The Great War in the Azores

The First World War involved all European countries except for Spain, the Netherlands, Switzerland, and the regions of Scandinavia. Portugal mobilized more than 100 thousand men, of which eight thousand lost their lives in the trenches of Flanders or the battlefields of Africa.

This volume aims at analyzing the First World War in the Azores, it does so by covering a variety of global features, that highlight the deep and profound impact of the conflict on Azorean society as well as the geostrategic importance played by the archipelago during the war years.

In the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, the Azores connects the western civilization. Intensely contested since the Discoveries, with the advent of the Industrial Revolution, with the mechanical propulsion and the economic and political rise of the USA, this ocean would know a commercial increase, based on a powerful market economy and a strong financial capital power reinforcing even more its role as a way of supplying colonial raw materials.

The War in the Azores would be marked by sea war; by a German POW camp in Terceira Island and by a deep trade crisis, with significant social misery, promoted in many cases by the action of hoarders.