Socio-Economic & Political Consequences of Napoleonic Wars and its effects on Portugal and its architecture

The present work is devoted to the study and analysis of the political, social and economic consequences of the Napoleonic wars in Portugal. The work presents a clear description of events in Portugal at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It emphasizes the main political, social and economic consequences of the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal and its effects on architecture. ...

Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………………………...3
1. Introduction……………………………………………………………………………………………....4
2. The Impact of the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal…………………………………………………………5
3. Social Consequences……………………………………………………………………………….…….8
4. Economic Consequences ……………………………………………………………………………….10
5. Political Consequences………………………………………………………………………………......13
6. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………..…….......16
7. References……………………………………………………………………………………………….18

Portugal is a state in the south-west of Europe in the western part of the Iberian Peninsula. Today, Portugal is a fairly successful industrial-agrarian European country. But, if we go deep into the history of the 19th century, we will see a completely different Portugal. It was then that country was poor. The beginning of the 19th century was extremely difficult and severe for Portugal. The Napoleonic wars brought a lot of suffering and devastation to the country.
It goes without saying that Portuguese architecture, like all aspects of Portuguese culture, is majorly marked by the history of the country and the several people that have settled and influenced the current Portuguese territory, not to mention the influence from the main European artistic centers from which were introduced to the broad architectural styles: Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, Baroque and Neoclassicism. In fact, Napoleonic Wars have greatly influenced Portuguese cities in many ways due to pressing wartime political, social and economic issues and its consequences.
In regard to this, one can say that the subject matter of this paper is consequences of the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal from political, social and economic perspective. While the object is how those consequences affected and formulated the artistic and architectural realm of the country.
The hypothesis of the present research paper is that Napoleonic Wars in Portugal led the country’s art and architecture to the period of wide usage of Neoclassicism style due to both destructive and rejuvenating effects that the Wars had. Considering the above mentioned, this work is aimed at finding examples and explanations of the political, social and economic consequences of the Napoleonic Wars in Portugal on the architectural progressions in the country.
In order to completely review all aspects of this topic it will be necessary to perform a number of tasks, such as: revision of Napoleonic Wars in Portugal and analysis of the main consequences of those wars in order to see whether those wars had any destructive effects on the country; to provide qualification on what extent those wars affected Portugal’s architecture