The History of the Revolutions of Portugal

René-Aubert VertotProject Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 3.4

Word count: 416K words
Chapters: 42

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.The History of the Revolutions of Portugal by Boisgelin de Kerdu and VertotAuthor: Vertot, abbé de, 1655-1735,Language: English, Class: DP: History: General and Eastern Hemisphere: Spain, Portugal, Release Date: Apr 24, 2014

Editor's review

This History of the Revolutions of Portugal, by the eighteenth-century French cleric and historian Vertot, is one of the representative early modern European texts on political change in the Iberian Peninsula. The book focuses on Portugal's political turmoil during dynastic change and crises of independence, narrating the transfer of power, aristocratic allegiances, and the intervention of external forces through a sequence of events; its prose carries the moral judgments and rhetorical flourishes typical of eighteenth-century historiography. For today's readers its value lies not only in offering an early narrative version of a segment of Portuguese political history, but also in showing how Enlightenment-era European historians understood "revolution," legitimacy, and national destiny. The book has many figures and a complex web of threads, and its pace is slow; it suits readers with an interest in Iberian history or early modern historiographical writing who are prepared to read closely. The public-domain electronic edition is convenient for searching names and events, but its sources and interpretive framework are both bound by their era and should not be treated as modern scholarly conclusions.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers interested in the political history of Portugal and the Iberian Peninsula who wish to learn about an early narrative version
Readers of historiography and literary history studying eighteenth-century European historical writing and political discourse
Patient readers who can accept a slower narrative pace and are willing to sort out the relationships among figures and factions
University students who need public-domain English historical sources for topical reading or textual analysis

Not a good fit for

Beginning readers who want a quick overview of Portuguese history and prefer concise narratives
Professional researchers who need to verify event details using modern historical methods
Readers with little interest in eighteenth-century argumentative prose and moralizing narration

Reading tips

First outline the timeline of Portuguese dynastic succession and the main political crises, then proceed to the narration of specific events.
While reading, list the figures and factions that recur, noting changes in their positions, to avoid confusing their relationships.
Extract the author's evaluative statements separately and consider how an eighteenth-century historian defined revolution and legitimacy.
Compare with modern works on Portuguese history to observe differences in the selection of events and causal explanation.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

What period of Portuguese history does this book cover?

The book centers on dynastic change and political crises in early modern Portugal, narrating events such as the transfer of power, aristocratic allegiances, and the intervention of external forces. It is not a general history in the modern sense but an eighteenth-century historian's narrative of a period of political change organized around the theme of "revolution"; readers should treat it as an early historiographical text rather than a systematic general history.

Is the author Vertot's narrative reliable?

Vertot was an influential eighteenth-century historical writer whose works circulated widely, but his sources and interpretive framework are bound by their era and carry moralizing and rhetorical tendencies. The sequence of events can serve as a reference for understanding an early narrative, but specific details and causal judgments should be checked against modern scholarship and not taken directly as settled conclusions.

Do I need prior knowledge of Portuguese history to read this book?

Basic background is recommended. The book is dense with figures and factions and offers little introductory explanation; without any concept of Portuguese dynastic succession and the main political crises, readers can easily get lost in the relationships among figures. Reading a concise chronology or a chapter from a general history of Portugal first will make reading this book noticeably more efficient.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

René-Aubert Vertot Author · French · 1655–1735

René-Aubert Vertot (1655–1735), commonly known as the Abbé de Vertot, was a French historian and a member of the Académie française. Details of his life are limited in publicly available sources, and existing records center mainly on his historical writings. He wrote works on the history of the knightly orders and on Roman history, while the two works held in this collection both deal with Portuguese history: The Revolutions of Portugal and its related version, which recount the political upheavals over the throne and independence in Portugal's past. His writing is narrative in emphasis, skillful at turning complex political events into a clear and coherent historical sequence, with concise language that reflects the readability prized by eighteenth-century French historiography. These works circulated widely in their time and earned him a reputation as a historian; his accounts of the Portuguese revolutions and the history of the knightly orders remain among the early French-language sources for these subjects.