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Across Cultural Frontiers: Humour and 'Anglobalization' in Portugal (Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries)

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16 July 2026

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17 July 2026

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Abstract
While humour requires closeness, it may also be understood at distance, in books or newspapers, where jokes play an important role both as attractive elements for reading and as political and social devices. One of the problems that shall be discussed is a particular case of 'Anglobalization': the reception and appropriation of British cultural and political influence via the translation of British authors or through the satire on the influence of British Army officers. Thereafter, along with the concept of the British presence in Portuguese reading materials, the question is to understand whether we may speak about British humour or about Portuguese humour on British characters. While the meanings of jokes change, being far from the cultural area where texts were born and understood, they may still function for different readers. Humour is a strong case in discussing cultural transfer and reading expansion, as readers deal with jokes meant to be heard or to be seen, and hardly to be read.
Keywords: 
‘Anglobalization’
;  
border interactions
;  
book history
;  
cultural transfer
;  
collective identities
;  
historical contexts
;  
satire
Subject: 
Arts and Humanities  -   History

Introduction: Working on a Concept

Cultural or linguistic borders do not manifest themselves in mere difference, but in confrontation, in the need to interact, in power gaps. The evidence of the parallel between the Portuguese and the British will grow over the centuries of political and commercial relations, of which the fabric and Port wine merchants have been the most visible agents since the 17th century. But the mutual images, the knowledge, the strangeness and myths go beyond those exchanges, however unequal they may have been. This leads us to a word: “Anglobalization”.
The case for ‘Anglobalization’, from a Portuguese standpoint, has a long history, and the concept itself must be clarified. Niall Ferguson coined the neologism to emphasize the notion of ‘globalization as it was promoted by Great Britain and her colonies’, which contents he summarizes as commodity markets, labour markets, culture, government, capital markets and warfare [1]. Andrew Porter calls Anglobalization a ‘ghastly appellation’ for a conceptual step backward and argues that free trade, one of its pillars, ‘was likely to restrict and impoverish the less economically “modernized” party' and 'cannot necessarily be equated with freedom of choice and opportunity' [2]. Its 'backwardness' notwithstanding, the concept has been used not only in the field of economic or political history but also in global history [3], notably global book history. 'Anglobalization via the book' was precisely one of the topics discussed in the workshop The Global History of the Book (1780 to the present), held on the 4th and 5th of December 2014 at Ertegun House, Oxford [4]. The book, it was argued there, as part of a global “paper empire” – or an empire-wide print culture – became “the very emblem of imperial sovereignty” [5]. Or its frontier.
We are not considering “frontier” here as a political or physical boundary, but conflictual imaginary territories, where mutual strangeness is expressed, where the other is identified as foreigner, alien, strange, an object of laughter. But where distances are marked by both fascination and refusal. The caricature, the stereotype, the strangeness is an expression of territories, us facing the other(s). On the other hand, this strangeness is not static. The strangeness grows with the growing importance of the English presence in Portugal, in circumstances in which the dominant position of the foreigner is not the Englishman, but the Spaniard or the Frenchman.
Alongside actual geopolitical borders and natural, physical boundaries, imagined frontiers exist, being expressed by laughter, as well as by scientists or theologians. More recently, anthropologists and other researchers have been developing multidisciplinary approaches on “border studies” and “border cultures” [6]. What is viewed as strange and different establishes territories, not static, but stable. Without this stability, humor would not – could not – be understood. But the mood is precarious. It implies sharing what is strange, foreign, alien, but through games of meaning changing, which therefore require proximity, connotation, the wink of an eye.
Being 'the oldest ally' meant that the relationship between Portugal and England (later the United Kingdom) is a centuries-old history of inequality and British political and economic dominance. Long before the British Empire superseded the early Portuguese one, “it was the Portuguese who created the first truly global polity, stretching from Brazil to Malacca and beyond” [7]. Although Portugal’s independence was more than once guaranteed by British support (including military assistance), the price paid was high, including the handover of colonial possessions in Africa and India [8] and the acceptance of junior partner status as a consumer market for British goods, which, since the Treaty of Methuen in 1703, severely hampered domestic manufacture and industrial development.
What interests us here is not so much a long history of alliances, misunderstandings and conflicts, but what, by the end of the eighteenth century, would be available in the imaginary of the Portuguese with regard to England and the English. That is to say, it is important to think about the basis on which jokes, laughter and praises were built. And on this basis there is a contrasting reality between diplomats and merchants that a few might cross with in Lisbon or Oporto and a long tradition of narrative that refers to knights of the North, whose origin may be confused from England or Hungary. One can mention Arthurian Cycle since the Middle Ages and above all, an abundant 16th-century publishing where some main characters are knights or ladies from a mythical England. Some of them, like O Palmeirim de Inglaterra (Palmeirim of England), are even praised by Cervantes. Others, like the Legend of the Twelve of England, are reproduced and recounted in diverse genres, including an episode told by Camões in his epic poem, Os Lusíadas. It is certain that these twelve are Portuguese knights but they fight in English tournaments, responding to the call of damsels in distress [9]. The novels of chivalry multiplied in the sixteenth century, with Os Triunfos de Sagramor (The Triumphs of Sagramore) and Duardos of Brittany. What is important to underline is a strong presence, still felt in the eighteenth century, of characters and themes that represented Englishmen. For those who wrote these books, the Englishman was certainly a faraway foreigner, but for those who read them he was more than that, especially if we think that the notion of foreigner, not having frequent contacts with other peoples of Europe, included all who were not from the same land or even the same city. Who is the Englishman, after all? The one which may actually be seen on the street and in the palaces or the mythical knight reproduced by memory?
This relationship was part of the process of globalization [10] involving cultural exchanges which can be approached from the perspective of what Homi Bhabha called 'cultural difference', 'cultural translation' and 'hybridity' [11].
Our problem is to identify the British presence, not only as the transmission of values, imagery and commodities, and certainly not as passive acceptance of a culture with which there is a long relationship, but in the contradictory expressions of that contact. We have chosen the language of humour for it shows us this tension, the relationship with the other, the strangeness and violence of cultural and social shock, how the imbalance of relationships is represented and how it resists or adheres, in each moment. We do it also considering that in humour one finds meanings and one loses them, meanings that otherwise would never have been expressed. And this problem of meanings exists, whether in the expression of British culture understood or received, through deferred paths and languages or in the everyday phrase and where connotations and double meanings are difficult to grasp but represent images of a wide social reach.
The tension (and even the violence) of the images did not come from occasional encounters, but from a long-term relationship. From the fourteenth century on, the perception of Anglo-Portuguese relations has been riding a roller coaster of sorts, from anglophilia to anglophobia and back [12]. The first contact with English allies came to assist in the war against Castille in 1380, following the Treaty of Tagilde (1372), was a dismal one. Fernão Lopes, in the chronicle of King Dom Fernando, portrayed the soldiers of the earl of Cambridge as a bunch of killers, thieves and rapists [13].

Praise and Fascination

Meanwhile, moods and meanings change. In an Atlas published in Lisbon in 1812 (a translation from a French original, published by the Rollandiana typography), one can read, amid a very flattering description of the English, the following sentence: 'They have a sad and melancholic humour, nowhere is the populace more stunned and more brutal, even though the nobility is polite' [14]. This caricature, which should be added to the curiosity towards a country where wine is not produced, contrasts with the image of 'coarseness and ferocity of the Scots', and the 'affable, generous, but lazy and vindictive nature of the Irish'. By then, the climate in Lisbon was indeed favourable to the British, allies in the war against Napoleon, and at the same time, an example of most wanted political balance.
In 1809, praise came from most different sensibilities, from the conservative Agostinho de Macedo, more concerned with criticizing the French revolutionaries, to the liberal-leaning writers willing to emphasize the liberal system of the British. This was the case of a short essay written by Joaquim António Castel-Branco, which effusively praised the British parliamentary system, but with the necessary safeguards of someone who lived and published in the context of the Portuguese absolutist regime [15].
The climate was soon to change, becoming impatient and insufferable, after the years of British regency, which ended in 1820. José Daniel Rodrigues da Costa, writing on the 'present state of things' in 1822, stresses the difference: “The Englishman, who with beer everything squirts,/ pulls profits only for himself,/with an eyepiece watching the Kingdom being stretched” [16].
While in the eighteenth century the Philosophical Transactions and the Essays and Observations from the Edinburgh Academy were certainly read by a few Portuguese philosophers and scientists, they would much more likely quote the Mémoires de Trévoux or the Journal des sçavants and the Acta Eruditorum and they were certainly pleased to know that an Italian version of the Transactions was to be published. Leibniz, for instance, had been certainly read by Verney in these journals. which made it impossible, by the time he wrote his main book (1746), to fully understand the opposition between Leibniz and Locke. And Locke, as happened to other British authors, like Francis Bacon, had been read in Portugal through French, Latin and Italian translations, during the first half of the eighteenth century [17].
This did not mean that Portuguese culture would necessarily follow French culture, likewise Portuguese humour did not reproduce French humour. Again, we know that the caricature of those other foreigners was never more sympathetic. On the contrary, fashion maniacs, frivolous and vain were often depicted as 'afrancesados' (Frenchies), with their ridiculous gestures in a wide circuit of leaflets and verses, both printed and manuscript [18]. Sometimes it happened in the same leaflets, mocking those in the city of Lisbon, ‘wearing crazy English clothing,/ and people in French style’, all of them being hostages of some disgraceful fashion [19].
Images started to change by the turn of the century. Did these caricatures of French and British leave any room to welcome other people's culture, humour or taste, especially the British, in spite of their merchants and military living in Portugal? Some authors were definitely read and Alexander Pope was probably the most important. He was read in English, and he was translated. Not many were able to read English and, of course, some readers were more proficient than others. José Anastácio da Cunha, a mathematician, a poet, and an artillery lieutenant in the Portuguese army, was forty two years old in 1787 when he died. His last words, while delirious, were allegedly a sentence said in both English and French: “Some dreams of humanity, qui me déchirent plutôt qu'ils ne me consolent” [20]. As a man of letters, he wrote a great number of translations from several languages, including German and French. To mention only the English speaking authors, he worked mainly Pope's verses. He also translated Shakespeare, whose books he read in English and kept in his library [21]. But he also translated Milton, Shirley, Shenstone, Ramsay, Otway, J. Armstrong, among others whose names and English texts are unknown [22]. For instance, Cunha made his own moto, in Portuguese, from the lines of Samuel Butler, “I now am out of Fortune's power, for being down I can fall no lower” [23]. And he gave titles in English to some of his Portuguese poems, as this: “To a friend's mistress, being in a dungeon in her birthday, the 14th May 1769” [24]. We shall remember the fact that the Artillery barracks in Valença do Minho, where he spent many years, had a large foreign population, including James Ferrier, a Scottish colonel, whose wits had certainly some effect on the young Portuguese mathematician.
The presence of foreigners in the newly reformed Portuguese army is to be taken into account in the general process of 'anglobalization' of which we have been speaking, and it will certainly be important also in the solidarities formed through belonging to Masonic societies since the eighteenth century on. In the case of José Anastácio da Cunha, the interesting point is the fact that someone who has never left Portugal was able to be associated with other authors who have spent their entire lives in other European countries, under the vague name of 'Estrangeirado', a word that identifies those who were attracted by foreign ideas, rather than by a supposed strict Portuguese or traditional academic culture.
This word marks, in the historiography of culture in Portugal, the valorisation of a clear frontier between an inside and an outside, with respect to the nature of the thought and to cultural and philosophical conceptions. In the twentieth century, it turned from insult to eulogy, identifying those who were open to European influences, refusing the weight of local tradition, but kept the dichotomous appreciation, as if the criticism of tradition was necessarily based on the appropriation of what was foreign.
In spite of a long history of latent anglophilia, José Anastácio da Cunha was probably, by then, one of the few Portuguese who could appreciate British humour. It wasn't enough to read. One had to get in a special mood and spirit that allowed double senses, absurdity and fun. Many others found themselves attracted to texts and people they would not fully understand. And it was thus much more rewarding to ridicule them.

Fibs Pedlar

Almocreve de Petas (Fibs Pedlar), printed in Lisbon by Simão Thaddeo Ferreira, 1797-1800, was the first Portuguese printed periodical where humour was consistently and systematically used. It was edited by José Daniel Rodrigues da Costa, one the most prolific writers of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries in Portugal.
One may catch some examples of the kind of jokes that can be found in that newspaper. One section of the Pedlar was “Jokes found in the curious savings trunk of our Old Man from Romulares” (Anecdotas achadas ao nosso Velho do Romulares no seu curioso pecúlio): “When a fly falls into a cup of wine at a table, you do not need to hear the guests talk in order to identify the country where they come from; the German blows it and then drinks, the Englishman drinks and then puts the fly away with his lips, the Frenchman takes it away with his little finger before drinking, and the Portuguese washes the cup and pours more wine” [25].
And he goes on.
Don’t you know that all Foreign Nations differ in taste and fashion; Spain’s best delicacy is the red bell pepper; Naples, anchovy; Genoa, chopped mushrooms; Venice, pluck with eggs; Germany, sausage; Italy, macaroni; Hungary, her spirited aqua vitae; Prussia, pudding; the Netherlands, kidney fricassee; England, roastbeef; Denmark, oysters; Sweden, herring in sauce; Poland, stewed aubergine; Russia, malasada [fried dough]; America, manioc flour; Asia, tea; and Africa couscous? Don’t you now that Portugal, before acquiring these [modern] tastes, has done well with açorda [bread mashed with water, olive oil and eggs] with garlic, at the same time when in all those countries’ people ate and dressed according to local tastes and usual practices? So, how do you want to get back in time, in a time when all things have changed? [26]
The editor of the Pedlar believed the British used to stroll in a particular way, a model followed by the Portuguese ‘fashion victims’, the “Tafuis”:
[…] wishing to become a complete Taful […] he goes to Cais das Colunas in the afternoon to see how three friends walked, strolling in the English way, from the East to the West, one entering in the middle while the other exits by the side, a kind of walk that he has been rehearsing in the three ways, so that he will be able to stroll alongside the others as soon as the occasion seems fit [27].

The Peeper of the New World

The Fibs Pedlar was replaced by Comboy de Mentiras (Convoy of Lies) in 1801. The new periodical published a sonnet by José Daniel Rodrigues da Costa dedicated to ‘The followers of fashion of the day’ (‘Aos Tafuis do tempo presente’) which read, in the last triplet: ‘To this is a Portuguese reduced, / It is shown here in detail/ What a Taful is today, merged with an Englishman’ [28].
The following year, 1802 (reprinted in 1819), the same author published The Peeper of the New World [29]. Each issue dwells on a theme, whence the reporter (the peeper – espreitador) peeps through some public space. For example, in March the peeper goes to the fairground, where a tale involving an English saddle and a Portuguese albarda (pack saddle) is a pretext to some philosophical reflexions on social climbing and social hierarchy.
In this very Fairground came along a clerk, who had never ridden but a donkey but today he presented himself on a splendid horse harnessed with a fine saddle […]. He rode the horse in the English style, just to die in the Portuguese style, as any man. So many were the leaps and so many the bounds that they all ended in a mortal jump. The little clerk was thrown to the ground by the beast, broke an arm and cracked his head. In such a case, some say better an albarda [pack saddle] than a saddle. Were the men satisfied with Portuguese saddles in which, tightly fitted, they could even dance, and they would not have exposed themselves to such disasters, that have come upon many followers of the English saddle fashion [30].
In July, the peeper went for a stroll in the park and found a pretext to criticize the fashion of imitating everything that came from abroad.
Four foreign girls were sitting in a stone bench in the park, whispering about whoever happened to come in or out (…) That one over there would like to be mistaken for a foreign lady; albeit she lacks our natural grace. The other went on: we were born to be foreigners, any piece of cloth suits us well. And the fourth one: since the clothes are created by us [a reference to the importance of British textiles in the Portuguese market], worn by us, no matter if it was made of knots [the Portuguese word nós means either us or knots], suits us like gold on blue! (…) Do you remember when I got better from the pox and lost my hair, I put on a bonnet with flowers on it? The first time I went out wearing it all the ladies who saw me thought it was a new attire; and soon afterwards the fashion of the bonnet was followed all over the town [31].

A new Anglophile Generation

Other perspectives on English people were then emerging. The French invasions and the exile in London of several Portuguese writers were to change partially this picture. In late 1801 and early 1802, shortly before his first journey to London, Brazilian born Hipólito da Costa, then holding a position at the Printing Plant of Arco do Cego, in Lisbon (Casa Literária do Arco do Cego), to which he had been appointed by the minister Dom Rodrigo de Sousa Coutinho, later count of Linhares, translated the Essays political, economical and philosophical by Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. The original four volumes, published from 1796 to 1800, became two in the Portuguese version with the title Ensayos Politicos, Economicos e Philosophicos por Benjamin Conde de Rumford, 2 vols., Lisboa, Regia Officina Typographica, 1801-1802.
Shortly after his return from London, in July 1802, Hipólito da Costa was arrested, accused of being a freemason and imprisoned first in a police jail and later in the Inquisition premises. He managed to escape probably in August 1805, reached Gibraltar and arrived safely in London, where he settled under the protection of the Duke of Sussex. In 1808 he became the writer, editor and publisher of Correio Braziliense, the first Portuguese language newspaper unhindered by censorship. This was just one of several newspapers produced and sent from London to Portugal and Brazil, during those years.
As happened to others, this periodical circulated not only among the tradesmen and commercial bourgeoisie of Lisbon, Oporto and of the Brazilian merchant ports but was also read by the court of Rio de Janeiro and the Portuguese expatriates in London.
In March and April 1813, alongside political articles irritating the absolutist Regency government of Lisbon and in favour of the allied coalition against Napoleon, Hipólito da Costa found place in two consecutive issues of his newspaper to publish a lengthy review of Robert Owen’s A New View of Society [32].
It is always useful to meditate and to compare the findings or inventions aiming at putting a remedy to these evils [vices, corruption and passions], whether approved or not […]. We know only too well that the wicked, interested on the disgrace of society, always ridicule the ideas of reform. Though they recognize the existence of evil, they say it is impossible to provide a remedy to it […] Such is the language of the politicians, absorbed in cogitations on the manner of bringing down their enemies. Yet the philosopher thinks otherwise…The author dwells on the hypothesis that children can be taught and brought up in such a way that they may acquire any language, feeling or creed, whatever manners, according to the principle that “individual happiness, fully understood, can only be obtained through a behaviour intended to promote the happiness of the community” (p. 297).
Moreover, The author sustains that the governments should establish rational plans for education to form the character of their subjects. 'The education of the people is miserably neglected in almost every country of the world and yet, even without any ill succeeded experiment on the matter, the politicians dare to discredit the idea of educational reform, and spread the error that it is impossible to improve things' (p. 298).
At a time when the misery of war and the depravation of some individuals force us to ascribe most of the space of our newspaper to current affairs which are anything but monuments to human wickedness, it is twice a delightful task to look away from the horror scenes and turn to the efforts of the philanthropist which tend to prove how easy it is for Governments to improve human character (p. 426).
The A[uthor]. shows the feasibility of educational improvements in an experiment pursued in a large cotton mill in Scotland and in a village nearby where the efforts of the philanthropist proprietor were extremely well succeeded in the task of improving the character of the people thereof. He points out that large mills, especially those that engage a great number of poor children, are some of the places most easily prey to corruption and depravation, where everything induces noxious habits to the health of the body and to the principles of morals. Thus, he concludes that the execution of his plan is feasible as long as the Government would implement it in all the Realm, as it was adopted in that village [New Lanark] […] The Reader will allow us, in order to give an idea of these brief but excellent essays, to finish with a passage of the same (pp. 429-430).
Thus were the Portuguese-speaking readers introduced to the work of the social reformer, founding father of the cooperative movement and of socialism. Among the main sources of Correio Braziliense there were the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society and the Journal of the Royal Institution, along with the Edinburgh Review, Agricultural Magazine, Annals of Philosophy or the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society [33].

Love from Abroad, a Play

Not all the contents of that newspaper had that kind of gravitas. In Hipólito da Costa e o Correio Braziliense, a seminal book on the patriarch of free press in Portugal and Brazil, Carlos Rizzini enlists 'an extravagant incursion by Hipólito in the domains of fiction in 1811', referring an 'apograph purchased by Plínio Salgado in Lisbon’s Feira da Ladra' [34]. He has in mind the play O Amor d'Estranja [35].
The text, dated from London, 1811, is presented as a 'play composed by the writer of Correio Braziliense and offered to the Portuguese ladies for their amusement'. As epigraph, two quotations help the reader to encompass the scope of the work: the first from Satire I by the Portuguese neoclassicist poet Correia Garção (1724-1772), follower of Horace and founder of the literary academy Arcádia Lusitana, who eventually died in jail under Marquês de Pombal’s government; and the second from Juvenal (whose Satires were profusely glossed, commented and adapted in the literary environment of eighteenth-century London, namely by Samuel Johnson whose work Da Costa is supposed to have been acquainted with): “Tam quis iniquae tam patiens urbis, tam ferrens [sic], ut teneat se” (“For who is so tolerant of the unjust city, so steeled, that he can restrain himself”, in Johnson’s translation).
The prologue explains that the author was inspired by letters received from Portugal containing 'a collection of highly bizarre and extravagant anecdotes' which provoked him 'great laughter ' and led him to write a “moral play” intended “in the first place, to the good families’ fathers who wish to preserve virtue and honour undamaged in their households, secondly, to those ladies who, albeit the cap fits, are not forsaken by reason....” He leaves in the air a menace that sounds like a ritual proclamation – one should bear in mind the role of Da Costa as a freemason in Great Britain and in Portugal: “Likewise, every month will be published a play wherein I will pay justice to virtue, while tearing off the ugly vice its filthy mask.” Rizzini is happy that Hipólito did not fulfil his promise, rating O Amor d'Estranja a “composition of no quality, which adds nothing to his reputation” [36].
The biographer’s concern is understandable in aesthetical terms; conversely, the historian of ideas cannot help but be thankful for having at hand a text so revealing of conceptions, misconceptions, sensibilities and prejudices.
Right from the beginning, the names of the characters are full of significance: the young female protagonists D. Fúfia Britânica (Miss Pretentious British) and D. Sentenciosa Reticência (Miss Sentencious Reticence); EstáPorTudo (Mr. Anything Goes, their father); their aunts D. Crocodilha Espantosa (Miss Astounding Crocodile) and D. Seba Azevia (Miss Fat Sole); Torneadinho (Mr. Wellshaped, businessman, Fúfia’s lover); Dr. Minuete (Dr. Minuet, a 'gentleman of quality', relative of the family); Mr. Stronk (a British Army surgeon, also Fúfia’s lover).
EstáPorTudo’s family took refuge in Lisbon following the first French invasion (1807-1808), leaving their estates and property in Coimbra. In the Portuguese capital, father, daughters, aunts and the other member of the family live at the expense of the well-to-do Torneadinho who is in love with Fúfia, vertex of a love triangle of which the other side is Mr. Stronk, surgeon officer in the allied/occupying army.
The intrigue denounces in satirical terms the ambiguous morality of Portuguese upper class families of the time, whose women are depicted as prey/predator in affective and carnal relationships with British officers – a fashion trend which helped to feed the patriotic resentment against the occupant army who had merely replaced the previous invader.
Written by an expatriate Brazilian in London and meant to be read by the members of the court in Rio de Janeiro and the traders and merchants of Lisbon and Oporto, O Amor d'Estranja is an example of the kind of globalization of culture that occurredin the early nineteenth century, revealing how the former looked at their British allies (whom the Portuguese monarchy owed its independence) but also at themselves, their families, their society and especially their women. Despite its poor literary quality, this half serious, half comic play – including a play within a play tainted with black humour and pre-romantic traits characteristic of the gothic literature, which beginnings Da Costa would have been acquainted to in London [37] – has a place within the satiric trend of the time and in which Hipólito da Costa has proven himself a better craftsman elsewhere. It was the case with the legal provision of June 17, 1817, banning the circulation of Correio Braziliense. When news of it was published in the newspaper, the “Portaria dos governadores do Reino” (Provision by the Regency Government) was transformed by a timely misprint into “porcaria” (filth) [38].

The Travelling Louse

Better known as a successful bookseller and printer, António Manuel Policarpo da Silva managed his bookshop in the very heart of Lisbon: Terreiro do Paço (Black Horse Square). There he collected ideas and devised the characters of the victims of his Travelling Louse: Travels divided into a thousand and one caps (O Piolho Viajante: Divididas as viagens em mil e huma carapuças. 4 vols., Lisboa: Nova Of. de João Rodr. Neves, 1803-1805).
I was astonished to see one of these fashionable individuals having dinner. The way he entered the restaurant like a Mylord, went past the tables and compartments and started to call: Ó Manuel? Ó Joaquim? This house is a drug! Quite poorly attended to! Boys! Then he sat down, put his hat to a side, one leg over the other. When the waiter came, the first thing he asked him was: –Light my pipe and tell me what you have […] – Well! Bring the best in the house and do not forget the roastbeef. Bring the port wine [39].
[The doctor] came by the bed, made a courtesy to whoever brought him a chair and asked the patient: – How are you? (…) The patient tried to explain the best he could while he assumed an air of Mylord and began asking and commanding: – Tongue out! On your back! Breathe now! Anything hurts? Give me your wrist […]. Against consumption he had a special medicine. Inhaling coal smoke, walking a lot and breathing the air of England which, according to him, was the best for the disease [40].
The notorious ignorance of some apothecaries, ridiculed in many Portuguese nineteenth-century jokes, provided this ‘bite’ of the Louse, based on the unawareness of the common name of magnesium sulfate (Epsom salt), ‘English salt’ in Portuguese, a widely used laxative:
When a doctor prescribed English salt to give a purgative, he [the apothecary] exclaimed: Oh, what times! Oh, what customs! All they care about is foreign stuff. But this shall not be the case. He made the purgative with common Portuguese salt instead, so that the poor patient could not stop drinking water throughout the day. At night he had a fever and the following day he passed away to Eternity, but in the Portuguese style [41].

The Disillusion of a Reactionary Priest

From a completely different cultural and political background, José Agostinho de Macedo was the most feared counterrevolutionary polemist in Portugal. A priest and former monk, he was expelled from his religious order because of his corruption, bad manners and intolerable behaviour. A poet and a political writer, he preached against liberalism, Jacobinism, freemasonry and tolerance. He was quite aggressive towards foreign authors who criticised the Portuguese society.
The Irish architect James Cavanah Murphy was scourged because of his Travels in Portugal (London, 1795), reviewed, together with the German botanist Heinrich Link, by Macedo in his Instruction and Entertainment Weekly: “Foreigners who do not know us (…) never had us in good account (…) come one Link and one Murphy, let them write travels in Portugal and claim they cannot find even one writer in the Nation” [42].
In 1824, by the time of the counterrevolutionary coup d’état attempted by Dom Miguel against his father, King Dom João VI, prevented with the support of British and French diplomats in Lisbon, Macedo reflected on the Constitution, comparing England with Portugal in print with the title Eternal Bases of the Political Constitution. Found in Master Ignacio’s Booklet by the Sacristan of the Village’s Priest. Dedicated to the Gentlemen Dons of the University, their Opposing Doctors, Students and Beadles, As Well as to All the gentlemen Officials and Curious of Constitutional Charters:
Let us leave England, which is of little help to us, or willing to help us at all, and contemplate the Kingdom of Portugal, which has been more worthy than Great-Britain (…) How many mills are there, or have been throughout the World, which have not been put on holidays by English Philanthropy (…) And what is the Constitution of England? Whatever might it be, I could not care less, because I do not believe the autograph Parchment of the Charter of João Santerre [the Magna Carta of king John Lackland]… any more than I believe the Parchment of the Laws of Lamego [43].
Macedo could not guess that he was right in the latter part of his reactionary predicament. The Laws of Lamego, presented since the mid-seventeenth century as sort of birth certificate of the Portuguese monarchy in the times of the first king Dom Afonso Henriques, in the twelfth century, were later exposed as a fabrication, forged in order to legitimize Portugal’s Restoration of Independence from Spain in 1640.
During the same coup attempt, the moderate Foreign minister (former ambassador to the United Kingdom and future prime minister) Pedro Sousa Holstein, marquess of Palmela, was arrested for a few hours in the Tower of Belém, together with other liberal politicians. José Agostinho de Macedo was seen there rousing the rabble against the malhados (liberals) [44]. Almost five years later, as editor of A Besta Esfolada (The Skinned Beast) he laid the blame for the growing liberal threat to the regime of Dom Miguel on the revengeful character of Palmela:
Pedro got his revenge […]. See how the little donkey has been kicking! That is where it all comes from. Who invented the Legitimacy by progeniture of His Majesty, the Emperor of Brazil? Pedro. Who collaborated in making here and pushing there and then pushing back here the little Magna Carta? Pedro. Who misled the Cabinets and who wrote and who sent the fatal Note (which circulates in print) to the revolutionary, the head of all the discontented of the Universe, the radical and most radical Canning? Pedro. Who went to Gibraltar to welcome the young Princess of Pará? Pedro [45].
For Macedo, the origin of all evil lied in Palmela’s “Anglomania”:
Anglomania has invaded many heads in all departments, states and conditions. In garments and fashion, Anglomania. […] Kitchen and steaks, Anglomania! […] Shrimps, eggs and tea with milk for lunch instead of our soup from the pot and a plateful of chorizo! Anglomania. To wander under the goldsmiths’ signs, eating oranges in the street looking distracted! Anglomania. […] To have an English tutoress for the girls, one who knows as much of the Portuguese language as the Articles of Faith! Anglomania. Much of these have many and all of these had Pedro and Pedro had much more than all of them together. He had and he has, in that blue jack mackerel soul of his, political Anglomania [46].
Near the end of his life, Macedo (1761-1831) edited The Disillusion [47]. There he wrote a significant sentence about the departure of the Portuguese Royal Family to Brazil, escaping the invading French under the protection of the British: 'It is true that the Court, together with a negligible part of the Nation, fled from some robbers to others, and while they went there with something of their own, they came back penniless' [48].

Finally, Who Were They?

These examples show us that British presence in Portugal was felt deeply enough to feed Portuguese conversations and leaflets with caricature and odd characters. They depicted people with strange habits and uses, not to mention the religious strangeness. The fact is that they were there, they had power, they were allowed liberties forbidden to ordinary people and they were foreigners. That would be enough to pick them as subjects of conversation and print, even (or especially) without having to understand them. Thus they were instrumental in the building a sense of identity, belonging and liminality from the part of the Portuguese observers, players and humourists. Identitiy and belonging in the sense that making a joke and understanding it involves self-awareness, or recognition, by the person who tells the joke and those who are told that joke, of being part – partaking – of the same ‘laughter community’, a concept imported from the linguistic studies. Wilk-Racięska [49] analyses how a laughter community can be created within a given sociolinguistic community, even though the members of the same laughter community may belong to distinct sociolinguistic communities. The identity is recognized by those bound by the same “humoristic pact” [50]. On the other hand, the sense of belonging to the same laughter community often (although not always) has, as its counterpart, the exclusion of the other – the one at whose expense the joke is told: the Englishman, as well as the Frenchman or the Spaniard… the other. As far as liminality is concerned, it envolves the ability to appreciate humor, as opposed to a sense of humor [51].
The case for British humour is completely different, less accessible, and less understandable. It was quite natural that it would be built on, and reproduced, prejudice, rather than information. But two issues emerge from this quick survey. The first is the growing presence of the British during the time span considered, both physically and through the writing world. The second is the reach of popular readings and conversation, encompassing people from all walks of life, even the more earnest and socially distinguished.
And, as these jokes were meant to be heard or to be watched but not necessarily to be read (or just in a second moment), one can imagine that they would have several interpretations and meanings, contributing also, paradoxically, to a favourable image of the British in Portugal.

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3. “Global history is both an object of study and a particular way of looking at history: it is both a process and a perspective, subject matter and methodology” (Conrad, Sebastian. 2016. What is Global History, Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 11, http://press.princeton.edu/chapters/s10748.pdf. Accessed 29 November 2025).
4. https://globalhistoryofthebook.wordpress.com. Accessed 29 November 2025.
5. Burton, Antoinette, Hofmeyr, Isabel. 2014. “Introduction. The Spine of Empire? Books and the Making of an Imperial Commons”. In Antoinette Burton and Isabel Hofmeyr (eds.). Ten Books that Shaped the British Empire. Creating an Imperial Commons. Durham and London: Duke University Press, p. 1.
6. Wilson, Thomas M. Borders, Boundaries, Frontiers: Anthropological Insights. Toronto/Buffalo/London: University of Toronto Press, 2024.
7. Bayly, Christopher. 2011. “History and World History”. In Ulinka Rublack (ed.). A Concise Companion to History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 4.
8. “Portuguese remained the most widely spoken European language in British India and Dutch South-East Asia as late as 1820, while much of the British Indian Empire’s lower bureaucracy, for instance, was staffed by Indo-Portuguese”. Ibidem, pp. 5-6.
9. One of whom is the celebrated ‘magriço’ present in the imaginary still today, reborn through the nickname of the Portuguese football team that played the World Cup in England in 1966.
10. Osterhammel, Jürgen, Petersson, Niels P. 2009. Globalization: a short history. Princeton: Princeton University Press, p. 7. http://assets.press.princeton.edu/chapters/s7952.pdf. Accessed 29 November 2025.
11. Bhabha, Homi. 1994. The Location of Culture. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 18-38.
12. Oliveira, Luiz Eduardo. 2014. O Mito de Inglaterra. Anglofilia e Anglofobia em Portugal (1386-1986) (The Myth of England. Anglophilia and Anglophobia in Portugal 1386-1986). Lisbon: Gradiva.
13. Lopes, Fernão. 1896. Chronica de El-Rei D. Fernando (Chronicle of King Dom Fernando). Vol. III. Lisboa: Escriptorio, pp. 52-55. http://purl.pt/419/4/hg-21065-p/hg-21065-p_item4/hg-21065-p_PDF/hg-21065-p_PDF_24-C-R0150/hg-21065-p_0000_anterrosto-capa_t24-C-R0150.pdf. Accessed 29 November 2025.
14. Atlas, p.126.
15. Castel-Branco, Joaquim. 1809. Breve mas circunstanciada notícia do governo e constituição da Grã-Bretanha (Brief but detailed notice of the Government and Constitution of Great-Britain). Lisbon: Alcobia.
16. “Inglez, que com cerveja tudo esguixa,/E lucros para si somente puxa,/ De oculo a ver o Reino, que se espixa” (Costa, José Daniel Rodrigues da. 1822. Ideias vagas sobre vários assuntos (Vague ideas on various matters) “Soneto XVIII”. Lisbon: Simão Tadeu Ferreira, p. 22).
17. For instance, Luís António Verney, António Ribeiro Sanches and Teodoro de Almeida often referred to experiences presented in those journals.
18. ''Vai hum desses Peraltas emproado / lançando as suas pernas à Franceza”, Miguel do Couto Guerreiro. 1786. 'Sátira XI. O Peralta' (Satire 11. The Dandy). In Sátiras em desabono de muitos vícios, (Satires against many vices) Lisbon: Francisco Luiz Ameno, p.127.
19. ‘Lisboa está desgraçada,/ Não sei quem tal damno fez/ Eu vejo-a contaminada/ De hum louco trajar Inglez,/ E de gente afrancezada’ (Costa, José Daniel Rodrigues da. 1795. Rimas (Rhymes). Lisbon: Officina de Simão Tadeu Ferreira, p.70), among others. See also Lisboa. 2015. “Read, watch and laugh (with 18th century humorous books)”. In Leonor Ferrão, Luis M. Bernardo (eds.). Views on Eighteenth Century Culture: Design, Books and Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, pp.346-357.
20. Cunha, José Anastácio da. 2001. Obra Literária (Literary Works). Vol. 1. Oporto: Campo das Letras, p. 9.
21. Probably a 9-volume edition by Pope in 1768. Cunha's Inquisition file mentioned also other plays from Shakespeare, apart from that edition. See Obra literária (Literary Works). Vol. 2, p.116, note 119.
22. Presumed in English due to the fact that they were gathered under the title “Versos ingleses” (English verse). Ibid. Vol. 2, p.170.
23. 'Outro estando a vergonha pública, disse: / Já sujeito não 'stou da Fortuna ao poder / Pois tão baixo estou já que não posso descer', Ibidem, Vol.2, Oporto Campo das Letras, 2006, pp.122-123.
24. Ibidem, Vol. 1, p.256.
25. ‘Cahindo huma mosca em hum copo de vinho á meza, se conhecem os circunstantes a que nação pertencem, sem que falem; porque o Alemão assopra-a, e bebe, o Inglez bebe, e bota a mosca fóra com os beiços, o Francez antes que beba a vai tirar com o dedo mínimo, e o Portuguez bota fóra aquelle vinho, e toma outro para beber’(Costa, José Daniel Rodrigues da. Almocreve de Petas, Part 99, p. 5).
26. ‘[…] não sabe que as Nações Estrangeiras todas differem no gosto, e nas modas; que a Hespanha o seu forte he o pimentão; Napoles a enxova; Genova o espernegado do cocumelo; Veneza o mujangué da forçura; Alemanha a salxixa; Italia o macarrão; Ungria a sua espirituosa agua; Prussia o podim; Paizes-baixos o rim de fricacé; Inglaterra o rosbife […]; Dinamarca as ostras; Suecia os arenques de molho; Polonia as bringellas estufadas; Russia a mal assada; a America o pirão; a Asia o Xá; e a Africa os cuscus? Não sabe que Portugal, em quanto não adoptou estes gostos, sempre passou com a sua assorda d’alho; e isto naquelle mesmo tempo em que em todos os Paizes se comia ao gosto, e se vestia ao uso? Logo como quer v. m. que tornemos a esse tempo? Em hum tempo em que as cousas estão todas alteradas? (Ibidem, Part 137, p. 2).
27. ‘[…] de tarde no Caes das Columnas vai ver como ligados passeão tres amigos á Ingleza, de Leste a Oeste, entrando hum no centro, e o outro sahindo ao lado; passagem esta, que elle tem posto em praxe com tres formas para saber passear com outros, quando a occasião se offereça’ (Ibidem, Part 101, p. 2).
28. ‘A isto hum Portuguez he reduzido, / Aqui se mostra bem pelo miudo,/ O que he hoje hum Taful, Inglez fundido’(Comboy de Mentiras, 4, p. 3).
29. Costa, José Daniel Rodrigues da. O Espreitador do Mundo Novo. Obra Critica, Moral, e Divertida, Segunda edição, Lisboa, Na Officina de J.F.M. de Campos, 1819.
30. ‘He nesta mesma Feira, que o caxeiro de certa corporação, que em outro tempo nunca montou mais, que em hum burro, quando veio da terra, hoje se apresentou em hum soberbo cavallo, ajaezado de selim, sem saber de picaria, e querendo ser Picador […]. Montou á Ingleza, para morrer á Portugueza, como qualquer homem. Porque tantos forão os pulos, e tantas as cabriolas, que pararão todas em hum salto mortal; pois, como huma pella, foi o caixeirinho despedido pelo bruto ao meio do chão, onde se quebrou hum braço, e abrio a cabeça. Em semelhantes casos assentão os minores, que antes huma albarda, que hum selim. Contentassem-se os homens com as selas Portuguezas, em que encaixados podião até bailar a fofa á sua vontade, que logo se não exporião a [p. 10, p. 11] semelhantes desastres, que já pela moda dos selins não tem succedido poucos’ (Ibidem,3, pp. 10-11).
31. ‘Era no Passeio Público […] que se achavão assentadas em hum banco de pedra quatro meninas estrangeiras, que pela sua meia língua estavão murmurando de tudo quanto entrava, ou sahia.[…] aquella […] bem quer affectar de estrangeira; porém falta-lhe a graça natural, que nós temos. Continuou a outra: nós he que nascemos para ser estrangeiras: qualquer trapinho nos está bem. Disse a quarta: pois se o trapinho he inventado por nós, posto em nós, e ainda que seja feito de nós, assenta em nós, como ouro sobre azul! Ó Madama Cintilina, não se lembra quando eu melhorei das bexigas, e fiquei sem cabello, que a touca, que puz na cabeça guarnecida de flores, me estava a matar? pois a primeira vez, que sahi fora com ella, agradou tanto a minha vista, que todas, as que ma virão na cabeça, julgarão ser hum novo enfeite; e logo se vio na Cidade toda, propagada a invenção das toucas na cabeça’ (Ibidem, 7, pp. 1-2).
32. 'Analysis of the pamphlet entitled A New View of Society: or, Essay on the formation of human character, and the application of the principle to practice: by one of the Justices-of-the-peace of H. M. in the county of Lanark. London 1813.'Correio Braziliense, vol. X, Londres, Impresso por W. Lewis, na Officina do Correio Braziliense, St. John’s Square, Clerkenwell, 1813, 295-298 and 426-430.
33. Through its translations, Correio Braziliense contributed to the reception of new social political and economic ideas among Portuguese-speaking readers. On the literary circulation between Great-Britain and Portugal, from the perspective of the representations of Portugal in the United Kingdom, see Raven, James. “Portugal, o Mundo Lusófono e o Romance Inglês: traduções e tradutores em contexto amplo (1750-1830)” (Portugal, the Lusophone world and English novel: translations and translators in a broad context 1750-1830). In M. Abreu and M. M. Deaecto (org.).A Circulação Atlântica dos Impressos – Conexões (Atlantic circulation of printed matter – Connections). Campinas: UNICAMP/Setor de Publicações, 2014, p. 115-128.
34. Rizzini, Carlos. Hipólito da Costa e o Correio Braziliense. (Hipólito da Costa and Correio Braziliense). São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1957, p. 45.
35. Ferreira, João. O Jornalismo na Emigração. Ideologia e Política no Correio Braziliense. (Emigration journalism. Ideology and politics in Correio Braziliense). Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica, 1992, pp. 204-238.
36. Rizzini, p. 45.
37. On the production, circulation and reception of haunting and ghost stories typical of early gothic literature in England see Handley, Sasha. Visions of an Unseen World: Ghost Beliefs and Ghost Stories in Eighteenth Century England. London: Pickering & Chatto, 2007.
38. Correio Braziliense, July 1817, p. 3.
39. ‘[…] então do que eu mais me admirava, era ver hum individuo destes da moda ir alli jantar: o ar com que elle entrava de Mylord pela casa dentro, dava volta pelas casas todas, entrava a chamar, ó Manoel? ó Joaquim? esta casa vai dando em droga, vai sendo muito mal servida: oh rapazes? sentava-se, carregava o chapéo para a ilharga, perna em cima huma da outra, apparecia moço, e a primeira cousa que lhe pedia era: dá cá lume, e vai dizendo o que há […] – Bem: venha do melhor, e não te esqueça o rosbifi, traze vinho do Porto’ (O Piolho Viajante (Travelling Louse). Part 4, ch. 63).
40. ‘Chegava á cama, fazia huma cortezia a quem lhe chegava a cadeira, e perguntava ao doente: como está? […] O doente explicava-se do modo que podia; e elle entrava em ar de Mylord a perguntar e a mandar. Bote a lingoa fóra? ponha-se de costas, respire agora, doe-lhe alguma cousa? venha o pulso […].Para tisicas tinha remedio especial, nada de fóra da terra, tomar fumo de carvão de pedra, andar muito, e ar de Inglaterra, que segundo elle era o melhor para esta moléstia’ (Ibidem, ch. 65).
41. ‘Huma vez, que hum Medico receitou sal Inglez para huma purga, exclamou elle: ó tempos! ó costumes! Não se faz caso senão dos generos Estrangeiros; pois não ha de ser assim: fez a purga de sal Portuguez, e o pobre doente esteve a beber agoa todo o dia: sobreveio-lhe huma febre á noite, e no outro dia foi para a Eternidade; mas á Portugueza’ (Ibidem, Part 1, ch.6).
42. Macedo, José Agostinho de. Semanário de Instrução e Recreio (Instruction and Recreation Weekly) Lisbon: Impressão Régia, 1813, Vol.II, No. 46, p. 320.
43. Bazes Eternas da Constituição Politica. Achadas na Cartilha do Mestre Ignacio pelo Sacristão do Padre Cura d’Aldea. Dedicadas aos Senhores Cathedraticos da Universidade, seus Oppositores Doutores Simplices, Estudantes e Bedeis; Assim como a Todos os Senhores Officiaes e Curiosos de Cartas Constitucionaes (Eternal bases of the Constitution. Found in the handbook of Master Ignatius by the sacristan of the priest of the village parish. Dedicated to the University Dons, their fellow doctors, students and bedels, as well as all the gentlemen officers and curious of Constitutional Charters). Lisbon: Impr. da Rua Formosa, 1824, pp. 26-27.
44. Barreto, D. José Trazimundo Mascarenhas. Memórias do Marquês de Fronteira e d’Alorna, (Memoirs of the Marquess of Fronteira and Alorna). Vols. I-II, Lisbon: Imprensa Nacional - Casa da Moeda, 1986, p. 400-401.
45. “Vingou-se o Pedro […]. Vejão que couces tem dado o jumentinho! Daqui vem tudo. Quem inventou a Legitimidade pela primogenitura de Sua Magestade, o Imperador do Brasil? Pedro. Quem cooperou para se fazer cá, e se empurrar para lá, e depois para cá a Magna Cartinha? Pedro. Quem enganou os Gabinetes, e quem escrevêo, e enviou a fatal Nota (que anda impressa) ao revolucionario, e cabeça de todos os descontentes do Universo, o radical, e radicalissimo Caning [sic]? Pedro. Quem foi buscar a Gibraltar a Menina Princeza do Pará? Pedro” (Macedo, José Agostinho de.A Besta Esfolada (The Skinned Beast). Nº 9, p. 3).
46. “A Anglomania tem em todas as repartições, estados, e condições invadido muitas cabeças! Nos vestidos, e modas, Anglomania. […] Cosinha, e Bifes, Anglomania! […] Camarões, ovos, e chá com leite para os almoços em lugar de nossas sopas da panella, e hum taçalho de chouriço do Crato! Anglomania. Pasmar pelas taboletas dos ourives, comendo laranjas pela rua, affectando ar de meditação, ou cuidados, que distrahem! Anglomania. […] Ter em casa Mestra IngIeza para as meninas, que sabe tanto a lingua Portugueza, como sabe os Artigos da Fé! Anglomania. Tudo isto tem muitos, e tudo isto tinha Pedro, e Pedro ainda tinha muito mais, que todos estes juntos. Tinha, e tem naquella alma de Chicharro a Anglomania Politica” (Ibidem, p. 2). Macedo called Palmela ‘revengeful’ and a ‘stubborn anglomaniac’ in his last periodical, The Disillusion (O Desengano, No. 25, p. 9). Palmela showed his ‘anglomania’ right after the failed coup of the Abrilada when he wrote to the Portuguese embassador in London asking for British military support, which was turned down. See Oliveira 2014, 238-240.
47. Desengano, Lisboa, Impressão Régia, 1831.
48. Ibidem, No. 13, p. 4.
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51. Ruch, Willibald. “Sense of humor: a new look at an old concept”. In W. Ruch (Ed.), The sense of humor: Explorations of a personality characteristic. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. 1998, pp. 3-14. See also Warren, Caleb & McGraw, A. Peter. “Appreciation of humor”. In S. Attardo (Ed.), Encyclopedia of humor studies. Vol. 1. Los Angeles/London: Sage, 2014, pp. 52-55.
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