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

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.