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Treaty of Lisbon
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The Treaty of Lisbon of 1668 was a peace treaty between Portugal and Spain, concluded at Lisbon, February 13, 1668, by the mediation of England, in which Spain recognized Portuguese independence. Overseeing negotiations on the Spanish side was the Regent of Spain, Queen Mariana of Austria, second wife of the late King Philip IV, in the name of her young son Carlos II. On the Portuguese side was the Prince Regent of Portugal, Dom Pedro, future king Peter II of Portugal, in the name of his incapacitated brother, Dom Afonso VI of Portugal.
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The Treaty of Lisbon of 1668 was a peace treaty between Portugal and Spain, concluded at Lisbon, February 13, 1668, by the mediation of England, in which Spain recognized Portuguese independence. Overseeing negotiations on the Spanish side was the Regent of Spain, Queen Mariana of Austria, second wife of the late King Philip IV, in the name of her young son Carlos II. On the Portuguese side was the Prince Regent of Portugal, Dom Pedro, future king Peter II of Portugal, in the name of his incapacitated brother, Dom Afonso VI of Portugal. Peace was mediated by Lord Sandwich, English ambassador of Charles II of England.
By 1640, the Habsburg king, Philip IV of Spain, no longer had the trust or support of most Portuguese nobles. The country was overtaxed and Portuguese colonies were left unprotected. Portugal, like the rest of Philip’s kingdoms, was on the verge of rebellion.
After sixty years of living under the rule of the Spanish Crown, a small band of conspirators in Lisbon rebelled and the Duke of Braganza was acclaimed Dom João IV of Portugal on December 1, 1640, taking advantage of a simultaneous revolt in Catalonia and Spain’s ongoing conflict with France. This began the 26-year-long Portuguese Acclamation War.
In the beginning, Portugal was losing many of its eastern and Atlantic possessions, as its military strength had to be used to protect its own frontiers, however, after 1648, with the end of the Thirty Years War, this tide of misfortune began to turn.
In 1652 Catalonia’s rebellion against Spain collapsed, and in 1659 Spain ended its war with France, so there were now grounds for Spanish optimism in the struggle to control Portugal. Yet Portugal could draw on the wealth of its Brazilian colony and the aid of both England and France, while Spain’s finances were still in crisis.
A series of successes by the Portuguese made it clear that the Iberian peninsula would not be reunited under Spanish rule. The first of these took place on June 8, 1663, when the Count of Villa Flor (with General Schomberg by his side) utterly defeated Don John of Austria, an illegitimate son of Philip IV, at Ameixial, and afterwards retook Evora, which had been captured by the invaders. One year later, on July 7, 1664, Pedro Jacques de Magalhães defeated the Duke of Osuna at Ciudad Rodrigo. And finally, on June 17, 1665, the Marquis of Marialva and Schomberg destroyed a Spanish army under the Marquis of Carraceña at the battle of Montes Claros, followed by defeat at Villa Vicosa, led by Christovão de Brito Pereira.
The Spaniards failed to gain any compensating advantage. Three years later, in 1668, desperate to reduce its military commitments, almost at any price, Spain accepted the loss of Portugal and formally recognized their independence by ratifying the Treaty of Lisbon.
Based on the terms of the treaty, the House of Habsburg of Madrid finally recognized the legitimacy of the Braganza dynasty of Lisbon as the Portuguese Royal House (Infanta Catarina of Guimarães (1540-1614), former Duchess of Braganza and grandmother of Dom João IV of Portugal, was retrospectively acknowledged as a legitimate heir), Portuguese sovereignty over its colonial possessions was reconfirmed (except for the African enclave of Ceuta, see below), and agreements for the exchange of prisoners, the granting of reparations, and the restoration of commercial relations were reached. Moreover, Charles II gave up any further attempts to incorporate the Portuguese into the Spanish Empire.
In return, Portugal ceded the Moroccan city of Ceuta (facing Gibraltar and guarding the Mediterranean mouth) to Spain. Seven years earlier, the city of Tangiers had been given to Charles II of England as part of the dowry of Queen Catherine of Braganza in the Treaty of Lisbon of 1661.
The Treaty of Lisbon of 1668 had advantages for both Crowns. For Spain, because it was far from being in a position to gain what it was asking, and for Portugal, because—apart from the peaceful possession of its states and the easing of the inconveniences of war—it gained the advantage of seeing its sovereignty recognized by those who had denied it until then. Despite winning its independence, however, Portugal remained under English hegemony for many more years.
After 1668, Portugal turned to Western Europe, particularly France and England, for new ideas and skills, determined not to be confused with Spain. This was part of a gradual de-Iberianization, as Portugal consolidated its cultural and political independence. Portuguese nationalism produced hostile reactions to Spain and to things and persons Spanish. By this time, Portuguese society was composed of two basic elements: those who participated in the gradual Europeanization process, the “political nation,” and those who remained largely unchanged, the majority of the people, apolitical and passive.
Portugal’s independence freed them to pursue the course mapped out by the pioneers of commercial imperialism. In the seventeen century, its economy depended largely upon entrepôt trade in tobacco and sugar and the export of salt. In the eighteenth, while the staples were not abandoned, it came to be based more upon slaves, gold leather, and wine. Portuguese trade, revolving around the busy port of Lisbon, was influenced jointly by Anglo-Dutch capitalism and by the colonial economies in Brazil.
See also
- List of treaties
- Treaty of Lisbon (1859), a treaty between Portugal and the Netherlands that decided the border between Portuguese Timor and the Dutch East Indies
- Treaty of Lisbon (2007), a European Union treaty designed to reform the European Union
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