.:: HISPORTOS ::.

  SCIENTIFIC AND
  EPISTEMOLOGICAL
  GUIDELINES

SCIENTIFIC AND EPISTEMOLOGICAL GUIDELINES

Ports have been, since long-time, focal points of local, regional, national and international economic development and social change. Its major articulation with the hinterland, and, at the same time, with an extended vorland, made seaports history to become a significant field of research to support understanding of historical transformation of economic, commercial, transport and technological networks, as well as industrial development and social and urban changes. Seaports are no longer view, nevertheless, only as infrastructures, but as a complex system, resulting from economic, political, social and cultural forces; the gateways between land and sea, between the hinterland and the vorland, a nodal axe with reflections on the territorial, economic, social and mental structures. They are also active agents in the process of modernization and change, and play a role to play in the fields of technological innovation and in the urbanization process. As a result of these dynamics, research on seaports history has accomplished, in the last decades, significant improvement all over Europe, even if particularly focused on economic and technological issues, and mostly directed to the Modern and Recent History.

The discussion about the building of seaports during the Early Modern Age is, nevertheless, an accurate one. The important role of ports in the early modern age (16th to 18th centuries) seems undeniable in the European context. They are essential to structure political and economic areas and essential junctions on supra-regional level. The mastery of new nautical techniques, the definition of new routes network, the increasing tonnage of seagoing vessels, all work to increase the importance and prominence of maritime communication routes, from the coastal to the trans-oceanic ones.

In this historical period, the economic hegemonies were contested between city-ports, such as Lisbon, Seville, Antwerp, Amsterdam and London.. Connections between Europe and other continents were naturally based on ports, at the same time that the internal implications of those dynamics were, at the very outset, projected on maritime centres.

In fact, we firmly believe that the strategic centrality of ports, especially seaports, in the early modern age, has given rise to specific historic phenomena and dynamics that should be studied. The concentration of population, plus the centripetal nature of these maritime complexes, certainly generates demographic, social and mental phenomena that clearly set port zones apart from inland areas.

Port movement itself requires complex logistics, including supporting arsenals and warehouses. Royal control of commercial operations resulted in complex taxation and supervision systems, consolidated in customs and excise structures and procedures. Larger vessels posed problems of access, which presume the building of quays, the implementation of procedures to control entry and departure of harbours and even the use of specialized pilots, for instance. In the 18th century it also became necessary to enlarge the artificial infrastructures to protect and guide the vessels.

In the context of the growing organization of “sea power”, due to the modernity of the Anglo-Peninsular and French conflicts, the military, political and economic power of states increased their interests on ports. The confluence of international fleets and lucrative trading traffic in key ports also motivated piracy and led to the need for defence, and the construction of military infrastructures.

The double exposure of these fronts, to land and sea, made them more vulnerable to epidemic outbreaks. Improvements on health protection infrastructures were also a feature of the internal dynamics of these areas.

Along with this, advances were made in engineering, notably in the 18th century, at the same time that royal authorities were awoken to the importance of investing in infrastructures - in bridges, ports and fortifications.

In fact, the implement of an economic system centred in commercial changes, at a national, international or overseas level - dynamics in which seaports are central – was responsible for the implement of the investments of the central and local power entities in seaports.

Evidence of this impetus can be seen in the production of knowledge and representations relating to these areas. Navigation requirements and infrastructure interventions both led to the production of maps, especially in the 18th century, as well as projects, accessibility studies and hydraulic engineering schemes. All these provide the historian of the early modern age with an increasingly accurate picture of the situation at the time.

Both the cultural factors and the reforms resulting from the Enlightenment were responsible for a more clear understanding of the world and, thus, of the coast. This understanding was clearly associated with the growing need planning, which constituted an encouragement for Cartography and Statistics.

This is also the time when cities with seaports play a new role. Besides the economic questions, wars, piracy and military events, public hygiene and public health become a major concern, reason and justification for a more accurate intervention of the State in seaport affairs, which the local authorities were no longer able to deal with by themselves. Individuals, local and central authorities propose, then, simultaneously new ways of interventions, at the same time that .engineering offer new technologies for harbour building and infrastructural construction.

Different historiographical schools all over Europe have developed studies on these and other issues, while the Portuguese historians haven’t produced enough in-depth studies to allow the possibility of comparative studies with Dutch, French, German, English, Italian or Spanish cases. In order to be able to produce an international dialogue this research area had to be explored.

Simultaneously, Early Modern European historiography was centred, in the past decades, in the analysis of port systems and intercontinental seaports nets, paying special attention to the overseas traffic system. This perspective parts from a theoretical conception of the existence of international seaport hierarchies and thus, tends to be centred on a macro-economical and international analysis. Underlining these aspects implies a kind of approach that undervalues or even disdains the study of internal dynamics and specific profiles of each seaport.

On the contrary, the project Hisportos, assuming itself as a debtor of these researches, elected the micro level and the local and regional scale as the methodological perspective to study the NW Portuguese seaports, aiming to discuss the existence or inexistence of seaport models But models cannot be developed out of context, stripped of specific local realities, without resorting to the perception of possible diachronic evolutions in which, besides the general cyclical events, and the policies of the central authority, local circumstances and specific conditions and features of each seaport interfere. If we accept that specific realities neither could nor should be subsumed in the general picture, simply because this is the outcome of those, then we should agree that the macro-analytical approaches are fraught with limitations that can only be corrected with a micro-analytical reading.

The theoretical assumption of our research was, then, that micro-analysis provides a crucial opportunity to review the levels of research and the thematic topics involved in seaports studies, improving the search for answers to questions that the macro approach doesn’t allow. It is our understanding that the micro-analysis gives researchers a keener perception, since they can see, through this microscopic scrutiny, factors and issues that are diverse and heterogeneous.

Hand in hand with this, even if the geography of maritime scales insists on the international dimension of the European market, we must not forget the regional and interregional horizons.. This period, particularly from the 16th century on, saw the consolidation of transport networks involving the littoral and the hinterland, some making use of the waterways as routes for shipping goods and supplying regional sub-areas. The organization of roads accompanied this confluence of routes to the ports they served and connected with the vast rural hinterlands, and so the study of port zones is crucial to our understanding of the economic dynamics of far more extensive regions.

So it is important to examine other types of networks and complementarities, on a smaller scale and not simply that of the connections between the major ports, whether European or European and Eastern, or European and American. The historical protagonism of these great maritime centres is often relied on local inter-port networks. In fact, from the point of view of logistics, shipbuilding, transport capacity, availability of navigation techniques, a particular cosmopolitan port is necessarily relied on other ports and on areas where agriculture and crafts were the predominant occupations, without which their dynamism would have been impossible to sustain. This is verifiable in the case of Lisbon during the overseas expansion period. And so it is important to study these local and regional interactions to better understand local situations, on the one hand, and international and intercontinental connections on the other. It also matters to see a port in all its complexity: human, social, urban, technical, administrative, and economic.