Portuguese Personalities
Carlota Joaquina, Queen of Portugal. By Marcus Cheke. (Sidgwick and Jackson. 15s.)
MR. CHEKE writes with verve and gusto (although the hypercritical may complain that he does not always duck when he sees a cliché coming) and he has pronounced and perceptible opinions on Portu- guese history. In these days when to say "We don't know" frequently is acclaimed the peak of the historian's art and to have any philosophy of history is judged vaguely improper and Victorian, one must admire a writer on the past who has a point of view. Broadly Mr. Cheke's point of view is the same as that expressed by the late Sir Austen Chamberlain in a preface which he wrote for a book on Dr. Salazar in the nineteen-thirties, namely that parliamentary democracy is a slow and delicate growth not necessarily successful in warm climates or on un-English soils. The story of Portugal from the outbreak of the French Revolution to 1830, which Mr. Cheke tells in terms of court and chancery, is, he says, " an inter- esting and typical example of what happens . . . when an attempt is made to transplant alien political institutions . . . into a country of ancient traditions unprepared to receive them, and inhabited by
• a people to whose national temperament they may be entirely un- suited." In Mr. Cheke's opinion the national temperament of the Portuguese is mild, charitable, lethargic and, above all, unwilling to recognise unpalatable truths, and therefore requires not parliamentary institutions but a Dr. Salazar to strike at the root of her troubles- " economic disorder." But while Mr. Cheke appears to feel that the Portuguese population .with its high degree of illiteracy and com- parative lack of political experience is not ready for democracy as we know it, at the same time he is clearly no admirer of Roman Catholic influence which he evidently associates with reaction.
For his central character Mr. Cheke takes Carlota Joaquina, daughter of King Charles IV of Spain, who married King John VI of PortugaL The Portuguese have a proverb that no good comes of a Spanish wind or a Spanish marriage, and in this instance the proverb was justified. Carlota Joaquina was an unprepossessing creature, almost a dwarf, with a hooked nose, dirty hair and a face marked by smallpox. Describing the princess and her husband (before he became king), Marshal Junot exclaimed : " My God! How ugly he is! How ugly the Princess is! Hovir ugly they both are! " Carlota Joaquina's favourite diversions were letting fly at partridges from the saddle with a heavy musket and intriguing against her husband and her adopted country. She was one of those female figures like Sarah, Duchess of Marlborough, whose strength of mind is exerted on behalf of semi-lunatic ends. She gave birth to two sons of very different characters, Dom Pedro, under whom the separation of Brazil from Portugal took place, and Dom Miguel who, after becoming Regent of Portugal with the good-will of Canning, proceeded at once to destroy the constitutional system established by his father and to preside over what was for the mild Portuguese an undoubted reign of terror. The history of Portugal at this time is of real interest for two reasons. It shows the effect of the ideas of the French Revolution and of Napoleonic aggression on a small nation, and it marks the end of an age when the Portuguese Empire was one of the richest and most splendid in the world. The two events were linked. If it had not been for the invasion of Portugal by the French armies, John VI (then Regent) and his Court would not have fled to Brazil (whence the Regent was exceedingly loath to return) and once there introduced reforms into that hitherto exploited colony and con- stituted it a kingdom. And if it had not been for the identification of John's son Dom Pedro with the rising Brazilian nationalism—as Emperor of Brazil he composed the Brazilian national anthem—and for the inevitable antagonism engendered among the Brazilians by the presence of Portuguese troops in Rio, it is possible that the separation of the South' American state from the mother country might at least have been delayed. As it was, a revolution by the " constitutionalists " in Portugal, originating during the Court's long absence in Rio, produced a Cortes which attempted to put the clock back in Brazil and onl3k fortified the movement for Brazilian inde- pendence.
This story is vivaciously told by Mr. Cheke. But his method of presenting it has its disadvantages. It is customary nowadays to assume that no one outside the schools will read modern history unless it is lavishly spiced with biographies. Few of us, including the reviewer, are guiltless of this belief. (The only accepted alterna- tive is the patriotic panorama written after the prose style of Lord Macaulay.) The main defect of the biographical approach is that it often results in the inclusion in a historical book of a good deal of extraneous domestic detail and the exclusion of some important facts. In this case, for instance, Carlota Joaquina had precious little to do with the evolution of modern Portugal except in so far as through her son she introduced a spark of Spanish cruelty into Portuguese politics. Most of her intrigues were ineffective, and she exerted no influence, good or bad, over her husband. A straight- forward account of the history of Portugal from the death of Pombal to the Miguelist wars, with an analysis of the Portuguese and Brazilian social and economic backgrounds, would have been a serious contri- • button to British knowledge of this attractive country and its people. As it is, we have the curipus result that a book on Portugal during the Napoleonic period scarcely mentions Wellington, and leaves one a little puzzled as to what indeed were the fundamental causes of the failure of constitutionalism in Portugal or the loss of Brazil. One must certainly not neglect the personal element in history, but there is always the danger that too deep a study of diplomatic reports and contemporary memoirs will make one imagine that it was more significant than reason would allow.
MAURICE ASHLEY.
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