Militarization, discipline and power: Reforms and resistances in the Portuguese troops between the Ancient Regime and the Enlightenment (1762-1812)

Abstract

The present study examines the militarization of the Portuguese State between 1762 and 1812 as an expression  of the crisis of the Ancient Regime and the transformation  of its estate-based and corporative foundations. It is  grounded in the hypothesis that military reforms did not  produce an immediate rupture, but instead established, in a gradual and at times contradictory manner, new principles of political organization linked to enlightened reformism,  administrative rationalization, and increasing royal  centralization, thereby contributing, in the long term, to the  emergence of the Portuguese constitutional order. The  main objective is to demonstrate how the Portuguese  military sphere, beyond serving as an instrument of  defence, became a privileged space for discipline,  surveillance, and intervention in society. To this end, the  study draws on royal decrees, charters, military regulations,  general instructions, and normative documentation –  consulted at the National Archive of Torre do Tombo and  the National Library of Portugal – in dialogue with  specialized historiography. The analysis shows that the  reforms carried out under the direction of the Count of  Lippe reorganized recruitment patterns, hierarchy, training,  and appointments to office, emphasizing merit, technical  competence, and obedience, without immediately  eliminating privileges, clientelistic networks, and  procedures inherited from the corporative paradigm.  Finally, it is argued that militarization formed part of a  broader process of reconfiguration of power in the  Portuguese world, in which the crisis of the Ancient Regime  gradually paved the way for new forms of government and  for the future constitutional state, as the individualist  paradigm increasingly superseded the corporative one.