Private action and public power in the struggle for instruction: Portugal in the second half of the 19th

Abstract

For the consolidation of their power in the 19th century, the national states developed new mechanisms to impart their ideology, among which the national systems of teaching. Because of the fi nancial diffi culties, the states allowed the private sphere in, what turned out to be a way to change instruction into a national cause. In Portugal, the State did not have the economic resources neither the political will. The private sphere was invited to take part in that effort to offer popular instruction. Various types of participation occurred in that period, reaching evidence the engagement of an entrepreneur of a neighborhood in the country area of Portugal. He tried all that he could to build and to offer a school to the community. Even though there was a great scarcity of instruction in the country and the political discourse supported the enterprise, the task would not be easy at all. He had to face the local political power, in the sequence the same problem in the higher spheres of political power. Even the civil governor of Aveiro and the direction of the Secretary of Public Instruction of the government. Taking up fi les and documents of the “Torre do Tombo”, in Lisbon, this work tries to show the complexity of the process of the diffusion of education and the confl icts of power that followed, specially those issues which seemed to be consensual.