Search

Copyright of Historia Contemporanea is the property of Historia Contemporania and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Historia y Comunicación Social is the property of Universidad Complutense de Madrid and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The general bibliography about the history of the Tua line indicates namely Abílio Beça, cacique of the regenerator party in Bragança, as the main lobbyist for the construction of the railway between Mirandela and that latter city. However, one other historical character also played an important role in that process: José Beça. In this paper, we aim to describe the role of this engineer, in cooperation with his brother Abílio Beça, in the adjudication of that public work. For such, we will build our dissertation upon several contemporary sources in order to describe José Beça's professional and political career as well as his positioning in the process that led to the adjudication of the Bragança railway to the contractor João Lopes da Cruz. We will therefore aim to add further knowledge to what is generically known through the Memórias Arqueológico-Históricas of the abbot of [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the second half of the nineteenth century, Portugal opted for a policy of investment in public works, especially the railway. The Ministry of Public Works was created to manage this policy, being the sole administrator of the rail business. An advisory body was instituted in the ministry, having to be heard in respect to all public works. Its opinion was especially important in railway concessions by decree. Whenever parliament was heard, the Public Works commissions had great importance because they were required to prepare the text that would be discussed. The Portuguese Association of Civil Engineers was founded in 1870 in response to budget cuts and it was intended as a channel for the discussion and dissemination of issues related to engineering. The purpose of this article is to identify the relationships between these three institutions and the government and show the relevance of these bodies in the national railway policy. In order to do so, we will examine the Parliament's daily records, the copy books of the ministry's advisory bodies, the Revista de Obras Públicas e Minas (the Journal of Public Works and Mines) and the compilations of laws that indicate what was actually done. Through content analysis, we intend to frame these sources in their historical context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]