文章基本信息

标题：Leonor Freire Costa, Pedro Lains, and Susana Munch Miranda. História Económica de Portugal (1143-2010). Lisboa: Esfera dos Livros, 2011. ISBN 978-989-626-346 -1.
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作者：Nuno Palma
期刊名称：E-Journal of Portuguese History
电子版ISSN：1645-6432
出版年度：2012
卷号：10
期号：2
出版社：The University of Porto, Brown University
摘要：História Económica de Portugal (2011) is a mostly balanced book about Portugal’s long-run political and economic development. In addition to the emphasis placed on economic history, there are several aspects that set it apart from more standard histories of Portugal. The book’s most innovative feature is its constant emphasis on a comparative perspective. It shares this ambition with the most recently published general history of Portugal (Ramos, Sousa and Monteiro, 2009), but actually achieves it in a more consistent manner. In fact, these books complement each other very well, the first focusing on long-run social, political and institutional development and the second on their economic and financial counterparts. For non-experts interested in Portuguese history, reading both provides a balanced and competent overview of over 800 years of Portuguese history. It goes without saying that such an overview is necessarily incomplete and naturally colored by the authors’ own biases and particular expertise, but nevertheless the combination of these two works constitutes the best choice for “everything one needs to know in no more than two volumes.” História Económica de Portugal is filled with updated references both to the international literature on economic history and to the literature on Portuguese topics. A major advantage is the way in which the authors consistently make relevant citations from the most recent research in this area. An English version is being prepared for Cambridge University Press, a move that is to be congratulated, as international scholars who need an English language reference work on the economic aspects of Portuguese history have no other choice than to resort to that of Marques (1972), which, despite its merits, clearly displays the marks of age. The book is a clear improvement over Marques, both due to its references to more recent scholarship and because of its own more idiosyncratic merits, including that of placing the Portuguese case in comparative perspective and interpreting its evolution within the context of the most recent views on the development of the European economy since the early modern period.