Inventing a European Nation: Engineers for Portugal, from Baroque to Fascism (Synthesis Lectures on Global Engineering)

This book deals with the simultaneous making of Portuguese engineers and the Portuguese nation-state from the mid seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. It argues that the different meanings of being an engineer were directly dependent of projects of nation building and that one cannot understand the history of engineering in Portugal without detailing such projects. Symmetrically, the authors suggest that the very same ability of collectively imagining a nation relied on large measure on engineers and their practices. National culture was not only enacted through poetry, music, and history, but it demanded as well fortresses, railroads, steam engines, and dams. Portuguese engineers imagined their country in dialogue with Italian, British, French, German or American realities, many times overlapping such references. The book exemplifies how history of engineering makes more salient the transnational dimensions of national history. This is valid beyond the Portuguese case and draws attention to the potential of history of engineering for reshaping national histories and their local specificities into global narratives relevant for readers across different geographies. Introduction Why to Write and Read a Book on Portuguese Engineers? Methodological Questions The Structure of the Book Making Engineers Portuguese The Artillery and Geometry Class (1641) and the Restoration of National Independence Manuel de Azevedo Fortes and the Portuguese Engineer Engineer and Courtier Engineers and the Lisbon Earthquake (1755) Engineering the Liberal State The Making of the Liberal Engineer: The Army School and the Lisbon Polytechnic School Making Civil Engineers in Portugal and Abroad Portugal Regenerated or the Saint Simonian Engineers in Power Conquering a New Professional Territory – The Associação dos Engenheiros Civis Portugueses (Association of Portuguese Civil Engineers) Engineers, Industrial Workers, and the Bourgeois City Saint-Simon in Portugal and the Founding of the Lisbon Industrial Institute Worker's Emancipation Through Technical Education The Industrial Institute and City Reform Opera, Precision, and the Industrial Institute The Colonial Face of Portuguese Engineering Engineering a European Country Through Public Works in Africa National Prestige and Professional Strategies The Modernist Engineer Transportation and Fixation, or the Engineer's New Identity Republican Education and the Technical Institute: Technik Comes to Portugal Industry and the Technical Institute Engineers The Dictatorship and the Rational Management of the Country's Resources Engineering the Fascist New State Regaining Power: The ``Social Role'' of Portuguese Engineers in the Dictatorship Irrigating the Portuguese Garden Arch Dams and American Modeled Research Engineers Conclusion Revolutionary Years Between Technocracy and Democracy New Disciplines and Institutions Summarizing the Argument Authors' Biographies Blank Page