Emigration

Emigration from Madeira was already taking place in the 16th century, for Friar Gaspar da Madre de Deus, in his Memórias para a Historia da Capitania de S. Vicente do Estado do Brasil, refers to many married couples from this island going to that captaincy. Emigration to Brazil continued in the 17th and 18th centuries, and among the many Madeirans who went there in search of fortune during Philippine rule (Spanish Habsburg rule over Portugal, 1580–1640) was the celebrated João Fernandes Vieira, the liberator of Pernambuco. By 1676, says Dr Azevedo, the decline of the sugar trade on this island had reached such a point that emigration to the lands of the Holy Cross (Santa Cruz), until then a mere expedient or private venture, came to be promoted by the government. In 1747 a royal letter (carta régia) was issued instructing the governor-general of Madeira to assist this emigration.

The royal decree (alvará) of 4 July 1758 required passports of anyone who henceforth wished to leave the island, and in 1779 the governor-general ordered a judicial inquiry (devassa) ‘to discover the recruiters of emigration and the ships employed in transporting emigrants’. At that time there was emigration both to Brazil and to foreign countries. It was chiefly against the latter that the governor protested, and he even proposed to the government that agriculture be developed as a means of preventing the depopulation of the island.

In 1792 many Madeiran families emigrated to the United States of America because of the persecution suffered by Freemasons that year, and it is known that as early as 1753 many people were leaving for that country, almost always clandestinely, to escape the poverty that afflicted the island’s population.

Emigration to Demerara and the British colonies of the West Indies seems to have begun on a large scale only around 1840.

In 1841 the number of emigrants rose to 4,045, in 1846 to 4945, in 1847 to 4,720 and in 1853 to 3060. A good many of these people went to those countries, where from 1842 the British government paid for their passage because of the shortage of labour there. In 1847 a Portuguese warship was stationed for some time in our waters to assist the local authorities in the repression of clandestine emigration.

Of the thousands of Madeirans who left for Guiana and other British colonies in search of riches, some were favoured by fortune, and today their descendants live both in those countries and here in Madeira. The demerarista (emigrant returned from Demerara, British Guiana) who, through the most arduous labour and hardships of every kind, managed to amass capital did not, as a rule, forget his homeland. It was here that he liked to come to spend the rest of his life, surrounded by comforts and conveniences he had not known in his youth. It was he who, in the parishes, most zealously organised the feasts of the Senhor (the Lord), feasts that always featured an abundance of gunfire and rockets, things greatly to the liking of the simple country folk of our island.

From 1835 to 1855 about 40,000 people left Madeira, of whom only some 20,000 carried passports. Many of them went to Brazil and the United States of America, where at that time some of our compatriots also managed to make their fortunes. On 18 June 1854 the Portuguese yacht Experiência sailed for Rio de Janeiro carrying 188 settlers, and in the same year 104 people left Porto Santo (‘holy harbour’) bound for public works in Portugal, as recorded in the Anais of that island’s municipality.

Emigration to the Sandwich Islands began in 1878, the first emigrants leaving here on a large full-rigged ship which took about 6 months to carry them to their port of destination. From 1883 to 1887 further waves of emigrants left for those islands, as happened again in 1909 and 1911, and in other years as well. In 1884, 232 people left for Africa, 210 of them engaged by the government to go to Moçâmedes. In 1889 and 1890, 1338 left for the same continent, most of them settling in Angola and Lourenço Marques, towards which the authorities sought to divert the emigrant current that had previously flowed mainly to America and Oceania.

Modern emigration statistics show that North America and Brazil were the countries that received the largest numbers of Madeiran emigrants in the period from 1903 to 1913. The first of these countries admitted 195 Madeirans in 1903, 218 in 1905, 874 in 1909, 1064 in 1910, 1051 in 1912 and 1491 in 1913; the second admitted 377 in 1903, 1198 in 1905, 839 in 1909, 985 in 1910, 2,059 in 1912 and 1522 in 1913. In 1915, 1114 emigrants left for North America and only 62 for Brazil.

Every year large sums arrive in Madeira, sent by Madeirans living in the United States of America. Many of these Madeirans have already returned home, bringing capital that they almost always invest in buying property.

In Brazil few Madeirans have managed to make their fortune in recent times, and in Portuguese Africa we believe that only the colony established on the plateau of Mossamedes is flourishing today. Some settlers also went to East Africa in 1889 or 1890; at first they led a life of hardship and misery, because they did not find there the resources that the government had promised to provide. There are Madeiran colonies at the Cape of Good Hope and in the Argentine Republic, and about 250 people emigrated to the latter country in 1905. From 1872 to 1879, 6,624 emigrants left Madeira, and from 1882 to 1889, 13,750. Emigration in more recent years is recorded in the following table:

Years	Emigrants
1901	1080
1909	2,483
1902	1103
1910	2,135
1903	836
1911	2,298
1904	1178
1912	3,222
1905	1844
1913	3,295
1907	2,678
1915	1271
1908	1347
1916	2,326