page_title: History of Portugal (1834–1910)
section_title: Devourism
hierarchical_section_title: History of Portugal (1834–1910) / Devourism
caption_attribution_description: S.M.I. o Senhor D. Pedro restituindo sua Augusta Filha a Senhora D. Maria Segunda e a Carta Constitucional aos Portugueses, 1832 (Peter I with his daughter D. Maria II and the Portuguese Constitution of 1826 - lithography).
context_page_description: The Kingdom of Portugal under the House of Braganza was a constitutional monarchy from the end of the Liberal Civil War in 1834 to the Republican Revolution of 1910. The initial turmoil of coups d'état perpetrated by the victorious generals of the Civil War was followed by an unstable parliamentary system of governmental "rotation" marked by the growth of the Portuguese Republican Party. This was caused mainly by the inefficiency of the monarchic governments as well as the monarchs' apparent lack of interest in governing the country, aggravated by the British ultimatum for the abandonment of the Portuguese "pink map" project that united Portuguese West Africa and Portuguese East Africa.
  The situation culminated in a dictatorship-like government imposed by King Carlos I, in the person of João Franco, followed by the king's assassination in the Lisbon regicide of 1908 and the revolution of 1910.
context_section_description: The post-Civil War period of the constitutional monarchy saw the rise of competing manifestations of liberal ideology and their adherents. Gastão Pereira de Sande, Count of Taipa, then one of the oppositionists (commonly referred to as "radicals"), described the government as a "gang made up to devour the country under the shadow of a child" (a figure of speech wherein the "child" represented the young Queen, Maria II of Portugal). This was one of the earliest references to Devorismo (Devourism), i.e., the corrupt practice of using the public treasury to enrich oneself or to benefit another.
  The post-Civil War period was characterized by a precarious executive office, a lack of ideological definition, the marginalization of popular movements, indiscipline and the intervention of military chiefs in politics. The death of the Regent, formerly King Pedro, after successfully installing his daughter as Queen, thrust the inexperienced Maria da Glória into a role that, at the age of 15 years, she was unprepared to handle.
  Her counselors, aristocrats and nobles, still used the royal authority as a counterweight to the liberal revolution. There were two political currents: the moderates who defended the Constitutional Charter of 1828, and those who promoted reinstatement of the democratic Constitution of 1822. Both parties were disorganized, neither felt solidarity with the monarch, and their ideologies were not clearly defined; politicians regularly swung between Vintista and Constitucionalista politics. Meanwhile, the majority of the population were disenfranchised: illiterate and culturally unrefined, they merely supported whichever wind blew in their favor. Education was available only in the cities, whose local merchants and bureaucratic functionaries had some sense of social mobility.
caption: The imperfect Constitution of 1826, that begin a conflict within liberal revolutionaries; former-King and Regent (with Consort: left) introducing the 1826 Charter to Princess Maria da Gloria
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