Civil Governments of Portugal. History, Memory and Citizenship

This Research Project, developed following the termination of the civil governments of Portugal, aims to make the survey and inventory of all existing data on those organisms for subsequent deposit on file, and scan sources of permanent nature.

The definitive introduction of liberalism in Portugal (1834), which is at the origin of the Contemporary Portuguese State, introduced a radical reform of public administration, definitively separating administrative functions of judicial functions, and establishing a new territorial organization based on the creation of districts, headed by a representative of the State, the Civil Governor, a position that would be terminated by 2011.

This Research Project, starting following the conclusion of the civil governments of Portugal, aims to make the survey and inventory of all documentation existing in those organisms for later deposit; to scan the sources of permanent conservation and make them available in electronic format on the website of the National Archives Network; and to carry out a study to make known the activities developed by this sovereign body, from its origin to its extinction.

To this end, we have eighteen teams, one for each Civil Government that worked on the Portuguese mainland until 2011, and also a specialized team in scanning and processing and a set of experts that is analysing the political and administrative evolution of the Civil Governments and their leaders, a study that will be part of the book Civil Governments of Portugal. History and Memory (1835-2011), which will also include an inventory of the documents inventoried by our archivists.

Finally, it will be held under this Research Project the International Seminar The Civil Governments of Portugal and the Political-Administrative Structure of the State in the Western World, with the goal of establishing a comparative analysis between the administrative organization of the Portuguese territory and other Western countries in the 19^th and 20^th centuries; drawing attention to the importance of the documentary sources of the Civil Governments of Portugal to the knowledge of the History of Contemporary Portugal; and presenting the methodology and techniques used in the treatment and inventory of documentary collections of Civil Governments of Portugal.