Soterrados em petições: os liberais e a regulamentação do comércio itinerante em Portugal, 1820-1823

Abstract

This article deals with one of the most neglected economic issues of the first Portuguese liberal experience: the domestic trade and its regulation. It focuses on itinerant trade, or peddling activity, which remained controversial, in some cases even prohibited, although it was completely compatible with the liberal agenda. We explore the discourses of both sides of the massive confrontation that enfolded: the established commerce, mostly retailers, supported by their still-influential corporations, and the peddlers, men and women who sold goods in the streets and door-to-door. We sought, in particular, for signs of speech modernization, starting with the dissemination of concepts related to economic and political liberalism, in an unprecedented petitioning context in Portugal. Finally, we discuss and provide additional explanations for the indecisions and half-measures of the parliament, incapable of accommodating its liberal agenda to the economic and social reality of the country.

Keywords

• liberal revolution
• peddling
• peddlers
• retailers
• corporativism
• petitioner movement