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Abstract
The First World War deployed means of combat that brought about devastating effects on the minds and bodies of the men who fought it. In keeping with the sources available for the study of Portuguese soldiers, this article aims to explore the ways in which war disabilities were perceived and represented within the post-war context, stemming from the hegemonic discourses of masculinity. Overlapping masculinity and disability, I show how the ideals of the former (preceding the conflict and being mobilised by it) were subsequently invoked by disabled Portuguese veterans in their public demands for recognition. I also demonstrate the continuity of pre-war cultural representations of masculinity and disability despite the deep impacts inflicted by the conflict on the men and Portuguese society.
Acknowledgements
This work is supported by PPGHIS/UFRJ, JCNE/FAPERJ and IHC-NOVAFCSH/IN2PAST. I would like to thank Miguel Vale de Almeida for the references on the studies about masculinity in Portugal as well as my students Mayra Trocado and Anna Clara Gonçalves (PIBIC-UFRJ Program) for their cataloguing and transcription of the historical sources.
Disclosure statement
There is no conflict of interest in the publication of this article.
Notes
1 On the relationship between the national identity projects of modern states and their cults of the healthy male body: John Horne, ‘Masculinity in Politics and War in the Age of Nation-States and World Wars, 1850–1950,’ in Masculinities in Politics and War: Gendering Modern History, ed. by Stefan Dudink, Karen Hagemann and John Tosh (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004), 22–40.
2 Horne, 32.
3 ‘Esperienze che debordano dai limiti della parola e del testo scritto’ (my translation). Eric J. Leed, Terra di nessuno: Esperienza bellica e identità personale nella prima guerra mondiale (Bologna: Il Mulino, 1985), 5.
4 Modris Eksteins, Rites of Spring: The Great War and the Birth of Modern Age (Boston: Houghton, 1989).
5 George L. Mosse, The Image of Man: The Creation of Modern Masculinity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 111.
6 Antoine Prost, ‘The Impact of War on French and German Political Cultures’, The Historical Journal 3, no. 1 (1994), 209–17.
7 Joanna Bourke, Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain and the Great War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 12.
8 Ibid., 19–20.
9 Sílvia Barbosa Correia, ‘The Veterans’ Movement and First World War Memory in Portugal (1918–33): Between the Republic and Dictatorship’, European Review of History: Revue europeenne d'histoire 19, no. 4 (2012), 531–51; Sílvia Correia, Entre a morte e o mito. Políticas da memória da I Guerra Mundial em Portugal (1918–1933) (Lisbon: Círculo de Leitores/Temas & Debates, 2015).
10 Jay Winter, Sites of War, Sites of Mourning: The Great War in the European Cultural History (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1995).
11 Antoine Prost, Les anciens combattants et la société française 1914–1939 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1977), I.
12 Jessica Meyer, Men of War: Masculinity and the First World War in Britain (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009).
13 To date, historians have found no record of the Ministry of War’s files concerning disabled veterans. Thus, my findings on the treatment of the war disabled, their evaluation, integration and pensions must be limited.
14 Among other early studies: Winter, Sites of War; Bourke, Dismembering the Male; Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker, 14–18, Retrouver la guerre (Paris: Gallimard, 2000).
15 Thomas J. Gerschick, ‘Toward a Theory of Disability and Gender’, Signs 25, no. 4 (2000), 1263–8.
16 On the centrality of the gender perspective in war research: Alison Fell, ‘Gendering the War Story’, Journal of War & Culture Studies 1, no. 1 (2007), 53–8.
17 Among important works published on masculinity and disability of greatest relevance to this study are: Bourke, Dismembering the Male; Meyer, Men of War; Ana Carden-Coyne, Reconstructing the Body: Classicism, Modernism, and the First World War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009); Martina Salvante, ‘The Wounded Male Body: Masculinity and Disability in Wartime and Post-WWI Italy’, Journal of Social History 53, no. 3 (2020), 644–66; Sophie Delaporte, ‘Le corps et la parole des mutilés de la grande guerre’, Guerres mondiales et conflits contemporains 205, no. 1 (2002), 5–14; Wendy Jane Gagen, ‘Remastering the Body, Renegotiating Gender: Physical Disability and Masculinity during the First World War’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d'histoire 14, no. 4 (2007), 525–41; Antoine Prost, ‘The Impact of War’. For a significant literature review: Pieter Verstraete, Martina Salvante and Julie Anderson, ‘Commemorating the Disabled Soldier: 1914–1940’, First World War Studies 6, no. 1 (2015), 1–7; Ana Carden-Coyne, ‘Masculinity and the Wounds of the First World War: A Centenary Reflection’, Revue Française de Civilisation Britannique: French Journal of British Studies, XX-1 (2015). <http://journals.openedition.org/rfcb/305> [accessed 22 September 2021].
18 Tremain notes that disability history approach does not deny the materiality of the body, but instead focuses on what makes its existence possible along the same lines as Butler’s work on precarious lives: Shelley Tremain, ‘On the Government of Disability: Foucault, Power, and the Subject of Impairment’, in The Disability Studies Reader, ed. by Lennard J. Davis (New York: Routledge, 2006), 187; Judith Butler, Quadros de Guerra. Quando a vida é passível de luto? (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2015), 13–56.
19 Bruno Sena Martins, ‘Introdução. A normalidade em crise’, in Deficiência e emancipação social: para uma crise da normalidade, ed. by Bruna Sena Martins and Fernando Fontes (Coimbra: Almedina, 2016), 15–38. Martins has contributed to the debates on disability in Portugal within the framework of the Colonial War. See the Foucauldian debate on the control of bodies and disability: Tremain, ‘On the Government of Disability: Foucault, Power, and the Subject of Impairment’, in Davis, 186.
20 Davis, 6.
21 R.W. Connell and James W. Messerschmidt, ‘Hegemonic Masculinity: Rethinking the Concept’, Gender & Society 19, no. 6 (2005), 829–59; Miguel Vale de Almeida, ‘Gênero, masculinidade e poder: Revendo um caso do sul de Portugal’, Anuário antropológico 20, no. 1 (1996), 161–89.
22 Mosse.
23 Ibid., 5.
24 According to Davis, this idea is deeply shaped by eugenic conceptions. Eugenics was not a racial project in Portugal. Instead, it was associated with a more hygienist perspective: Ana Leonor Pereira, ‘Eugenia em Portugal?’, Revista de História das Ideias 20, (1999), 531–600.
25 Mário César Lugarinho, ‘Masculinidade e colonialismo: em direção ao ‘homem novo’ (subsídios para os estudos de gênero e para os estudos pós-coloniais no contexto de língua portuguesa)’, Abril–NEPA/UFF 5, no. 10 (2013), 18.
26 Primeira República Portuguesa [PRP – First Portuguese Republic (1910–1926)].
27 ‘Lei do Recrutamento Militar’, Diário do Governo, 56/1911, Série I de 1911-03-10, 2 March 1911, 1027.
28 A Águia, (Porto: Renascença Portuguesa, 1916). On the republican nature of recall processes in Portugal: Sílvia Correia, ‘Celebrating Victory on a Day of Defeat: Commemorating the First World War in Portugal, 1918–1933’, European Review of History: Revue européenne d’histoire 24, no. 1 (2017), 108–30.
29 Lugarinho, 17. It should be noted that revolutionary movements sought a balance between preserving individual freedom, maintaining the family base, and consolidating state control: Lynn Hunt, ‘A Revolução Francesa e a vida Privada’, in História da Vida Privada. Da Revolução à Grande Guerra, ed. By Philippe Ariés and Georges Duby. Vol IV (Porto: Edições Afrontamento, 1990), 21–51.
30 On masculinity and the period of the First Republic, I employ here the model of masculinity proposed by Lugarinho.
31 Horne, 32.
32 Meyer, 3–6.
33 Ibid., 162.
34 Concerning the idea of a ‘mutilated victory’ adapted from the Italian experience: Victoria De Grazia, The Perfect Fascist: A Story of Love, Power, and Morality in Mussolini’s Italy (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2020). For the use in the Portuguese case: Correia, ‘Celebrating victory’.
35 Correia, ‘Celebrating victory’. On the First World War politics of memory: Filipe R. Meneses, ‘Salazar, the Portuguese Army and Great War Commemoration, 1936–1945,’ Contemporary European History 20, no. 4 (2011), 405–418; Prost, Les anciens combattants, III; Jay Winter, Remembering War: The Great War between Memory and History in the Twentieth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006); Daniel Todman, The Great War: Myth and Memory (London: Habledom Continuum, 2014); Antonio Gibelli, La Grande Guerra degli Italiani 1915–1918 (Milan: Sansoni, 1998).
36 Sílvia Correia, ‘The Mutilated Face of World War I in Portugal’, E-Journal of Portuguese History 15, no. 1 (2017), 35–54.
37 This monopolisation took the form of control of veterans rather than any political exploitation of the war experience. On the relationship between political transformations in Portugal and the veterans’ movement: Correia, ‘The veterans' movement’.
38 Livro de Estatística do CEP, Serviços de Estatística e Estado Civil do CEP, PT/Arquivo Histórico Militar /1.ª Divisão/3.ª Secção/Caixa 1401.
39 During the First Congress of the War Mutilated and Disabled, there was reference to around 1,800 disabled men. Held in January 1926, it marked the first major ‘movement’ in support of the people crippled by the war. ‘I Congresso dos Mutilados Inválidos de Guerra’, A Guerra 2, 1 February 1926, 13–19.
40 ‘Uma carta que na sua síntese diz tudo’, A Guerra 53, May 1930, 1145.
41 ‘O que nos ficou da guerra’, A Guerra 57, September 1930, 1215.
42 The Portuguese Women’s Crusade (CMP) took its first steps in March 1916 before its statutes were published in Diário do Governo on 13 July 1916. It was a republican women’s organisation set up to make welfare payments to war victims, especially aimed at helping the war disabled and orphans. The CMP maintained a close relationship, even family ties, with some of the leading members of the first republican government. Hence, its activities were correspondingly affected by governmental instability.
43 PT/AHM/1/3/442; Lei no. 1:170, Diário do Governo, I Série, 105, 21 May 1921.
44 Of special note is the 1924 publication of the first act that combined the pre-existing multiple categories into the formula of inválido de guerra (war-disabled) (Decree 10:099, Diário do Governo, I Série, 210, 17 September 1924); as well as the Código dos Inválidos (disabled code), published in 1927 and republished in 1929 (Decree 16:443, Diário do Governo, I Série, 167, 5 August 1927; Decree 16:443, Diário do Governo, I Série, 138, 6 June 1929), a more detailed project regulating parameters and institutions for identifying the disabled and relevant assistance through the apparatus and/or through financial support of the disabled veteran and/or his family.
45 The legislation (published in 1921 and 1924) was an adaptation of the French model of 1919 – the Guide-Barème – and established disability degrees between ten and one hundred per cent, with this latter percentage granted the status of ‘absolute incapacity’ (the only case not to undergo constant re-evaluations for confirmation of the war disabled status). Pensions were paid according to the degree of disability and military rank. Soldiers with less than thirty per cent disability did not receive a pension but could choose a civil service post according to their abilities.
46 Decree 10:099, Diário do Governo, I Série, 210, 17 September 1924.
47 In its 1936 Annual Report, The League of Combatants of the Great War (LCGG) first published a list of the ‘alienated’ combatants (those with psychological problems) of which it had knowledge up to that date, which increased from 28 in 1936 to 58 in 1937 – without, however, indicating their mental state. See: LCGG, Relatório da Gerência de 1936 (Lisbon: Typografia da Liga dos Combatentes da Grande Guerra, 1937); LCGG, Relatório da Gerência de 1937 (Lisbon: Typografia da Liga dos Combatentes da Grande Guerra, 1938).
48 Correia, ‘The mutilated face’.
49 Although the amounts proposed by the Commission for the Study of Retirement Conditions (PT/AHM/1/35/442) were high, considering the national average wage of industrial workers, between one and five escudos per day in 1921. According to most critics, the actual pensions awarded to the disabled were low and did not exceed forty cents per day and twenty cents whenever the disabled was undergoing re-education: Ministério das Finanças – Direção Geral de Estatística, Anuário estatístico de Portugal, 1921 (Lisbon: Typografia da Liga dos Combatentes da Grande Guerra, 1938), 323.
50 Documentation produced by the 5th Department has never been located.
51 On the political appropriation of the disabled: Correia, ‘The Mutilated Face’.
52 Public and private files on the war disabled constitute highly fragmented information that has been widely applied in my other studies.
53 From 1928–1930, the newspaper published the weekly column ‘Mutilados e inválidos’ [Mutilated and disabled], written by Captain Almeida Pinheiro and with at least two pages dedicated to examining the Portuguese legislation on pensions and reparations, as well as the column ‘Quadros de dor e miséria’ [Pictures of pain and misery], which reported cases of veterans facing situations of poverty and illness, which ceased publication after several editions. Between 1931–2 and afterwards, less attention was given to the war disabled, with the newspaper focusing more on the League’s activities while occasionally publishing the column ‘A queimar cartuchos’ [Burning cartridges] and ‘S.O.S’, exposing cases of disabled soldiers on the verge of poverty.
54 To understand the political positioning of veterans in the Estado Novo: Correia, ‘The Veterans’ Movement’; Correia, Entre a morte e o mito (my doctoral research project largely focusing on this subject).
55 Delaporte, 5.
56 Correia, ‘The Mutilated Face’ and Sílvia Correia, ‘(In) complete Citizens: First World War Portuguese Disabled Soldiers and the Construction of Group Identity’, in War Hecatomb: International Effects on Public Health, Demography and Mentalities in the 20th Century, ed. by Paulo Teodoro Matos, Helena da Silva and José Miguel Sardica (Bern: Peter Lang, 2019), 160–78.
57 Helena da Silva, ‘Consigned to Oblivion: Rehabilitation of First World War Disabled Veterans in Portugal (1917–1927)’, War & Society 37, no. 4 (2018), 262–79.
58 ‘I Congresso dos mutilados inválidos de guerra’, A Guerra.
59 Col. C. Ayres, ‘Mutilados’, A Voz dos Combatentes 125, 4 July 1931, 6. Ayres was a recognised military personality and war historian who wrote on war disability.
60 For more information on these debates, see footnote 17.
61 Capt. A. Pinheiro, ‘Mutilados e inválidos: aspectos gerais sociais’, A Voz dos Combatentes 61, 31 January 1930, 6.
62 Capt. A. Pinheiro, ‘Mutilados e inválidos: Constatações e aspirações’, A Voz dos Combatentes 89, 15 August 1930, 2–3.
63 On religious assistance to disabled soldiers: da Silva, ‘Consigned to oblivion’.
64 A. de Lemos, ‘O meu humilde preito de homenagem’, A Voz dos Combatentes 53, 6 December 1929, 7.
65 Sílvia Correia, ‘Escrita como metáfora rememorativa da vida. Uma análise das cartas dos soldados portugueses na Primeira Guerra Mundial’, in Lugares e práticas historiográficas: escritas, museus, imagens e comemorações, ed. by Ana Paula Sampaio Caldeira and Douglas Attila Marcelino (Campinas: Ed. CRV, 2021), 207–21.
66 L. V. Verde, ‘Um novo inquérito’, A Guerra 58, October 1930, 1232.
67 E. de Faria, ‘A Razão Principal’, A Guerra 53, May 1930, 1129.
68 Meyer, 114.
69 S. Carrusca, ‘O que nos ficou da guerra’, A Guerra 49, January 1930, 1066.
70 Meyer, 118.
71 A.G. Rocha, ‘Pobres Combatentes!’, A Voz dos Combatentes 68, 21 March 1930, 4.
72 Anonymous, ‘Diversas: O lamento das Vítimas’, Vítimas da Guerra 37, 5 November 1932, 4.
73 Veterans with tuberculosis were only included in the status of war disabled in 1924. There were serious imperfections in the diagnosis of the various disabilities suffered by military personnel. As stated in the ‘Letter from the Board of the War Disabled Guild to the President of the Ministry’ dated 16 November 1933: ‘there are Invalids, in greater numbers than those who are victims of tuberculosis proven to have been contracted in campaign, who do not receive a penny from the state, because, poor ignorant people, they did not apply in time for the pension to which they were entitled. Many have died; some are waiting their turn to receive the small aid allowed by the meagre resources of the War Ministry's Commission for Tuberculosis Assistance’ (PT/AHM/FO/006/52/906/5).
74 Anonymous, ‘S.O.S.: A eterna canção’, A Voz dos Combatentes 176, 25 June 1932, 4.
75 Anonymous, ‘Os sacrificados da Guerra: António Calcinha (Soldado do C.E.P (França)’, A Voz dos Combatentes 131, 15 August 1931, 5.
76 Anonymous, ‘Quadros de dor e miséria: Manuel Joaquim da Cunha (o Serrado)’, A Voz dos Combatentes 57, 10 January 1930, 3.
77 Dam Mir, ‘Tribuna de um combatente’, A Voz dos Combatentes 114, 7 February 1931, 8.
78 Joan W. Scott, ‘The Evidence of Experience’, Critical inquiry 17.4 (1991), 773–97.
79 Anonymous, O Mutilado, 1, 1, 30 July 1920, 3.
80 Salvante, 658. For more information on the Italian case, which is considerably closer to the Portuguese case with regard to post-war political transformations, but not with regard to the mobilisation of war veterans: Gibelli, La Grande Guerra.
81 Prost, ‘The Impact of War’.
82 Lugarinho, 18.
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Sílvia Correia
Sílvia Correia is an assistant professor in the Department of History, Political and International Studies, Faculty of Arts-University of Porto. Previously, she taught at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She completed her PhD at the NOVA University of Lisbon on ‘The Politics of Memory of the First World War in Portugal’. She was a Fulbright Research Fellow at Brown University and a researcher at NOVA University of Lisbon working on a comparative approach of the colonial wars’ memory regimes. Her ongoing work focuses on the memories of the Portuguese experience in the First World War in Europe and Africa.
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