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Railways, Population and Uneven Regional Development in Portugal (1801-1930)
Luís Espinha da Silveira, Nuno Miguel Lima e Ana Alcântara
(Universidade Nova de Lisboa)
PAPER (pdf)
Abstract:
Portuguese historiography on railways has not paid much attention to their regional effects or to the relationship between this form of transport and population evolution. Available studies usually adopt a national approach and analyze the contribution of railways to the overall development of the country.
The main argument of this paper is that in the Portuguese case, access to railways reinforced pre-existing territorial inequalities and promoted different regional dynamics, mainly with regard to population growth, urban development and population mobility.
In fact, in the most developed regions, railway access helped to increase population concentration in the areas served by this infrastructure; railways favored the growth of pre-existing urban centers and the emergence of new ones. They also encouraged migration into towns, thus contributing to their growth. In the Inland North, where the Tua line is integrated, traditionally affected by greater transportation difficulties, railways seem to have operated in the opposite direction, contributing to a decline in population relative to the other regions of Portugal. Moreover, this area continued to be characterized by a predominance of modest-sized cities, unable to match with the dynamism of the urban centers in the coastal regions or to attract a migrant population to aid in their development. Instead, since the end of the nineteenth century this region suffered from an increasing emigration that railways seem to have facilitated. Of course, to explain this evolution we have also to take into account the economic crisis that affected the agriculture of this part of the country, but the presence of the railway seems to have been a significant factor.
In this paper we will try to put the Tua line in this context, comparing its effects on population with those caused by the Beira Baixa line in another Portuguese mountainous region around the city of Covilhã.
Instituto de História Contemporânea, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Av. de Berna, 26-C, 1069-061 Lisboa. This paper was produced within the project “The Development of European Waterways, Road and Rail Infrastructures: A Geographical Information System for the History of European Integration (1825–2005)”, as part of the EUROCORES Program of the European Science Foundation and was funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (INVENT/0001/2007)
Biographical notes
Luís Espinha da Silveira is Associate Professor, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa. With Daniel Alves, Nuno Miguel Lima, Ana Alcântara, and Josep Puig he published, “Population and Railways in Portugal, 1801-1930”, Journal of Interdisciplinary History, vol. 42, 1, 2011, pp. 29-52. He is the principal investigator of the Portuguese team involved in the international project “The Development of European Waterways, Road and Rail Infrastructures: A Geographical Information System for the History of European Integration (1825–2005)” of the European Science Foundation, funded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (INVENT/0001/2007).
Nuno Miguel Lima is a PhD student, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, working on Iberian transnational railways. He is the author of Os «Homens Bons» do Liberalismo. Os Maiores Contribuintes de Lisboa (1867-1893) (Lisbon, 2009) and he is co-author of the aforementioned article Population and Railways in Portugal. He is also a member of the above mentioned research team. He benefits from a PhD scholarship awarded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia.
Ana Alcântara is a MSc student in Geographic Information Systems and Science, ISEGI- Universidade Nova de Lisboa, working on railway accessibility and demographic evolution of the region of Covilhã, located in the Inland North of Portugal, between mid-nineteenth century and early twentieth century. She is co-author of the article Population and Railways in Portugal. She is also a research assistant, benefiting from a research scholarship awarded by the Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia within the project INVENT/0001/2007.