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Portugal Development of the Realm
Having established the boundaries of the national
territory,
asserted their authority over the church and nobility, and
gained
control over the resources of the military orders,
Portuguese
kings began to turn their attention to the economic,
cultural,
and political development of the realm. This was
especially true
of King Dinis, who is referred to by the Portuguese as The
Farmer
(O Lavrador) because of his policies designed to encourage
agricultural development. He decreed that nobles would not
lose
their standing if they drained wetlands, settled
colonists, and
planted pine forests. The pine forests were to produce
timber for
the shipbuilding industry, which Dinis also encouraged,
the crown
having already at that time begun to look toward the sea
for
future fields of conquest.
Dinis chartered many settlements of colonists on lands
conquered from the Muslims and authorized the holding of
fairs
and markets in each of these, thereby creating a national
economy. He laid the basis for Portugal's naval tradition
by
bringing the Genoese, Emmanuele Pessagno (Manuel Peçanha
in
Portuguese) to Portugal in 1317 to be the hereditary
admiral of
the Portuguese navy. Maritime commerce was encouraged when
Dinis
negotiated an agreement with Edward II of England in 1303
that
permitted Portuguese ships to enter English ports and
guaranteed
security and trading privileges for Portuguese merchants.
Dinis
provided the impetus for the development of Portuguese as
a
national language when he decreed that all official
documents of
the realm were to be written in the vernacular. Finally,
Dinis
stimulated learning when, in 1290, he founded an academic
center
similar to the "General Studies" centers that had been
created in
León and Aragon. In 1308 this center was moved to Coimbra
where
it remained, except for a brief time between from 1521 to
1537,
and became the University of Coimbra, Portugal's premier
institution of higher learning.
Afonso IV (r.1325-1357) continued his father's
development
policies. He also improved the administration of justice
by
dismissing corrupt local judges and replacing them with
judges he
appointed. When a large Muslim army landed on the
peninsula in
1340, Afonso IV allied himself with the king of Castile,
Alfonso
XI, and the king of Aragon in order to do battle against
this
threat to the Christian kingdoms. Afonso sent a fleet
commanded
by Manuel Peçanha to Cádiz and marched overland himself to
meet
the Muslim army, which was destroyed at the Battle of
Salado.
When Afonso's grandson and heir, Fernando I
(r.1367-83),
ascended the throne, the economic productivity of the
country had
been so greatly disrupted by the plague that ravaged the
country
in 1348 and 1349 that he found it necessary to take
measures to
stimulate food production. In 1375 he promulgated a
decree,
called the Law of the Sesmarias, which obliged all
landowners to
cultivate unused land or sell or rent it to someone who
would.
The law also obligated all who had no useful occupation to
work
the land. This decree had its intended effect and led to
the
rebuilding of the country's wealth. Fernando also
stimulated the
development of the Portuguese merchant fleet by allowing
all
shipbuilders who constructed ships of more than 100 tons
to cut
timber from the royal forests and by exempting the owners
of
these ships from the full tax on the exports and imports
of their
first voyage. He also established a maritime insurance
company
into which owners of merchant ships of more than fifty
tons paid
2 percent of their profits and from which they received
compensation for shipwrecks.
Data as of January 1993
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