Peninsular war and society: the impacts of the French invasions at Porto (1807-11)
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abstract
During the peninsular war, Porto was invaded two times for french troops (1808-
1809). The Portuguese traditional sources about the French invasions describe,
on a patriotic rhetoric and through a denunciative discourse, and beyond a whole
series of economic and social constraints and the governmental disorientation
that the kingdom suffered by the usurpation of power, a series of abuses and
outrages perpetrated by the French and English troops that victimize the
population of Porto. Among the many possible approaches, we privilege an
assessment of the impacts of war from the people’s daily life in an adverse
context. We intend to feel, through their reports and diverse sources of
information, the economic, social, organizational and sociability constraints in an
adverse context of military occupation of the real urban space, further
compounded by the absence of the Portuguese government exile in Brazil and a
decreased local authority before the haughty ways of the “enemy”.
