Exílio e Escrita de Viagem ao Tempo do Liberalismo – A Experiência do Brigadeiro António Bernardino Pereira do Lago em Inglaterra

Abstract

As a result of D. Miguel’s return to Portugal and his accession as absolute king in 1828, a severe setback in the process of implanting Liberalism in the country, many Portuguese with liberal ideas were forced to flee into exile abroad. Despite the hardships they endured, such an experience proved of great cultural importance, as it meant contact with other peoples and cultures, a broadening of mental horizons. António Bernardino Pereira do Lago (1777-1847), a military engineer endowed with great intellectual curiosity, was one of those Portuguese who had to leave home and family to escape Miguelite terror, having recorded in a body of work comprising letters addressed to his wife his impressions of five years of wandering through several European countries. This article analyses the representation of England in Cinco Annos d’Emigração na Inglaterra, na Belgica, e na França (1834), focusing in particular on the way Pereira do Lago deliberately saw in his political exile an opportunity to educate himself and to acquire useful knowledge. For this liberal activist, his compulsory removal from Portugal was a time of accumulation of cultural capital. His interaction with the English reality allowed him above all to observe first-hand the fruits and benefits of what it was to live in freedom, the value he most cherished and for which he fought, at great personal sacrifice. As the author says in one of his letters, a traveller should take advantage of his/her travels to learn about the diversity of the world: he certainly profited from what he saw.