Colonia (contract)

When the owner or ‘landlord’ (senhorio) of a piece of land cannot or will not farm it himself, he hands it over to another person on condition that this person gives him a half-share (demidia) of the land’s produce. In this contract, widely used on the island of Madeira, the tenant farmer (colono, under the colonia contract) – that is, the agricultural partner who works the land – also receives half of this produce or income, but all the expenses the crops require are borne by him. When the tenant farmer and the landlord are on good terms, the landlord generally contributes half of the irrigation water, fertiliser and sulphur; this, however, is a concession, not an obligation imposed on him by the colonia contract (Madeiran sharecropping tenancy; produce divided, improvements owned by the tenant).

The houses, huts, paved paths, walls, vine trellises, useful plants and trees on the property are called improvements (benfeitorias, buildings and walls made by the tenant, which remained his property). These improvements may belong either to the landlord or to the tenant farmer, and for this reason deeds of agricultural sharecropping (parceria) always state what the tenant farmer receives when he takes over the property. If there is a house on the landlord’s land, the tenant farmer is called a resident tenant (caseiro); if there is none, he is called a sharecropper (meeiro, without a house on the land).

The owner may remove the tenant farmer by paying him in advance for the duly authorised improvements, and also for those made solely to increase or enhance the property’s yield. The tenant farmer may sell or mortgage these improvements without needing the landowner’s permission to do so.

No tenant farmer may put up buildings or make any other substantial improvements without the landlord’s written permission. Nor may he gather the harvest without first notifying the landlord or his lawful representative. Some owners merely require the sugar production, the wine, etc. to be shared, leasing to the tenant farmer the portion of the minor crops that would otherwise fall to them.

The colonia contract is not extinguished by the death of the contracting parties, nor by the sale of the property or of the improvements to other persons.

On Porto Santo there are lands that pay fifths and eighths (quintos e oitavos: rent of a fifth or an eighth of the produce) to their landlords under the royal decree (alvará) of 13 October 1770. This privilege is not general, however, for there are other lands on that island that are subject to the half-share, as happens in Madeira.

The colonia contract (Madeiran sharecropping tenancy; produce divided, improvements owned by the tenant), peculiar to the Madeira archipelago, is in the view of Dr Azevedo a corruption of the sesmaria (royal land grant to settlers on condition of cultivation) contract (see that entry). It arose in the 16th century, subordinate to the entailed estate (morgadio). ‘The wealthy sesmeiro (holder of a land grant, or sesmaria), says the same author, grew weary of country life, took pride in his ancestral nobility and craved a residence of greater show and bustle. He therefore scorned the land and entailed it, with a view to securing its revenues; he contracted out its cultivation to free tenant farmers in return for half, or in some places a third, of the produce, so as to live in idle pleasure; he abandoned his estates and came to settle, in luxury and extravagance, in the towns, chiefly Funchal, Machico, Santa Cruz, Calheta, Ponta do Sol and Ribeira Brava. Such is the historical origin of that fatal contract which was given the name of colonia: a leonine contract which, through the enormous injury it inflicts, exhausted the productive strength of the farmer and, combined with the entailment of the land, later came to impoverish the former sesmeiro too, now holder of the entail (morgado) upon it’.

Bibliography

The Funchal press has published many articles on the colonia contract, some of which would deserve special mention in this place (lugar) if it were possible for us at this moment to make a selection from these numerous writings. We shall merely point out a few pamphlets that may usefully be consulted on this subject. They are:

Observações sobre o contrato de colonia da Madeira, by José Pereira Sanches e Castro, district judge (juiz de direito) of the western judicial district (comarca) of Funchal, Funchal, 1850, 12 pp., which the annotator of ‘Longing for the Homeland’ (Saudades da Terra) calls the most authoritative writing on the subject; O contrato de colonia, by João de Sant’Ana e Vasconcelos, 1855, 17 pp.;

O contrato de colonia na Ilha da Madeira, by João Agostinho Perri da Câmara Lomelino, Funchal, 1889, 40 pp.;

Projecto de lei regulamentar do contrato de colonia ou parceria agricola na ilha da Madeira, by J. R. Trindade e Vasconcelos and José António de Almada, Funchal, 1867, 40 pp.;

Observações sobre a situação economica da ilha da Madeira, by António Correia Heredia, Lisbon, 1888, 96 pp.;

A questão da propriedade na Madeira Discursos pronunciados na camara dos deputados..., by Manuel José Vieira, Funchal, 1888, 20 pp.;

A imprensa e os tres projectos sobre colonia, venda de aguas do estado e autonomia da Junta Agricola..., Funchal, 1916, 197 pp.;

O contrato de Colonias na Madeira, by Pedro Pita, Lisbon, 1929, 84 pp. This important matter was also dealt with in ‘Longing for the Homeland’ and the Epocha Administrativa.