A British ultimatum helped topple Portugal's centuries-old monarchy
In January 1890 Britain ordered Portuguese forces out of the land between Angola and Mozambique, and Lisbon meekly complied. Many Portuguese saw a national humiliation and blamed the crown. Twenty years later, after about two thousand soldiers and sailors rose up, the republic was proclaimed from the balcony of Lisbon City Hall.
Portugal had dreamed of a coast-to-coast African empire, drawn on the so-called Pink Map. The British memorandum of 11 January 1890, from Lord Salisbury's government, ended that ambition, and quick surrender fed a sense that the monarchy presided over national decline. Money troubles deepened it: when Brazil became a republic, remittances from Portuguese emigrants there fell by 80 percent in the crisis that followed. Republicans cheered the Brazilian news; the king's government watched it nervously.
The first armed challenge came in Porto on 31 January 1891, when sergeants and enlisted men marched to the patriotic song A Portuguesa and proclaimed a republic from the town hall. Loyal municipal guards crushed it within hours; 12 died, and 250 captured rebels were sentenced to exile in Africa for periods up to 15 years. The anthem was banned. It was nonetheless the first serious warning to the regime.
The Portuguese Republican Party, founded in 1876, was clever at propaganda. It turned national moments, such as the 1880 tercentenary of the poet Camoes and the ultimatum itself, into proof that republicans were the true patriots. Most supporters never read its manifestos; opposing the crown, the Church and corrupt party politics was enough. Tensions kept building through royal extravagance, the dictatorship of Joao Franco and the 1908 killing of both the monarch and the crown prince.
When rebels rose on 3 and 4 October 1910, the army showed little appetite to resist, and the republic was declared at 9 a.m. on 5 October. A provisional government under the writer Teofilo Braga ruled until a constitution in 1911 formally began the First Republic. The flag and anthem changed and some liberties expanded, but a harsh anti-clerical campaign soon soured relations with the Catholic Church.
Source: 5 October 1910 revolution
