3 Review(s)

This book can be read in two different ways: as an introductory synthesis on Modern Portugal, or as a collection of twelve studies focusing on familiar aspects of the State formation of any modern nation throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this second reading, each chapter opens comparative perspectives on specific topics within some key fields of studies and international debates on modernity, including population, police, empire, technology, bureaucracy, social sciences, rural life, education, religion, nationalism, communism, and economy. Such a wide range of subjects, however, proves comprehensive enough to create a narrative where the reader may also locate the chief trends and dynamics developing in Portuguese history and society during the last two centuries. From this perspective, Portugal emerges as a country traversed by social conflict and struggling for modernization. Granted, this is not a very surprising picture, especially if we consider it in the historical context of European modernity. And yet, it is precisely this familiarity, one might argue, that allows The Making of Modern Portugal to become a useful tool for inserting the Portuguese case into the debates of a wide range of fields and disciplines in Europe and beyond.