Historian Raquel Varela and social scientist Roberto della Santa reconstruct the last two hundred years of class struggle in Portugal to explore the material conditions of its people, uncovering the real causes of the revolutionary waves and counterrevolutionary backlash. Starting in the early nineteenth century, the theme of colonialism and its antithesis runs through the narrative, as working-class life was closely entwined with Portuguese colonial exploitation. Despite relatively slow industrial development, the Portuguese spearheaded a surprisingly vigorous radical culture of dissent, eventually sparking a social and political revolution in 1974. More recently, Portugal's inclusion in the European Union has put its people in a neoliberal stranglehold that still stifles democracy. Are the working people of Portugal able to carry the memory of the revolutionary past into the future? This is a history of and for the people.