History of Oporto

Oporto (Porto in Portuguese) has a special place in the history of Portugal, for it gave the country its very name. In addition, it has often been crucial in the history of Portugal and its own history has often been closely linked to that of England.

In the process of wresting control of the Iberian Peninsula from the Carthaginians in the 2nd century BC, the Romans took a port camed Cale at the mouth of the Douro. It was probably a hill fort of the kind known as castro by specialists, and may well have owed its name to the Callaici Celtic people. The Romans called it Portus Cale.

When Roman administration of Hispania collapsed, the north-west corner of the Iberian Peninsula fell to the Suebi in 410. The Suebi occupied Braga, Oporto, Lugo and Astorga in the former Roman Gallaecia, and made its Roman capital, Bracara Augusta, (present-day Braga), theirs as well. Like the Visigoths who occupied the rest of the peninsula, the Suebi did not mix much with the native Iberoromans, and I imagine the latter did not really notice much difference when the Suebi were displaced by the Visigoths between 570 and 585. The Suebi mysteriously vanished, barely leaving a trace of their nearly two century-old kingdom.

Nor, I think, did the Iberoromans give much of a fig when the Moorish Ummayads conquered the Iberian Peninsula in the few years after the Battle of Guadalete in 711. They were unlikely to have been worse off under Muslim rule than under that of the Visigoths. But the north of Portugal would not remain Muslim for long, for the area south of the Minho down to the River Douro, Portucale, was reconquered from the Muslims in 868 by Count Vímara Peres, a Christian warlord who gave allegiance to Alfonso III of Asturias, Leon and Galicia. The county thus founded was the Condado de Portucale, the first county of Portugal.

Oporto legend has it that the Praça da Batalha is named for a battle which the townsfolk lost against Almanzor, the great warrior leader of Al Andalus in the ninth century. If this is true, and there is little reason to doubt it, it might well have occurred in 997, when he was on his way back from sacking Santiago de Compostela.

In 1095, Henry of Burgundy married his way into control of the County of Portugal. Henry was the ambitious youngest son of the Duke of Burgundy and sought power and wealth by making the County of Portugal a focal point in the Reconquista. The County of Portugal expanded militarily and Henry's son, Alfonso Enriques, was declared King of Portugal on July 26th, 1139, the day after winning the Battle of Ourique. The declaration meant Portuguese independence from the Kingdom of León.

In 1387, John or João I of Portugal and Philippa of Lancaster, daughter of John of Gaunt, were married in Oporto. This was the culmination of the process called the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, considered the oldest military alliance in the world, begun in the previous year, 1386, with the Treaty of Windsor (Winston Churchill put its start date even earlier, in 1373). Through NATO, the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance is still in effect today (over the centuries, the alliance became a complicated series of treaties, invoked by one side or the other to greater or lesser effect - it was involved in the War of Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, the First World War, the Second World War and the Falklands War, for example).

In the 14th century, Oporto became a major shipbuilder and by the 15th century, when Henry the Navigator sent a fleet to conquer Ceuta in North Africa in 1415, for example, it was crucial. Later expeditions were sent to explore the African coastline, for this was the Age of Exploration, and it is said that the nickname given to Oporto's inhabitants, tripeiros, dates from this time. The ships whould have left loaded with good-quality meat, while the more perishable offal, including tripe, would have been left behind for the residents of the town.

Wine has been shipped downriver to Oporto from the Upper Douro Valley in the flat-bottomed rabelos since around the 13th century. In the 17th century, as England or Great Britain was almost constantly at war with France to a greater or lesser degree, British wine drinkers found it difficult to acquire wine from there or from Germany and both Portugal and Spain became favourite alternative sources. The Methuen Treaty of 1703, a military and commercial treaty involved in the War of Spanish Succession, favoured English exports of woolen cloth to Portugal and Portuguese export of wine to England. It was to be the basis for the Port wine industry. The first English trading post was established in Porto in 1717, which opened the way for a number or English wine traders who began to corner the Port wine market. Because of this, prime minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo (later to be Marquis of Pombal, the name by which he is better known) regulated production of Port wine in 1756, demarcating its area of production for example, so creating what the Portuguese like to consider the oldest appellation in Europe (in fact, the Hungarian Tokaj was first).

The 18th century was Oporto's golden age, when it grew as a commercial and industrial centre, as can be seen from the numerous Baroque churches and other buildings. In 1809, Napoleon's troops invaded Portugal, then the only country in Europe apart from Sweden which did not enforce the Continental Blockade of Great Britain. Napoleon's brother-in-law Marshal Soult and his army were poised to enter the city, and the ensuing tragedy is still remembered in Oporto today. A bridge collapsed (sabotage may have been involved) and thousands of civilians were killed, perhaps as many as 9,000. Arthur Wellesley, later to be Duke of Wellington, drove the French off by crossing the Douro at lightning speed in full daylight.

The French pressure on Portugal continued and so did the British presence. The French were actually driven out of the Peninsula in 1813, but the Portuguese crown had moved to Brazil and the British remained in Portugal. Oporto became a liberal centre, and a Liberal Revolution began there in 1820. It spread throughout the country, reached Lisbon, and forced the return of John or João VI in 1821, with a liberal consitution adoptedi in 1822. When King Miguel of Portugal revoked the constitution in 1828, Oporto rose up again and was besieged for 18 months. Civil war between Miguel and his brother Pedro, Emperor of Brazil, led to the defeat and forced abdication of Miguel and the reintroduction of the liberal consititution.

Notwithstanding all this turbulence, Oporto continued to grow as a commercial and industrial centre and its Stock Exchange was opened in 1834. The Eiffel-built Ponte Maria Pia railway bridge was inaugurated in 1877, and the Ponte Dom Luis in 1886.

On January 31st, 1891, the Portuguese Republican Revolution began in Oporto. It would eventually lead to the creation of the Portuguese Republic, in 1910.