TALKS ON PORTUGUESE HISTORY BY PETER KINGDON BOOKER

JANUARY 2010

 

Tuna Fishing in the Algarve

Tuesday 26 January at 6.30 pm, Convento São José, Lagoa

Friday 29 January at 11 am, Municipal Library, Tavira

 

Right up to the time of the First World War, the Algarve was famous in Northern Europe for its fruit, fresh and dried, and for olive oil.  But its fishing industry was also economically very important.   Of the fish

caught here tuna and sardine occupy a prominent position, and measures were taken to foster and protect the tuna fishing industry. Some of the Portuguese sardines which fed Allied POWs and Axis troops must have come from the Algarve.  Tuna on the other hand has been used as a means for paying tax; it has been the target of corsairs.  The tuna fishing industry has been a major employer in the region.  The tuna sadly no longer cruise the coast of the Algarve, and there have been other periods in history when the tuna have been absent.  What influences the tuna in its migration?  How much does this region now depend on its fishing industry?  Peter Booker embarks on a survey of the Algarve and Algarveans and their relationship with the fishing industry.

 

The Jews in Portugal

Monday 18 January 7 pm, ASCA, Rua do Comunitário, Almancil

Ever since the diaspora caused by the Romans in 70 CE, Christian communities had difficulties in coming to terms with their Jewish populations, and there were usually strained relations between them.  One has only to think of the treatment of Jews which Shakespeare describes in The Merchant of Venice.  Such difficulties led in turn to further diasporas, and in Spain and Portugal the relevant dates were 1492 and 1497.  For a long time after 1497, the practising of the Jewish religion in Portugal was very dangerous, and Jews came back into Portugal only in the mid-nineteenth century.  Why were Jews so cordially disliked that they were expelled?  How many left Portugal at the time of the Sephardic diaspora, and how many chose to remain?  What was the influence of this diaspora on the society that remained?  Peter Kingdon Booker describes the history of The Jews in Portugal and explains how this hostile attitude by the government of the time caused great hardship to Portugal in the years that followed.