Anselmo José Braamcamp

Anselmo José Braamcamp

Anselmo José Braamcamp de Almeida Castelo Branco (*  1819 ; †  November 13, 1885 ) was a politician from the time of the constitutional monarchy in Portugal . He was chairman of the Historical Party , later the Progressive Party . He was interior, finance and foreign minister and from 1879 to 1881 head of government of his country .

Life

Braamcamp, a lawyer and Freemason , was a staunch supporter of the Historic Party and was first elected as a member of the Cortes , the Portuguese parliament, in 1851 . He gained his first government experience when he became Minister of the Interior in the second government of the Duke of Loulé , the most important leader of the Historical Party, from 1862 to 1864 . From 1869 to 1870, the third government of the Duke of Loulé, he was Minister of Finance.

From 1871 to 1877 the conservative Regeneration Party ruled in Portugal (government: António Maria de Fontes Pereira de Melo ), the Historical Party was in the opposition. During this time the Duke of Loulé died (1875) and Braamcamp took over the chairmanship of the Historical Party and the function of the opposition leader against Fontes Pereira de Melo in his place. The following year the Marquis of Sá da Bandeira also died . He was originally also a politician of the Historical Party, but then fell out with the Duke of Loulé and left the Historical Party with some supporters to found his own, the Reformist Party . However, this was tailored entirely to the person of its chairman and therefore fell into a crisis with the death of Sá da Bandeira. It was to the great merit of Braamcamp that he succeeded in reconciling the reformists with the Historical Party. The two parties united (1876) and called themselves the Progressive Party from then on. As a result, all forces in opposition to Fontes Pereira de Melo were united, and the opposition had a much better chance of ending the conservative government.

On May 29, 1879, the time had come: the second Fontes de Melo government overthrew through a scandal sparked by the finance minister's relationship with Überseebank. A few days later, on June 1st, Braamcamp was appointed Prime Minister. However, his reign was short-lived. This was mainly due to the fact that Fontes de Melo could not accept the loss of power and steered an uncompromising opposition policy against Braamcamp. He managed to overthrow the Braamcamp government by means of a vote of no confidence and to come back to power himself. Braamcamp became opposition leader again, but died before he could regain power for his party. His successor as party leader of the Progressives was José Luciano de Castro . A year after Braamcamp's death, he succeeded in bringing the Progressive Party back to government.

predecessor	Office	successor
Antonio Maria de Fontes Pereira de Melo	Prime Minister of Portugal 1879–1881	António Rodrigues Sampaio