This book deals with the simultaneous making of Portuguese engineers and the Portuguese nation-state from the mid seventeenth century to the late twentieth century. It argues that the different meanings of being an engineer were directly dependent of projects of nation building and that one cannot understand the history of engineering in Portugal without detailing such projects. Symmetrically, the authors suggest that the very same ability of collectively imagining a nation relied on large measure on engineers and their practices. National culture was not only enacted through poetry, music, and history, but it demanded as well fortresses, railroads, steam engines, and dams.
Portuguese engineers imagined their country in dialogue with Italian, British, French, German or American realities, many times overlapping such references. The book exemplifies how history of engineering makes more salient the transnational dimensions of national history. This is valid beyond the Portuguese case and draws attention to the potential of history of engineering for reshaping national histories and their local specificities into global narratives relevant for readers across different geographies.
Author(s): Maria Paula Diogo, Tiago Saraiva
Series: Synthesis Lectures on Global Engineering
Publisher: Morgan and Claypool Life Sciences
Year: 2020
Language: English
Pages: 159
Introduction
Why to Write and Read a Book on Portuguese Engineers?
Methodological Questions
The Structure of the Book
Making Engineers Portuguese
The Artillery and Geometry Class (1641) and the Restoration of National Independence
Manuel de Azevedo Fortes and the Portuguese Engineer
Engineer and Courtier
Engineers and the Lisbon Earthquake (1755)
Engineering the Liberal State
The Making of the Liberal Engineer: The Army School and the Lisbon Polytechnic School
Making Civil Engineers in Portugal and Abroad
Portugal Regenerated or the Saint Simonian Engineers in Power
Conquering a New Professional Territory – The Associação dos Engenheiros Civis Portugueses (Association of Portuguese Civil Engineers)
Engineers, Industrial Workers, and the Bourgeois City
Saint-Simon in Portugal and the Founding of the Lisbon Industrial Institute
Worker's Emancipation Through Technical Education
The Industrial Institute and City Reform
Opera, Precision, and the Industrial Institute
The Colonial Face of Portuguese Engineering
Engineering a European Country Through Public Works in Africa
National Prestige and Professional Strategies
The Modernist Engineer
Transportation and Fixation, or the Engineer's New Identity
Republican Education and the Technical Institute: Technik Comes to Portugal
Industry and the Technical Institute Engineers
The Dictatorship and the Rational Management of the Country's Resources
Engineering the Fascist New State
Regaining Power: The ``Social Role'' of Portuguese Engineers in the Dictatorship
Irrigating the Portuguese Garden
Arch Dams and American Modeled Research Engineers
Conclusion
Revolutionary Years Between Technocracy and Democracy
New Disciplines and Institutions
Summarizing the Argument
Authors' Biographies
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