Slaves

For centuries the soil of Madeira was abundantly watered by the sweat of slaves. In the early days of colonisation, the hard and gruelling work of clearing the land of this island was done by Black slaves, captive Moors and Canary Islanders. Slavery, which had begun at Río de Oro (Rio do Ouro) around the middle of the 15th century, grew steadily with the exploitation and cultivation of the land of the recently discovered islands, that is, the archipelagos of Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde.

At the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the next, the Fleming João Esmeraldo had eighty slaves – Moors, Black Africans and mulattoes – on his estate of Lombada da Ponta do Sol (‘ridge of Ponta do Sol’) alone. Frutuoso says that in 1552 the confession rolls recorded 2,700 slaves in Funchal, and that in the same year their number rose to 3000, because four ships brought another 300 to this island. If we bear in mind that the total population of the archipelago at that time was around twenty thousand inhabitants, we must conclude that the number of slaves here was considerable, and it is worth noting that three hundred were imported within a single year! Half a century later, when French corsairs sacked the city of Funchal in 1566, they carried off only three hundred Black captives, because the capacity of their ships allowed no more.

The parish archives of all or almost all the parishes contain many records of baptisms and marriages of Black and mulatto slaves. Slaves came even from India: Tristão Vaz da Veiga, who was governor-general of the archipelago in 1582, kept twelve Indian slaves for the private service of his household.

Slavery seems to have grown further as time went on, but we lack reliable evidence on which to judge, even approximately, the number of slaves and the periods when they were brought to this island. To them is owed in large part the rapid and remarkable growth of the sugar industry, which was the most important source of the wealth and prosperity of this archipelago in the 15th and 16th centuries. The settler who came from the mainland became a sesmeiro (holder of a land grant, or sesmaria), then made himself lord of the land and in many cases turned it into an entail (morgado). He left the cultivation and tilling of his rural properties to the slaves and went off to the city or the court to enjoy the income from his fields and estates. The slaves gradually freed themselves from their master’s tutelage. By cultivating the sesmaria lands on their own account and loading them with houses, walls and other improvements (benfeitorias, buildings and walls made by the tenant, which remained his property), they considerably increased their value. In this way they contributed to the creation of the colonia contract (Madeiran sharecropping tenancy; produce divided, improvements owned by the tenant) and very nearly became co-owners of those same lands and properties. It seems that slaves in this archipelago were treated with somewhat more humanity, and that their material situation was less to be lamented than in other Portuguese colonies. This may perhaps have been due to the natural fertility of the soil, the various military expeditions to Morocco, the considerable number of foreigners who landed on this island, with gentler customs and more civilising tendencies, and still other causes unknown to us. Writing of Machico, Frutuoso records ‘that in this town (vila) there are many mulatto women, very well treated and with rich voices, which is a sign of the ancient nobility of its inhabitants, for in all great and wealthy houses there is this multiplication of those who serve them’. It is certain, however, that in 1505 the donataries obtained the royal decree (alvará régio), recorded in volume 1 of the archive of the Council of Funchal, at fol. 111, under which they could have the ears cut off slaves who deserved it by law. And at about this time, when some slaves of João Rodrigues Castelhano murdered a factor (feitor) of the same Castelhano, five of them were hanged in the town of Calheta (‘small cove’).

Social conditions gradually changed, and the slave trade came to be regarded as a reprehensible act, punished by law. ‘By the royal decree (alvará) of 19 September 1761,’ says Dr Rodrigues de Azevedo, ‘it had been forbidden to transport slaves to the mainland of the Kingdom (reino, i.e. mainland Portugal), and any who did arrive there were to be held freed and emancipated; and on 7 July 1768 a letter from the Secretary of State to the corregedor (royal district magistrate) Dr Francisco Correia de Mattos was published in the city of Funchal by public proclamation (bando), ordering the provisions of that decree to be applied to this archipelago. The gradual extinction of slavery in Madeira then began. Another royal decree, of 16 January 1773, completed the humanitarian purpose of that of 1768’.

Although slaves were scattered across the whole island, it seems that in certain places, notably Funchal, Ponta do Sol, Machico and Curral das Freiras, sizeable communities of Black and Moorish people formed. These intermarried among themselves and also mixed with the inhabitants descended from the settlers from the mainland, so that the characteristic features of those races were diluted and merged into the Madeiran population. A considerable number of Black, mulatto and Moorish individuals nevertheless retained, until only a few years ago, the facial features that distinguish the peoples from whom they descended. It is still not rare to meet individuals with the features of the Black race very clearly marked.

The names of Rua da Mouraria (‘Moorish quarter’) and Rua das Pretas still bear witness to the presence of Moors and Black people in Funchal. The eighty slaves of João Esmeraldo on the Lombada da Ponta do Sol, and the many others there on various “settled farmsteads” (fazendas povoadas), show us that a large number of people of African descent lived in that parish (freguesia). Curral das Freiras (see that entry), as we have already said, was in the earliest days of colonisation a refuge for criminals and runaway slaves, who in this remote and almost inaccessible lugar (settlement ranking between a town and a parish) found their true letter of manumission. They formed a centre of population, which later merged with the settlers who established themselves there.

Under an ordinance of 1483, slaves who fled to the mountains could be sold by whoever caught them, provided their lawful owners did not seek them or have them arrested within four months of their flight. In the same year an order came to inquire into the slaves’ way of life, and they were not allowed to rent houses without prior licence; earlier still, in 1474, the Infante had ordered that no slave might keep a house ‘on his own’ (per si).

In 1490 people from Gran Canaria, La Palma, Tenerife and La Gomera were forbidden to reside in Madeira, but in 1515 this order was revoked for those who worked as sugar masters. In November 1767 a ship carrying slaves arrived in Madeira, but their sale was forbidden by the corregedor of the judicial district (comarca), even though, as we said above, the letter ordering the provisions of the royal decree of 19 September 1761 to be applied to this archipelago was published here by public proclamation only on 7 July of the following year.