were they justifiable? Even more famous work, Condede, which he published four years after that in 1759. And one of the reasons, Dominic, why the Lisbon earthquake, which we will come to, was so upsetting for people, not just in Portugal, but across the whole of Europe, was that Lisbon at that point was a famously beautiful and opulent capital, because this country that at the end of our previous episode, we had left as a kingdom that had been absorbed into the broader fabric of the kingdom of Spain, by the middle of the 18th century had not only regained its independence, but had really regained quite a lot of its mojo. It was importing vast quantities of gold, of diamonds,

and it seemed that Portugal was back. So before we come to the great earthquake of Lisbon, we should go back and look at how it is that Portugal manages to kind of re-emerge as an independent state. So, Tom, yes, we ended the last episode with you very tantalizingly promising us the First World War, by which I don't imagine you mean the real First World War. You mean a previous First World War. The First World War is the Fourth World War. This is the proper First World War. But before we get into the First World War, let's just quickly set the scene. Because Portugal, in our previous episode, we talked about the golden age of exploration and discovery

and so on, Vasco de Gama and whatnot. And we ended, as you say, in 1580. Portugal has been taken over by Philip II, the King of Spain, very famous as the architect of the Armada. But, Tom, a Portuguese listener to the rest is history, called Pedro Geraldes from Porto, has alerted me to something that we in Britain should be ashamed about. Do you know this? Ashamed?

Ashamed. I know, ashamed. In 1589, the year after the Spanish Armada, Elizabeth I actually sent an expedition, an armada of her own, to Portugal to rescue the Portuguese from their Hispanic overlords. And it was led by the Earl of Essex, obviously a great friend of Elizabeth I, and Sir Francis Drake, a great bowls enthusiast. So led by two such lads, how could it possibly have gone wrong, Dominic? It went disastrously wrong, Tom. They took 20,000 men. Everything went wrong on the rendezvous. They turned turned up there wasn't an uprising as they thought there would be so basically they got distracted and they did that classic kind of crusader style thing of sacking some portuguese towns themselves right just sort of making a nuisance of themselves and annoying the locals so they've been sent to rescue the portuguese and

then they turn on the portuguese because they don't know what else to do and then they just and then they went home and there are lots of people who've been waiting for them very excitedly, you know, sort of Portuguese patriots and Francis Drake and the Earl of Essex completely let them down. They're waiting, I think, in a place called Peniche. And ever since I'm told by Pedro Geraldo, and I looked it up and it's definitely true, the expression in Portuguese amigos de Peniche, friends from Peniche, means a traitor, a turncoat, a false friend, people who let you down. And that's us. I don't think that this is the kind of detail that we should be including in this podcast.

Well. Why do you hate England, Dominic? Yeah. That is woke Tosh. That is woke Tosh. I think we should move straight on from that yes well the english will redeem themselves later in this podcast i promise the english will redeem themselves and the true villains if you're looking through portuguese lenses will prove to be not the english and actually not even the the spanish but the dutch the dutch are the absolute dogs in this podcast absolute dogs very poorly behaved so the first world war um is basically it's the dutch the dutch are absolute dogs in this podcast absolute dogs very poorly behaved so the

first world war um is basically it's the dutch who are capitalist a maritime power as the portuguese had been very very interested in um taking over control of the spice trade um and they recognize that portugal having been absorbed into this kind of broader Spanish kingdom, is much less autonomous and therefore much less able to defend its trade links and its colonies. And so they move in. And as I say, the focus is really spice. And so the other name for this is called the Dutch-Portuguese War, but it's also known as the Spice War. But I think you can properly say this is the first world war in the sense that this is a war that spans the entire globe. So basically, it's a war fought over all the Portuguese colonies from Brazil, Angola, the East Indies, Malaysia.

So an incredible conflict, and it rumbles on for the first six decades of the 17th century. Unbelievably long, isn't it? I mean, 60 years. And basically the Spanish, they don't pull their weight. And so this fuels a kind of escalating sense of resentment in Portugal that then combines with a sense that the Spanish economy and the Spanish state is really facing trouble. And so you start to get this kind of mood of insurrection in Portugal by the 1630s. Yeah. So I suppose if Portugal had been autonomous, completely autonomous, maybe some sort of alliance with England is traditional. I mean, despite the Peniche business. I think we would have done the right thing.

I think, well, that's what, taken over Portugal's colonists for ourselves? No, we'd have stepped in and stood by our ally and fought off the Dutch. Maybe we would. I mean, the Spanish, I mean, it's not sort of tyranny under the Spanish, is it? Because as we said in the last podcast, Portugal maintains its own institutions. It's a union of the crowns rather than a union of countries but i think you're definitely right that by the mid-17th century a lot of portuguese just think this union with spain is is no good we want to be you know they're not helping us today and actually we've been dragged into this war with the dutch because of the association with spain so let's let's kick out

the spanish there's a new spanish king Spanish king called Felipe IV who basically wants to, you know, it's the age of absolutism, and he wants to cement his power over Portugal. And he's got a kind of insane long chin, hasn't he? He does. Yeah. So the Portuguese elite have had enough. They launch an uprising on the 1st of December, 1640. There's a load of them called the Forty Conspirators,

and they kill King Philip's Secretary of conspirators and they kill king philip's secretary of state and they imprison his cousin and they they launch this revolution and and this war that basically lasts 28 years and actually the the english stay out for most of it well because the portuguese are trying to get an alliance with france yeah which i think is very poor behavior yes because fr Because France is by far, you know, is by, is absolutely the preponderant power in Europe at this time.

So the Portuguese hope that they can, they can have an alliance with, with, with France. And the person they want to marry off is the premier Duke of Portugal, as was John of Braganza. But he is an heir of, of Manuel I. And so he's a kind of living link with

the great days of the Portuguese empire. And so he's persuaded to become king. And actually a kind of fascinating churn behind this, we talked about Sebastian dying and vanishing in North Africa. And this sense that a kind of messianic nationalism is flaming through Portugal, this dream that Sebastian will come back. He doesn't, but John of Braganza does, or Jao of Braganza. And so he becomes the new king.

But of course, the great thing about him, for Anglo-Saxon, for English listeners, is his daughter marries Charles II, the Mary Monarch. So in 1660 in England and Scotland, Charles II is restored, and then the English do get involved, and we'll come to that in a second. But obviously Catherine of Braganza, I mean, she's not the best-treated wife, I think it's fair to say, in English royal history.

She's famous because she, I don't think it's true that she introduces tea to England, because Samuel Pepys certainly was drinking tea before she pitched up. But she definitely popularizes, you know, she's a great tea drinker. Obviously, the Portuguese would be very interested in tea because of their links with the spice trade and all that sort of business. And she's keen on porcelain and cotton and other kind of innovations. So she's a sort of trendsetter. But here's the thing about Catherine of Braganza, Tom. Do you know what connects Catherine of Braganza and Donald J. Trump, former president of the United States?

No. If I give you another clue and something that will delight you, they have this in common with Peter Parker, a.k.a. Spider-Man. Another subject I know you're very interested in. I have no idea. So Peter Parker, as our listeners will know, comes from Queens in New York. Queens is supposedly named after Catherine of Braganza. It was established in 1683 when she was the queen. Wow.

And in 1983, Tom, the Portuguese American friends of Queen Catherine wanted to set up a statue of Catherine of Braganza in Queens to celebrate their Portuguese heritage. And they enlisted the support of top, absolute top businessmen, top entrepreneurs. Somebody who knows more about business, statues, and Portuguese history than almost anybody. And that man was the future president, Donald Trump. And it will amaze you, Tom, to hear that after his involvement, the statue was never built.

Oh, why was that? Well, actually, it turned out that lots of local activists said Catherine of Braganza and the Portuguese were very involved in the slave trade. Well, that's indisputably true. It is indisputably true. And you shouldn't put up this statue, so it never was put up. So for people who were very keen on Mr. Trump's wall, this was a preview of what was to follow. Right.

Okay. I think those connections are slightly tenuous, but... No, no, no. Those are excellent connections. Those are fascinating connections. So anyway, Charles II sends an expedition to help his wife, his wife's family, and they comport themselves absolutely splendidly. They're all Cromwellian soldiers, aren't they? Yeah. They're part of the new model army that were left over from... From the previous regime. Yeah.

He sends them out. And do you know what Zhao's chief minister, the Count of Kastrel Mill, said about them? Did he praise them to the skies? He said, the English have done more than can be expected of them. And I believe there are no soldiers in the world like them. Well, that's splendid stuff. So the stain of 1589 is wiped away. And the alliance was polished up and blazed anew. And also another tremendous symbol of Anglo-Portuguese amity, she, as part of her dowry, she gives England what will become the city of Bombay, so Mumbai.

That's very impressive. I didn't know that, Tom. Yeah, and so – Good for Catherine of Braganza. And so what you have there is a sense of an alliance between England, you know, the old alliance between England and Portugal, but is now starting to have global ramifications because it's shortly after this Anglo Portuguese alliance has been refurbished that essentially the First World War, a.k.a. the Spice War, the Dutch-Portuguese War, comes to an end. And Portugal has to give up quite a lot of its colonies. It loses the Cape of Good Hope. So that's, you know, hence the that's why you get Boers in South Africa rather than Portuguese settlers.

Malacca, you know, this great city that the Portuguese had won back in the early 16th century. Ceylon, so Sri Lanka, as is now, the Malabar Coast. So all that goes to the Dutch, but the Portuguese are able to keep, crucially, they're able to keep Macau, which remains a long-term colony, Goa, Angola, and the jewel in the Portuguese crown, Brazil. Yes.

So Brazil is a really interesting one, isn't it because brazil is um as it were colonized later than some other latin american countries uh and and much of it is is obviously it's not effectively going to be westernized if that's not i mean that's completely the wrong word but you know what i mean for for decades if not centuries um. And Brazil's population is tiny. So in 1700, there are still only 300,000 people in the huge expanse of Brazil. And the cities and towns are just, I mean, they're just fly-bitten, shabby kind of trading posts. Wouldn't the word, I don't know, would it be

Lusitanized, Portuguese? You know a lot more about this than me, but my understanding is that it's the discovery first of gold which happens what kind of 1700 yeah late 17th century yeah and then diamonds and that generates essentially the first gold rush and you get lots and lots of people from portugal suddenly thinking you know there's gold in their jungles or hills or whatever and and so they all go flooding across the atlantic and it's that process of settlement Lots of people from Portugal suddenly thinking, you know, there's gold in their jungles or hills or whatever. And so they all go flooding across the Atlantic.

And it's that process of settlement that essentially introduces to Brazil. It kind of beds down Portuguese language, Catholicism, all those kind of cultural trends, all that kind of stuff. So that to this day, Brazil remains shaped by that huge influx. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. So the sugar, there's obviously the sugar plantations that have been there already. But you're right, there's the discovery of the gold, there's the gold mines in the state of Minas Gerais, which means general mines. And I said the population of Brazil was about 300,000 in 1700. In 100 years, it increases tenfold. So it's about 3 million by 1800, which gives you some,

I mean, it's still quite small, but it gives you that some sense of the sort of, of the, of the trend, I suppose. And I think, I mean, you said at the beginning that Portugal got its mojo back. I mean, to some degree, obviously it has because it's independent and because all this gold is flowing in. But I think in other ways, Brazil is a great boon for the Portuguese and they come to rely on it. But it's also a kind of curse because they come to rely on it. So they can't kind of wean themselves off it. So the gold comes in, the sugar comes in,

and they're making enormous profits from those things. But that means that they're not really building up their own domestic... And part of that is actually Britain. So they have signed a series of deals with the British, most famously the Methuen Treaty of 1703, that we talked about at one of our 12 Days of Christmas podcasts about port and about port wine.

So that treaty basically, I mean, it's very much to Britain's advantage. Because basically the Portuguese don't put any tariffs on British cloth, and the British don't put any tariffs on Portuguese wine. But it's the cloth that is the boom. Yeah, it's the cloth that drives industry in the 18th century. Yeah. And wine, you know. Wine doesn't.

And wine doesn't, exactly. So, I mean, Portugal, there um about three million people in portugal by the mid-18th century but it's very very agricultural um there's only two cities worthy of the name really lisbon and and porto which is and porto is dominated by the sort of the export and import trade with britain so there's a sense i think in the mid-18th century that the image that portugal had had 100 or 200 years before as one of the great shapers of globalization has kind of begun to fade by the mid 18th century. There's a sense of, I think, of growing backwardness. I mean, isn't there also a problem that the Portuguese royal family are entitled to a fifth of the gold that comes in?

So it absolutely embeds colossal inequalities um and then on top of that you have i suppose you know so many people are going across to brazil that you're starting to lose a kind of working population in portugal i suppose there's a bit of a drain yeah and then actually i mean when you read about um the english settlers british settlers in portugal and we've been talking about this wonderful alliance and be very sentimental about it but but essentially when you read about it it it's pretty it's a kind of neo-colonialism isn't it yes because they come to be known as the factory uh the english trading community in lisbon and they have all these rights that are felt by many portuguese to be humiliating because the British are Protestant.

And so they are a kind of standing offence to everything that the Inquisition represents, which is still going strong at this point. So I think maybe saying that Portugal has got its mojo back was the wrong way. But it's a kind of classic example, I suppose, of the way in which people talk about empire, overseas possessions being a kind of curse. Yeah, it's a very complicated picture, isn't it? Because on the one hand, I think it's reminiscent of countries like Argentina. So on the one hand, the Portuguese, there are people who resent the English and who resent their sort of sense of colonial, neocolonial dependency. And of course, at the same time, they admire the English. They see the English as the most modern, the most

advanced and a sort of a model. And the classic example of somebody like that is a guy who's best known as the Marquês de Pombal. So he's the defining Portuguese statesman of the mid-18th century. And we're going to come back now eventually to Voltaire and his earthquake. So the Marquês de Pombal is born Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, I think it is. And he's born in 1699. He's the son of a nobleman. He studies at the great Portuguese University of Coimbra,

the great kind of medieval foundation, basically the only university in Portugal at that time. He elopes with a noblewoman. Isn't she Austrian? Yes, she's the niece of a Portuguese count. And they run off and get married. But he's appointed as ambassador to Britain. And actually, he's in Britain for seven years,

and he's a fellow of the Royal Society. And he's really interested. He sort of travels around looking at British industry and British science and all these things. And he has this great vision of a modernized, sort of anglicized, I suppose. But also a kind of enlightenment. He's a kind of militant enlightenment figure, kind of quite radical and quite brutal. So he comes back and he becomes first minister doesn't he um yeah and he launches this really very brutal attack on

the nobility so um the the greatest nobleman in in portugal the duke of averro has his palace destroyed um and then very cool behavior he he sows the Duke's garden with salt, which is very Assyrian behavior. Yes. And then there's this unfortunate Marquess, the Marquess of Tavora, who is literally broken on the wheel. And then his wife has their children executed in front of her. And other members of the nobility are in prison for up to 20 years. So, I mean, this is kind of an assault on the nobility comparable to what would happen in the French Revolution. And then there's an attack on the church.

So he presides over the expulsion of the Jesuits, who were very much the kind of, you know, the cutting edge of the Catholic Church. He brings science and mathematics into the curriculum at Coimbra. So basically, he tries to rein in the kind of the Inquisition and effectively abolishes it. And he abolishes the racial discrimination that had previously existed between Jews who'd been forcibly converted. Because he's aware, I think, that the expulsion of the Jews, which happened in the 17th century, 16th and 17th century, had been hugely to the disadvantage of Portugal. So and they'd all gone to settle in Amsterdam. So the most famous descendant of Portuguese Jews who settled in Amsterdam is Spinoza, the great philosopher. Yeah. So he's outlawing that.

So he's freeing the Jews from their disabilities and he's not doing this because he's a liberal. He's doing with a fair measure of brutality but what of course what he is not doing is abolishing slavery in the colonies where i mean it's on an enormous scale isn't it it's on a scale that dwarfs the the plantations in the the caribbean or in north america yeah you're right to bring this up actually tom uh because it's so little known i think in the anglo-saxon world where i mean the endless sort of conversations that we have about slavery and and the involvement of britain the united states and the slave trade and so on um but one thing we actually as you as you rightly say we completely miss is that the the portuguese ship i mean nobody's exactly sure of the number, but it's between four and five million, probably, slaves to the New World. And to put that into context, the Portuguese ship to Brazil, probably 10 times as many African slaves as are ever shipped to the United States of America.

I mean, an astonishing figure. And I don't, I mean, maybe I'm wrong about this. We have quite a few Portuguese listeners. I'd be interested to hear from them how much this is discussed and debated. I mean, whether it's simply taken for granted and it's, you know, they have, as it were, come to terms with it or whether they've even had the conversation, the arguments, the endless sort of arguments that people have in Britain about it. And do they flagellate themselves about it?

Or do they just say, well, it was all in the past? I don't know. But obviously slavery is the single most important thing in shaping modern Brazil. And the legacy of it is still there in Brazil's racial politics today. So, yeah, it's a fascinating story and one not often told. But anyway, the Marcus de Pombal, I mean mean he's a whatever you you think of in individual policies he is i think it's fair to say isn't it tom by and large he is a remarkable man impressive

i would say um but as you said right at the beginning coming right in the middle of his kind of tenure is that colossal sat one literally seism seismic disaster of the Lisbon earthquake, which, you know, it's not just an earthquake. It's All Saints Day. Tsunami, isn't it, as well? It's an earthquake, a tsunami, and then a firestorm, which destroys the great majority of buildings in the city. It's a firestorm, isn't it?

Because it's All Saints Day. And so everyone has gone to church and they've lit candles. And when the earthquake hits, everyone's in church, they'll get crushed beneath the churches, the candles blaze and the whole of Lisbon burns down. And it's that that particularly kind of raises eyebrows among those who are religious and among the philosophes, those who are sceptical. So that's where Voltaire is coming in. How could God allow this to happen? Because at at the time you know there's a real sense of enlightenment optimism isn't it the sort of um you know everything is for the best it's leibniz

is that leibniz yeah everything orders for the best in this best of possible worlds yeah so in condit his you know voltaire's famous kind of satire on that kind of philosophical optimism, it's exemplified by the figure of Pangloss, who is supposedly the greatest philosopher in the Holy Roman Empire. And he accompanies Condede and they get kind of involved in the, um, in, in the earthquake, Pangloss kind of surveying the rubble and the fire and the, the death and people screaming beneath the kind of shattered fabric of all these churches. And he says, ah, it's all,

you know, this is all for the best. Um, if this didn't happen, there'd be a terrible volcano explode somewhere else. Um, and he, Pangloss says this to a member of the inquisition and they get arrested,

uh, accused of heresy. Um, Condi gets whipped. Pangloss says this to a member of the Inquisition and they get arrested, accused of heresy. Condede gets whipped. Pangloss gets hanged. Condede is just about to be hanged himself when there's another earthquake and he manages to escape. And it's a very, very brutal satire on this kind of notion that everything is all for the best, the best of all possible worlds.

I mean, the interesting thing is that the Marcus de Pombal, he doesn't lose his Enlightenment optimism. He uses the earthquake as an opportunity to rebuild Lisbon on very Enlightenment sort of optimistic principles. Never let a crisis go to waste. No, he has this famous, apparently famous in Portugal anyway, this famous line where people are sort of, everyone's weeping and wailing and saying, what should we do? And he says, bury the dead and heal the living. he says it in exactly that very impressive way well he hangs a lot of people as well they put gallows up on the hills yeah he hangs all the looters but then he rebuilds the city so if you've been to lisbon and we haven't really talked that much about lisbon in these podcasts but lisbon i think is an absolutely spectacularly beautiful

and stylish city and you've got the sort of on the one hand you've got the castle and the kind of moorish court of the alfama and it's all a hickledy-pickledy kind of almost north african kind of warren of alleys and then on the other hand side you've got the byro alto the the other high town on the other side um today very trendy kind of neighborhood with bars and boutiques and stuff and in between them you have this kind of valley and that was what was completely destroyed by the by the tsunami and the firestorm so you were saying in the previous episode that we all you know vasco de gama and his gang that we don't really know as much about them as we should and that's presumably

because everything all the records got destroyed in the firestorm yeah i think a lot of the records were destroyed i mean there were and there were all the stories of paintings and things that were destroyed as well by tishan and rubens and people like that so a lot of that is destroyed but pombal turns that i mean it's now it's called the baisha and if you go there it is a grid it is spectacularly beautiful very elegant these kind of gleaming mosaic pavements leading down to the waterfront and it's comparable to edin Edinburgh or any great enlightenment kind of project. And because it's such a contrast with the rest of the city, it makes it all the more impressive and all the more striking.

But Pompadour falls, doesn't he? He does. There's a new queen, Donna Maria, and she's very religious. And of course, you were saying he's not anti-clerical is the wrong word, maybe, but he's certainly very sceptical of the Catholic Church's kind of privileges. And she can't stand that. And she basically boots him out within moments of becoming queen. But she also, I read online in my very close Bodleian research, she had one of history's first restraining orders it says i can come um so that basically he wasn't allowed within 20 miles of her presence and if she visited her estates which were near his he had to leave his house evacuate them yeah yeah but then she goes

mad doesn't she um a bit like she does third uh so she has the same doctor um what's his name doctor uh francis willis and he basically comes over and says i can do nothing for her it's a kind of dementia or no one knows could be porphyria could be manic depression could be i mean people at the time describe her as basically a religious maniac so this is a this is kind of um emblematic of an escalating decline in Portugal's economy, international standing that will hit absolute rock bottom with the Revolutionary Wars and the rise to power of Napoleon, which I think we should come to after a break. So when we do that, we will come to the drama of the Peninsular War and the extraordinary evacuation from Portugal

of the Royal Family. So we will come back with that. See you in a minute. Bye-bye. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news,

reviews, splash of showbiz gossip. And on our Q&A, we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our Members Club. If you want ad-free listening, bonus episodes and early access to live tickets, head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Hello, welcome back to the second half of the third episode in our epic history of Portugal. And Dominic, we have reached the early 19th century. And Dominic, Portugal, not in a good way, very much economically a bit on its uppers, but also, more importantly, menaced by Napoleon

because, of course, Portugal is the ally of Britain. Napoleon is trying to kick the British out of the continent. So in a way, Lisbon and Oporto are the two kind of entry points that the Royal Navy still have into what is otherwise fortress Europe. So a huge crisis for portugal because they basically have to choose between france and britain and offending either one is is obviously you know a nightmare yeah they're so they're stuck really the portuguese it's actually an issue so in our fourth podcast when we get to world war ii it's it's a not dissimilar position actually

that they they that they're they have this alliance with Britain, but they feel they are trapped by a sort of belligerent, sort of menacing neighbour, in this case, France. But I mean, it's worth saying, isn't it, that the reason why the alliance with Britain is so important is that Portugal's links to Brazil are absolutely crucial to it, and the Royal Navy can guarantee those links but obviously the british don't have sufficient land forces perhaps to keep portugal defendable from from the french army so so actually napoleon has multiple i mean napoleon very much not a friend certainly not a friend of the rest of this rest is history presenter and i think i think

you're a bit unsound on napoleon but we will um i have my suspicions but we'll we'll come back to that when we do we do a big napoleon series i mean god how many episodes are we doing on a page um we did the french revolution in one so maybe half well we did napoleon in egypt didn't we so we we have we have started on that we did so napoleon has already when the time the crisis really comes to Portugal, Napoleon has actually already basically threatened and browbeaten the Portuguese once with his ally Spain. So the Spanish had led armies into the north and south of Portugal. They had taken the town of Olivenza. Napoleon had basically compelled the Portuguese to pay him an indemnity

of 20 million francs and close some of its ports to the British. But he comes back for more, and we're in 1807, and his ambassador basically tells – so Dona Maria, because she's gone mad, is kind of out of the picture. So her son, Dom João, is basically the regent. And he's a bit ineffectual, isn't he? He is. He's sort of melancholy and, yeah, sort of full of that self-doubt. And he's not a great leader of men, I think it's fair to say.

And the French basically say to him, you have to recall your ambassador from London, break diplomatic relations with Britain, close the ports of British ships, arrest all the Brits in Lisbon, confiscate their property, and you've got weeks to make up your mind. And Dom Zhao, he's a great character. He lives in this palace in Mafra, and he's got this huge library, and he's surrounded by all these books and monks,

and the library is infested with insects. So the monks maintain a sort of menagerie, if that's the word, of bats, which they use to deal with the insects in Dom Jarre's library. So he's like Batman sitting in the middle of Wayne Manor, a very miserable figure. And he asks the British what he should do, and the British basically say, what you have to do is this we will take you to brazil you know you will flee we'll take your entire royal household to brazil but you must open all the ports in brazil to british goods

so basically allow us to control the trade um with brazil um and he doesn't like that so he plays for time the british actually i mean again we i'm not convinced that the british come out of this quite as well as we might like to think because they basically say listen if you don't do this um we will consider that an act of war and we will bombard Lisbon ourselves. So you have to choose between us and the French and you have to choose us or we'll attack you. Yeah. I mean, so my rosy sense of this of this alliance is I'm finding it rather upsetting having to having to face how perfidious Albion. But now we do come out well, Tom, because we send a splendid fellow to Lisbon. So he's called Sir Sidney Smith, the Lion of the Sea.

Friend of the show, because he's the one who he was in our episode on Napoleon in Egypt. So remind me, Tom, what was he doing in that? Siege of Acre. Yes. And he sees Napoleon off and Napoleon says, this is the man who cost me my destiny so in another um he's a very i mean i know you won't like this because we mentioned in previous podcasts that you don't like this you don't like rope you don't like naval technology and you don't like the novels of patrick o'brien but sir sydney smith strikes me as a very jack aubrey figure because like jack aubrey he's's imprisoned he's imprisoned by the French

for two years for being a spy which as if you would know if you had read Patrick O'Brien's books Tom you would know it's not fun it's not fun but it's also but it but it's very rousing it makes you proud to be British that somebody would you know hold out in such a way and then come back and rescue the Portuguese royal family

which is precisely the line of the sea right so yeah November 1807 the French are basically moving in on Portugal and then come back and rescue the Portuguese royal family, which is precisely what happened. And be called the Lion of the Sea. Right. So November 1807, the French are basically moving in on Portugal. The Portuguese royal family make up their minds, all right, we'll go. And there's this amazing scene. So there's a brilliant book, actually. I mean, it sounds like a very obscure subject,

but honestly, it's a brilliant book. It's a book about Brazil by Eloisa Starling and Lillia Moritz-Schwartz, which I wrote about in the Sunday Times a few years ago, called Brazil, A Biography. And they have this amazing set piece where they basically say, you know, it's like a scene from Dante's Inferno, all these huge mobs of people kind of swarming down to the docks in Lisbon. I mean, just thousands upon thousands of people preparing for the voyage to Brazil.

So kind of maids and servants and courtiers and noblemen, basically anybody who is anybody. And Donna Maria, right? And Donna Maria, who's been, because she's, of course, mad. She's screaming and sobbing because she thinks she's been kidnapped yeah yes so she's been taken down in her carriage it's an absolutely risible kind of chaotic scene i mean as they say in their book it's not just a case of the royal family it's the families of ministers of counselors of their ability of the court of civil servants it's the entire

administrative machine the government offices the secretariats the law courts the archives the treasure the government employees do they take an orchestra like um they take everything like the last emperor of mexico i think they take dinner dinner services and they take wardrobes and they take because they're basically moving the entire in their minds they are moving portugal you know the how the royal, the sort of symbol of Portugal, across the Atlantic to Brazil to about 15,000 people. They did what the British royal family didn't do in the Second World War. Exactly. Because there was kind of talk of them going to Canada, wasn't there?

But I don't think if they had gone to Canada. I like to think, now maybe this is me just flattering myself and my country, but I find it hard to believe that in 1940 there would have been 15,000 people shouting. Well, they'd have to take all the footmen and the horses. Would they have taken the footmen? I mean, maybe they would. I don't know. I kind of imagine they'd have done it more discreetly in a more tweedy way. Do you know what I think?

George VI? Yeah, probably. But anyway, they get on these ships um the british are escorting them there are no beds uh the crew is too small um what's it so this is from that brazilian biography it says um the water all the water was reserved for drinking and even the ships that conducted the prince regent the queen and the princes were disgraceful and stank like pig's thighs the lady's hair became infested by fleas obliging them to shave their heads thus the journey dragged on monotonous interminable apart from the distractions of watching the sails being hoisted and singing

to guitars at sunset and on moonlit nights there was nothing to do but play cards and they're just doing this for weeks when they arrive in bra, all the ladies of the court are bald. They must be, or shaven-headed anyway. Wow. I mean, what a spectacle. But then the spectacle is incredible because they get off. They've never been. They have never been. No European royal has ever been to the New World.

So they get off the ships and they arrive in Salvador, which is then, I think, effectively the capital of Brazil. And that's the great slave port, isn't it? It's a great slave port. So it is this huge slave market. It's basically a glorified slave market. And the get-off is filthy. There are people crowding around.

There's rubbish in the streets. It's muddy. There are strange plants and animals and all this sort of stuff and you know for them it's and it is the the culture shock of culture shocks and meanwhile because they've opened brazil as part of the deal to british manufacturers other ships are unloading these bizarre products that the the british are forcing the Brazilians. So ice skates, ladies' shark fin corsets, warming pans, thick woolen blankets, and mathematical instruments. So all these things that are being made in, I don't know, Barnsley or something, are being

shipped over and the Brazilians are being forced to buy them. Oh, brilliant. A woolen blanket. Just what I want. Yeah. Okay. So that's a scene in Brazil. Meanwhile, back in Portugal, high drama,

because of course the French are moving against Portugal and the British need to defend what is their bridgehead. Yeah, exactly. And so they send one of their top generals, don't they? Sir Arthur Wellesley, who... Do you know, is this his first appearance on The Rest Is History? I think it might be, because of course, Sir Arthur Wilsley will go on to become the Duke of Wellington. But this is really where... He's been a general in India, hasn't he? And done great

stuff there. But this is really his first experience of campaigning on the continent. And he does very well. So he defeats the French uh he he signs the convention of sintra the french evacuate portugal uh they then invade again typical perfidious french behavior uh again wellesley defeats them that's when he is ennobled that's what he's made the duke of wellington for kicking the french out for a second time in 1809 i think it is so we can start calling him wellington now we can so so he invades spain doesn't he he wins this great victory at talavera which is uh i mean almost near madrid i think uh but then he realizes that he's massively outnumbered and so he he he withdraws and he

focuses uh rather than kind of taking the attack to the french in spain on absolutely securing lisbon because he knows that the French are going to make another attack and so these are the famous lines of Torres Vedras which are built over the course of 1809 to 10. 152 forts I think it is and they're built using I mean the Portuguese are basically press ganged into building these forts and it's real scorched earth policy so actually Portugal is a is a sort of battle scarred wasteland well it's the belgium yeah absolutely it is yeah i mean you know sort of cannons are blasted kind of craters out of the earth and all that sort of thing and they're built on a huge scale aren't

they i mean the lines of torres verdas if you look at the pictures that i mean the forts are they're pretty sizable i mean mean, they're pretty chunky forts. I mean, who knows? The Portuguese, I think, become increasingly francophobic as the war goes on. I mean, as you would expect, you've been invaded three times in three years, basically. So, of course, any sense of sort of the French might be there. Republican liberators from the old regime has pretty much evaporated, I would say in spain as well yeah as it does in spain as well so the peninsula war i mean a lot of the main sort of major action takes place in spain and it's a very confused and sort of bloody story well we should

do we should do an episode on that shouldn't we but i mean from the point of view of this of this um of portugal yeah there is one last attempt by the French to capture Lisbon. And that's under basically one of the best marshals there is, Messina, whose Napoleon rates very, very highly. But he can't break through. And so the lines of Torres de Dres hold. And basically that ensures that Portugal will escape French conquest and it ensures that the British will maintain their bridgehead, which is absolutely crucial. So that's all going on. So you've now got Portugal and Brazil, rather than Portugal being the colonial power and Brazil a colony, I mean, Brazil is starting to basically become the kind of the center of this United Kingdom.

It is. It's such an extraordinary story. And there's no, I can't think of a comparison anywhere in the world. I mean, maybe listeners will be able to think of one where the metropole basically moves to the colony and that ends up almost becoming the metropole. So what's basically happened, Portugal and Brazil, their populations are, I guess, roughly equivalent in the turn of the 19th century. But the royal family have moved to Brazil. And when the war with Napoleon is over, Dom João, he doesn't come straight back to Portugal. He stays in Brazil, in Rio, and he elevates Brazil.

So the kingdom is now called the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil, and the Algarves. So what are the Algarves? I thought there was just one. Well, I think maybe some islands are included in the Algarves. So what are the Algarves? I thought there was just one. Well, I think maybe some islands are included in the Algarves. It's a bit like the, the multiple Sicily, the two Sicilies. Right. Okay.

I think it always sounds better if you have a plural. Yes, it does. Yeah. Doesn't it? I mean, yeah. You know,

I once had a, um, a children's history, a very old fashioned children's history book, which said that there were multiple Britons, which is why I was called great Britain. Well, so there were three Britons. Do you know what they were um canada yeah so it was

britain brittany and the wider britain beyond the seas very inspirational anyway um tom shout doesn't want to come home and the portuguese and he doesn't want to take his coat off, does he? He refuses to take his coat off. That's a very important point. He kind of rips it on a fork or something. And so his chamberlains have to go and sew it up while he's asleep. So he's clearly not entirely on top of things. Yeah, his several forks short of a cutlery drawer or whatever. Yeah.

Yeah. Meanwhile, in Portugal, so the Portuguese are obviously gutted that the royal family has gone to Brazil and won't come home, but also they've sort of lost their status in their own empire. And, you know, there's a sort of depression at the end of the Napoleonic Wars. There were harvest failures. You know, as we know, we've talked before about the sort of climactic conditions of the early

19th century, sort of year without a summer or whatever it is and all this stuff. Their currency is in sort of meltdown, high inflation. They basically say the Brazilians don't care about us, they don't send us anything. And there's this increasing, increasing ferment, this sort of liberal ferment where they say that the royal family should come back to Portugal and they should swear a constitution that basically will, first of all, give sort of liberal elites more power. So part of that liberal constitutionalism of the 19th century. But also, we absolutely want it to be clear that we're the top dogs, not the Brazilians. The return of the king. That's what they Brazilians. The return of the king.

That's what they want. They want the return of the king. And you know the big people in this, so a very big thing in this is Freemasonry. So... Oh, they're always up to no good. Well, Masonic societies are very big among the sort of Portuguese enlightened sort of upper classes and middle classes.

So they're agitating for all this. And basically they demand that Zhao comes back, which he does in April 1821. Still wearing his coat. He's still wearing his coat. He's absolutely gutted. He wanted to stay in Brazil because basically in Brazil he's got everything kind of as he wants it.

If he goes back to Europe, it's the home of revolution. Europe is the home of political ferment and turbulence. And, you know, he'll be pushed around by all these Portuguese bigwigs. He doesn't want that. He's so sad, apparently, that he can't speak. But before he's lost the ability to speak, he says to his son, Pedro, you stay in Brazil as regent in Brazil. And basically, if they tell you to come back,

if they try to take Brazil from you, you should declare independence or something. I mean, he's completely upfront about this. Jao comes back. The Portuguese browbeat him into this new constitution. He has to swear an oath of loyalty to the constitution. His wife refuses, so she's kind of stripped of her royal privileges. But now the Portuguese go further and they say, your son is still in Brazil. He needs to come back to Portugal as well. And this business of him being regent in Brazil is rubbish. He needs to scrap all that. The Brazilian masons actually are very anti this. And they say, no, no, no. they invest him in brazil with the title defender of

brazil don pedro don pedro is a slightly useless man as well he's been very highly educated but he's everybody says he can't focus he's always having affairs with people he's sort of badly behaved um and it basically all comes to a head in the late summer of 1822 the portuguese say you know this is an absolute ultimatum. Pedro has to come back to Portugal. Pedro, unfortunately, has chronic diarrhea. So he's not cutting a very glamorous figure. But nevertheless, he gives this rousing speech in between sort of running to the loo. Rushing off to the toilet.

Yeah. In which he says, independence or death. And and all this which is generally what oh tom i can't believe you did a sound effect on the your first sound effect on the rest of history well and it was everything and what i want to do uh so he gives the speech he says independence or death which i think that all latin american people say when they're declaring independence i think that's the law isn't it yeah by un convention you have to say independence or death which i think that all latin american people say when they're declaring independence i think that's the law isn't it yeah by un convention you have to say independence or death and they get independence because of course there's not really anything the portuguese they can't do anything no they haven't got it's not like they've got a navy and an army that they

can really use to crush the brazilians what's it what's the attitude of the british to this because presumably their attitude really matters because they control the shipping lanes that enable Portugal and Brazil to communicate with each other. So really the British act as mediators and the British don't care whether Portuguese run Brazil or not. What they want to do is to ensure their own commercial dominance in both places. So they can sell all their woolen blankets. Yes, corsets and ice skates. But interestingly, for people who think that the British have not always behaved with distinction in the course of today's podcast, one of the sort of quid pro quos

for the British agreeing that they will – I mean, the British basically mediate and they persuade the Portuguese to give Brazil their independence, to recognise Brazilian independence. One of the quid pro quos is that the British, this is the heyday, really. I mean, abolitionism in Britain, the early 19th century. And they say, we want you to scrap slave trafficking. Not necessarily abolish slavery within Brazil, but stop the slave trade. And the Brazilians, in a sort of very roundabout way,

they kind of agree. So in 1831, they agreed to a law that says basically when slaves arrive in Brazil, they will be considered free. And they completely and utterly ignore it. So it's a complete fiction and a fraud. And is there a famous Portuguese phrase that sums this up? You're reading the notes. You're reading ahead. There is. It's uma lei para o inglês ver, a law for the British to see, which basically in Brazilian Portuguese means addressing it up.

Yeah. And actually, it's not until 1888 that slavery is abolished in Brazil. And since I know we're running out of time, so I will just say this is Brazil. Brazil now vanishes from Portuguese history because it's on its own. But, Tom, we will be returning to Brazil, which is a country whose history is almost entirely unknown, certainly in Britain, but probably in the English-speaking world more generally. We'll be returning to what happens to Brazil because Brazil obviously becomes an empire entirely unknown, certainly in Britain, but probably in the English-speaking world more generally, will be returning to what happens to Brazil,

because Brazil obviously becomes an empire under Dom Pedro and his successors. So we'll be returning to the Brazilian empire and the abolition of slavery in Brazil and the downfall of the Brazilian empire in a future podcast, won't we? Because we're going to be doing some very exciting podcasts in the autumn. Yes, we've got part of a massive very exciting podcasts in the autumn yes we've got

a mass part of a massive very very exciting plan that we've got coming that we will talk about top secret unless you're a wang they already know but uh yeah something i hope that definitely to look forward to okay so i think we should um we should stop at this point. And we have everything is set up now for the fourth and concluding part of our epic history of Portugal. The absolute climax. And I know, Dominic, this is an episode you've been hugely looking forward to because you are a huge Fado fan, aren't you? Fado music. And Tommy's going to be singing. I will be singing.

That's Fado. Well, I might hum along. And the extraordinary figure of Salazar, the 20th century Portuguese dictator. Dictator. Yes, it's very exciting. Extraordinary figure. So Tolkien only did three in his Lord of the Rings trilogy, Tom, but we have gone one better because we have done four in this mighty series.

A tetralogy. Which people are already calling the Lord of the rings of history podcasts aren't they yeah are they calling that have you heard people calling them i'm sure they are i'm sure they are uh so we will we will see you tomorrow um thanks very much for listening uh and um do come back for portugal in the 20th century bye-bye adios Adios. at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com. I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment.

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