After his 1940 work on contemporary economics, Armando Castro felt the need to go back in time in order to produce a complete account of the Portuguese economy, i.e., from the country ’ s origins to the present day.

The vast 11-volume work, A Evolução Económica de Portugal dos Séculos XII a XV [The economic evolution of Portugal from the 12 th to the 15 th century] , published between 1964 and 1980 and based mainly on the information gathered by Henrique da Gama Barros, is a sign of this interest in describing the feudal economy exhaustively. In fact, in 1965, the Portuguese Writers ’ Society awarded the Grand National Essay Prize to the first volume, acknowledging its scientific value. Parallel to the publication of this work, which was complemented by a sketch of a comparative perspective ( Portugal na Europa do seu tempo … 1970 [Portugal in the Europe of its time…1970] ), his interest once again focussed on the study of more recent centuries with initial work on the 19 th century ( A Revolução Industrial em Portugal no Século XIX, [The Industrial Revolution in Portugal in the 19 th century] 1972) and then another on the 20 th century ( Economia Portuguesa do Século XX (1900-1925) [Portuguese Economy of the 20 th century] , 1973). The first contribution mentioned was an expanded reprint of the volume published by the Cosmos Library in 1947. In a way, just by looking at the title of the volume, the historian reaffirmed the thesis that Portugal, like other European countries, became industrialised in the 19 th century and, in this sense, disagreed with Vitorino Magalhães Godinho ’ s thesis, argued in 1971, that ‘despite undeniable progress, the 19 th century failed to bring about the industrial revolution in Portugal – and it had not yet brought about the steam engine revolution when electricity and oil were already dawning in Europe to the north of the Pyrenees’ (V. Magalhães Godinho, Estrutura da Antiga Sociedade Portuguesa [Structure of Ancient Portuguese Society] , Lisbon, Arcádia, 2 nd edition 1975, p. 145). However, Armando Castro insisted on the importance of chronology and emphasised that ‘until around 1875, economic development was very slow [...] then industrial progress accelerated: steam engines appeared, factories began to spring up far from watercourses, new industries were born’ ( A Revolução Industrial em Portugal no Século XIX [The Industrial Revolution in Portugal in the 19 th century] , 1972, p. 36). Therefore, without denying the existence of the industrial phenomenon in Portugal, he emphasised Portugal ’ s undeniable gap with northern Europe.

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