Free Spain: A Unique History by Stanley G. Payne Page A

Portuguese aristocracy never fully recovered from the trauma of 1578, which destroyed some of its leading elements. Though the domestic social structure would remain much the same for three centuries, the fire and drive was gone from the old military nobility, which preferred to live off its rents. It might be asked whether this reflected a subjective change on the part of the elite, or rather an objective adjustment to a world of increased competition in which the Portuguese could inevitably expect to achieve less. The answer probably is that it reflected a certain amount of both.
    It may be objected that the concept "change of character" creates a caricature. Ordinary Portuguese behaved much the same before and after 1578. In both eras the most typical subject of the Portuguese crown was a peaceful peasant who worked the land. Moreover, there was never a monolithic Portugal. The fifteenth-century elite had been sharply divided about the wisdom of crusading in Morocco, and also about the Atlantic voyages. There had always existed more prudent and practical elite sectors, whose point of view imposed a more pragmatic and "modern" policy after 1640. Rather than a change of character, this might be interpreted as a natural evolution, even though crucially precipitated by trauma.
    A certain militancy and expansionism was regained under modern nationalism in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Portugal was much more successful in this regard than was Spain, amassing the second largest empire of any of the smaller European countries, a situation that greatly stimulated German cupidity on the eve of World War I. Given the relative poverty of modern Portugal, this was a considerable achievement, but of course at no time had the country been wealthy, in comparative terms, and the "third empire" (Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau), though noteworthy, did not reflect an originality and a daring equivalent to the fifteenth century. Portuguese society to some extent lost its atavistic military ethos without developing the full structure and values of a modern society. This also paralleled the experience of Spain, but in the case of Portugal the disaster of 1578 and the temporary loss of full sovereignty marked a before and an after. Though later exceeded in character and extent by the radical transformation of Germany after 1945, it constituted a more marked change than was to be found in the early modern history of any other European country.
    The positive side of the decline in militancy in modern Portuguese culture has been the absence of civil war and prolonged civil violence, except for the conflict of 1832-34. The perpetual instability of the "Primeira República" (1910-26) produced intermittent violence that was nonetheless low in volume. Even the long Portuguese dictatorship of 1926-74 was comparatively gentle, the only one in Europe referred to as "uma catedocracia" (a professorocracy) because of the prominent role of university personnel.
The "Precocity" of Portugal
    Portugal has never been a particularly modern or advanced country, and did not hold such status even at the time of its expansion in 1415. Nevertheless, it has exhibited certain symptoms of precocity to the extent that it carried out new achievements or introduced new institutions earlier than did Spain or other parts of southern and eastern Europe, or even, in some cases, northwestern Europe. The "advantages of backwardness," as it is sometimes called, offer no explanation, for this refers more to the possibility of making unusually rapid advances by taking advantage of institutions or policies already pioneered by more developed countries. 5 The only advantages that Portugal possessed were a militant ethos, a compact geography and privileged strategic location.
    Among the many Portuguese "firsts" may be found:

    1. The first Hispanic kingdom to complete its full southern reconquest;
    2. The first western kingdom to initiate major expansion in Africa and