Background
Martins was born in 1845 in Lisbon, Portugal.
Martins was born in 1845 in Lisbon, Portugal.
He received his early education at the Lyceo Nacional and the Academia das Bellas Artes.
At the age of fourteen his father's death compelled him to seek a living as clerk in a commercial house, but he gradually improved his position until in 1870 he was appointed manager of the mine of St Eufemia near Cordova.
In 1874 Martins returned to Portugal to coordinate the construction of the railway between Porto, Póvoa do Varzim and Vila Nova de Famalicão. In 1880 he was elected president of the Sociedade de Geografia Comercial of Porto and, four years later, manager of the Museum of Industry of Commerce in the same city. Later, he was also manager of the Company of Mozambique and member of the executive commission of the Portuguese Industrial Exhibition. Oliveira Martins became a deputy elected by Viana do Castelo in 1883, and in 1889 by Porto. In 1893 he was nominated vice-president of the Junta de Crédito Público.
Oliveira Martins worked for the major literary, scientific, political and socialist Portuguese journals. His vast work began with the romance Febo Moniz (1867). In the area of social sciences, his major works include Elementos de Antropologia (1880), Regime das Riquezas (1883) and Tábua de Cronologia (1884). His historiographical works include História da Civilização Ibérica and História de Portugal (1879), O Brasil e as Colónias Portuguesas (1880), História da República Romana (1885), Os Filhos de D. João I (1891) and A Vida de Nuno Álvares (1893).
He was a writer, a deputy, a minister; he became the 47th Minister for Treasury Affairs. His works influenced Portuguese political life, historiography, critic and literature during his life and the twentieth century, but also generated large controversy.
In 1878 his memoir A Circulaqao fiduciaria brought him the gold medal and membership of the Royal Academy of Sciences of Lisbon.
He had married (Vitória Mascarenhas Barbosa) when only nineteen (1865), and for many years devoted his leisure hours to the study of economics, geography and history.
