The Branches of Large Electricity Companies in Portugal: From Trade to the Transfer and Adaptation of Technology (20th Century)

In the last decade of the 19th and first decades of the 20th century there was a movement of capital and engineers from the central and northern Europe to the countries of southern Europe and other continents. Large companies sought to obtain concessions and establish branches in Portugal, favouring the circulation of technical knowledge and transfer of technology for Portuguese industry. Among the various examples of the representatives of foreign companies in Portugal we find Jayme da Costa Ltd. established in 1916 in Lisbon, which was a branch of the Swedish company ASEA, as well as STAAL, ATLAS DIESEL (Sweden), Landis & GYR (Switzerland), Electro Helios, etc.. Another example is EFACEC a company founded in 1948 in Porto, that was a partnership between the Portuguese company CUF – Companhia União Fabril, and ACEC – Ateliers de Constructions Électriques de Charleroi and a small entreprise Electro-Moderna Ldª. This enterprise started the industrial production of electric motors and transformers, and later on acquired a substantial share of the national production of electrical equipment. Using Estatística das Instalações Elétricas em Portugal (Statistics on Electrical Installations in Portugal) from 1928 until 1950 we can identify the foreign enterprises acting in the Portuguese market: Siemens, B.B.C, ASEA, Oerlikon, etc. We can also establish a relationship between the development of the electric network and the growth of production and consumption of electricity in the principal urban centres. Finally we see how foreign firms were a stimulus to the creation of national enterprises, especially those of small scale, in Portugal.

Rethinking Le Corbusier: Urban Design and History

It is generally assumed that Le Corbusier’s urban planning made a break with the past, and that the public spaces designed by him had nothing to do with anything that existed before – a conviction fostered by both the innovative character of his proposals and by the proliferation in his manifestos of watchwords that mask any evocation of the past – words like civilisation machiniste, l’esprit nouveau, l’architecture de demain. However, in his writings, Le Corbusier often mentioned the powerful analogy that exists between the architecture of other times and the logic of modern production. Vers une architecture, for example, contains a mixture of photographs showing silos, cars, aeroplanes, ships (i.e. the fruits of 19th and 20th century civil architecture and mechanical engineering) alongside photographs of Greek and Roman buildings. While Le Corbusier, at the end of the 1920s, claimed “I have only one teacher: the past; only one education: the study of the past”, a series of sketches in the first volume of the Œuvre complète, done during his youth at the archaeological sites visited during his Grand Tour, shows that his interest in the past went far beyond a simple reference.

Double trouble: French colonialism in Morocco and the early history of the Pasteur institutes of Tangier and Casablanca (1895-1932)

Morocco was the last North African country in which a Pasteur institute was created, nearly two decades later than in Tunisia and Algeria. In fact, two institutes were opened, the first in Tangier in 1913 and the second in Casablanca in 1932. This duplication, far from being a measure of success, was the material expression of the troubles Pastorians had experienced in getting a solid foothold in the country since the late 19th century. These problems partly derived from the pre-existence of a modest Spanish-Moroccan bacteriological tradition, developed since the late 1880s within the framework of the Sanitary Council and Hygiene Commission of Tangier, and partly from the uncoordinated nature of the initiatives launched from Paris and Algiers. Although a Pasteur Institute was finally established, with Paul Remlinger as director, the failure of France to impose its colonial rule over the whole country, symbolized by the establishment of an international regime in Tangier, resulted in the creation of a second centre in Casablanca. While elucidating many hitherto unclear facts about the entangled origins of both institutes, the author points to the solidity of the previously independent Moroccan state as a major factor behind the troubled translation of Pastorianism to Morocco. Systematically dismissed or downplayed by colonial and postcolonial historiography, this solidity disrupted the French takeover of the country and therefore Pastorian expectations.

Mário SAA (1893-1971): Um intelectual português na sociedade do século XX

Mário Saa (1893-1971) - um percurso de índole nacionalista, onde se cruzam a literatura, a ciência, a filosofia e a história. Pretende-se revelar o trajecto de um intelectual português da direita conservadora do início do século XX, numa perspectiva transnacional. Aborda-se o seu percurso intelectual, analisando os reflexos da identidade europeia na sua produção cultural. Através do seu legado depositado na Fundação Arquivo Paes Teles, no Ervedal, uma freguesia do concelho de Avis, acedemos ao tempo da sua formação académica e às temáticas que abordou na sua vasta e diferenciada produção cultural. Descobrem-se os seus círculos de sociabilidade literária e intelectual, e entende-se a construção da sua consagração através de um conjunto de dedicatórias gravadas nos livros da sua biblioteca. Um legado que permite aceder à sua «modernidade» decorrente da interacção com a Europa intelectual e do seu contexto de vivências variadas. /ABSTRACT: ln this paper we examine the career of the nationalist thinker, Mário Saa (1893-1971), whose achievements were in the fields of literature, science, philosophy and history, as a model of the right-wing conservative Portuguese intellectual at the beginning of the 20th century from a trans-national perspective. We trace his intellectual trajectory, analysing the influence of European identity on his cultural output. The complete works of Mário Saa, housed at the Paes Teles Archive Foundation in Ervedal, a parish in the district (concelho) of Avis, provide us with a window on the period during which he completed his academic training and the topics he examined in his extensive and varied cultural works. We profile the literary and intellectual social circles in which he moved, and seek to gain an understanding of how his reputation carne to be established by analysing the dedications contained in books from his library. Mário Saa's legacy enables us to understand the ‘modern’ nature of his work, deriving from his interaction with European intellectuals and the context of his varied experience.