War abroad and war within: A British military officer’s view of Portugal’s revolution of 1917

General Nathaniel Walter Barnardiston (1858-1919), who had been Assistant Director of Military Training and General Staff Officer (1910-1914) and had commanded the British troops at the capture of Tsingtao, North China, in 1914, was appointed Chief of the British Military Mission to Portugal (1916-19), where he was commissioned to supervise the training of the Portuguese troops for the war in western Front. He wrote reports on the political and military situation of the country and kept a diary where he recorded events and his impressions of the people he met and the parts of the country he visited. This paper aims to contextualize Barnardiston’s mission and to discuss not only his views on Sidónio Pais’s coup in December 1917, but also the opinion that he entertained of the Portuguese in general.