Starting from a critical reading of Gomes Eanes de Zurara’s narrative of the taking of the Moroccan city on the Straits of Gibraltar by a Portuguese army commanded by the princes of Aviz in 1415, Sérgio postulates that the Portuguese expansion – the empire and colonisation – has to be viewed as a socio-economic reality. He denies that it must have been exclusively or even predominantly the product of religious motivation and the strategic-military intention of one or even several figures. As for the princes of this illustrious generation fighting for Faith and the destruction of the Moors (the normally accepted principal explanation), he replaces this notion with one claiming the war was motivated by the bourgeoisie of the European and Portuguese maritime ports wanting to divert the African and Eastern trade that reached Ceuta to their own ports. Sérgio further mentions the attraction of importing cereals which Morocco possessed and which Portugal had for a long time (since around 1290) been short of.

Furthermore, the essayist interprets the overseas Portuguese expansion as combining two concepts that he defines as “transport policy” and “settlement policy”. In his seminal text on this distinction, he considers that acts of conquest and the transport policy were in opposition to the colonisation policy. Thus, he attempts to demonstrate that the transformative activity that fomented the development of the colonial territories was a result of establishing a settled population and creating wealth through agricultural work, denying the primordial function of the transportation of goods for commerce which he said represented plunder. This remarkable thinker occasionally returned to this line of reasoning, always insisting on this interpretation. With his essay on the taking of Ceuta, Sérgio influenced the research of both David Lopes (1867-1942) and Jaime Cortesão (1885-1960). In the criticisms and objections they raised, he knew how to appreciate and highlight the differences and the originality of the explanations given, even when these went against some of the hypotheses he had put forward.

In 1923 he advances an idea that is very dear to him: “the location of our ports was the geographical factor with the greatest weight in the independence of Portugal”. The foreigners who used them contributed to the territory’s not being incorporated into Castile. Of the notable series of monarchs of the first dynasty, D. Dinis stands out as the model king with his development of the territory, in particular the protection of agriculture, revealing him to be so. This then ends with the 1383-85 crisis and the dynastic solution that followed the social revolt that took place. From this emerges the belief that the aristocracy who owned the hinterland were opposed to the merchant middle classes of the coast. The latter lent their revolutionary support to D. João, Master of Aviz, whereas the rural lords supported D. Fernando’s heir. “Aljubarrota, therefore, consecrates the independence of Portugal, a new orientation for society, and the fall of most of the old aristocracy who were replaced by new people.”

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