Introduction

In the opening pages of the Elementos da Policia Geral de hum Estado, translated from French to Portuguese by João Rosado de Villalobos e Vasconcellos and published in Lisbon in 1786, the translator made a dedication to the Lieutenant General of Police of the Portuguese kingdom, Diogo Inácio de Pina Manique, requesting his patronage for the book. The translator tells us in these opening pages that the work does not offer more than the theory behind the rules and principles already put in practice for many years by Pina Manique.

This very interesting book – which introduces itself as fully aligned with the spirit of the actions and establishments created in the field of ‘police matters’ in Portugal since the mid-eighteenth century – was originally published in French in 1781 by the famous publishing house of Fortuné- Barthélemy De Felice at Yverdon (Switzerland). Because of that, the Elemens de la police generale d'un Etat (1781), which does not contain any indication of authorship, would be traditionally assigned to De Felice. However, as indicated by Marc Weidmann, the author of the book is in fact another important name associated with the Swiss Enlightenment: the pastor and naturalist Eli Bertrand. What went unnoticed however by those who have dedicated themselves to this subject, and this book in particular, is that the Elemens de la police generale d'un Etat is actually not an original work of Bertrand, but an abridged and annotated version of a fundamental cameralist work written by Johann Heinrich Gottlob von Justi: Die Grundfeste zu der Macht und Gluckseeligkeit der Staaten; oder ausfuhrliche Vorstellung der gesamten Policey-Wissenschaft (1760/61) created for Bertrand's teaching purposes. Hence, even if inadvertently, the Portuguese translator, who also added his own notes linking the content of the book to Portuguese reality, assigned an important compendium of cameralist police science (Policeywissenschaft) as the foundation for actions and institutions in Portugal during the second half of the eighteenth century.

I will return to the topic of police matters and its regulations in more detail, but this example serves to highlight some of the issues that are central to discussion of the influence of cameralist ideas in Portugal.