The Siege of Oporto in The Times of London

Abstract

The thirteen-month long siege of the northern Portuguese city of Oporto constitutes a decisive episode in the six yearlong Portuguese civil war (1828-1834). In the English-speaking world this conflict is commonly called the War of the Two brothers which took place between Dom Pedro and his younger brother Dom Miguel. It was a war, not only for the Portuguese succession, but which constitutes an important chapter in a longdrawn- out ideological conflictwhich has shaped the modern world between the forces of liberalism on the one hand and absolutism/conservatism on the other and whose first notable manifestations took place in the late 18th century with the American Revolutionary War and, on European soil, with the outbreak of the French Revolution. An ongoing ideological conflict which would be re-enacted time and again in different parts of the European continent, and indeed around the planet, throughout the 19th and 20th centuries and which has still not finished. Some of the most notable ideological battles in this ongoing conflict between the forces of liberalism and traditional conservatism, apart from the American and French Revolutions, are the Napoleonic wars, the three-19th century Spanish Carlist wars, the Russian Revolution, the Spanish civil war, amongst many other smaller conflicts, eventually leading to the cataclysmic Second World War. The landing of an 8,300 strong liberal expeditionary force at the village of Mindelo on the Portuguese coast from the Azores on 8th July 1832 marks the beginning of the triumph of liberalism in, not only Portugal, but in neighbouring Spain as well, and the ascendancy and consolidation of liberalism in the rest of continental Europe as a first step towards global liberal hegemony and dominance which characterizes the 20th and 21st centuries. As far as I know, to date, this research paper is unique as it relates to the coverage of the siege of Oporto in the daily editions of The Times of London newspaper thereby offering an invaluable insight into the conflict based on The Times newspaper’s digitalarchive relating to the Portuguese conflict whilst at the same time providing an interesting reflection on the contribution of the coverage in The Times to the beginnings of modern foreign and war correspondents, the development of public opinion in contemporary Western democracy, and of British attitudes towards, and participation in, the siege of Oporto and the Portuguese Civil war in general.