Foreigners

The conquests and discoveries that the Portuguese began at the dawn of the 15th century awakened the interest and curiosity of all Europe. There was no shortage of restless and ambitious spirits who left their native lands and took their chances with fortune, seeking in the distant newly discovered lands the glory and riches that their homelands could not give them. If some were driven only by love of adventure, by the desire for the unforeseen and the unknown, and by ardour for daring enterprises and heroic deeds, it is certain that most went out drawn by a thirst for riches, by the quest for the golden fleece, which once again stirred the ambitions of so great a number of bold adventurers. Madeira was the first and most important commercial emporium to arise in our colonial domains, and therefore also the first and most coveted point of attraction for the outsiders who made for the newly discovered shores. Their number was considerable, although we cannot determine, even approximately, how many they were, the qualities and social position that distinguished them, the precise times at which they landed here, or other general circumstances that might give us reliable evidence of their activity or influence in the community in which they settled. It is true that certain personal circumstances are known about various foreigners, which speak highly of their origins and admirable qualities of character, but these form a rather small number compared with the countless outsiders who settled on this island in the early days of colonisation. The names of Simão Acciaioly, João Esmeraldo, João Bettencourt, Pedro de Lemilhana Berenguer, João Drumond, António Espinola, António Leme, Urbano Lomelino, João Rodrigues Mondragão, João Salviati, Adriano Espranger, João Valdavesso and still others who settled in this archipelago became known through the distinguished families they founded, and they proved their noble descent; many of them were granted the status of fidalgos, with the privileges belonging to the most authentic nobility. We do not mean by this that the outsiders whose names remain unknown to us, who are the greater number, did not have qualities equal or superior to those of the men we have mentioned; we merely wish to record here the surnames of some families that we frequently find cited in old documents and in the old Madeiran genealogies.

The foreigners contributed considerably, though to their own profit, to the prosperity this island attained from the end of the 15th century to the middle of the following one. They engaged in various branches of trade, set up many sugar mills, and a good part of the export of that product to foreign countries passed through their hands. Gaspar Frutuoso asserts, though perhaps with some exaggeration, that João Esmeraldo produced twenty thousand arrobas of sugar a year on his properties at the Lombada (‘long ridge’). Many of them were at once farmers, manufacturers and merchants. By the middle of the 15th century there were already many foreigners on this island, living on good terms with the natives, most of them engaged in the sugar trade. At first the remarkable fertility of the soil and the rewarding price of the cane fields fully satisfied the tenant farmer (colono, under the colonia contract), the landlord and the merchant. Later, however, came the fall in prices, brought about by various causes, which roused the distrust and hostility of the producers of the raw material for sugar against the merchants, especially the foreign ones. The Funchal Council even took repressive measures against them, going so far as to order their expulsion from this island.

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Among them, says Dr Azevedo, soon at odds, there at once arrived the speculation and capital of the foreign merchants, who, resentful of the fortune that had granted so many and such rich colonies to Portugal and Spain, did not miss the chance to take swift revenge, through usury, on this distracted population. Advances on account delivered it into their hands, subdued by the want of some and the extravagance of others. They had already taken possession of the future produce of the land, and were gradually becoming masters of the land itself. And, as if this internal crisis were not alarming enough in itself, it was aggravated by the slow but continuous decline in the price of sugar, a commodity still limited at that time to use in pharmacy and confectionery. Thus, on top of the constant conflict between the tenant farmer, who produced, and the landlord, who spent, came the unrelenting and merciless pressure of outside capital or cash, at once fertilising and destructive, coveted and cursed by both.

This turn of events, gradually building up and now coming to a head, had its effect on public opinion and transformed it. As early as 1486 the Council of Funchal, lacking the tact to diagnose the true causes of the harm, or blinded by them, had turned against these foreigners resident on the island, who only a few years before had been well liked and fêted. By a municipal by-law (postura) it ordered them to leave the island by September of that year, but the Duke, jealous of his privileges and resentful, prevented this by a letter of 7 August’.

Although the annotator of the Saudades does not say so, and even seems to wish to justify the conduct of the foreigners, we must believe that the drastic measure adopted by the Funchal Senate (senado, the municipal council), requiring their immediate departure from this archipelago in 1486, was based on very grave and weighty reasons, arising from the excesses committed by the merchants in their unbridled speculation on the price of sugar. We do not know whether the measures taken by the Council of Funchal were ever fully carried out. However, the regulations (regimento) of 7 October, issued by the central government to overcome the crisis then facing the sugar industry, allowed foreigners only a temporary stay on this island each year and, among other restrictive measures, forbade them to lease land planted with sugar cane. We likewise do not know whether the regulations of 7 October were faithfully observed. What is certain is that the royal decree (alvará régio) of 22 March 1498 allowed foreigners to reside freely on this island, King Manuel I declaring in it that ‘we deem it good & it pleases us that any foreigners whatsoever who wish may stay & trade on it (the island) permanently & as best suits them.

Although vine-growing in Madeira is old, it seems certain, according to Dr Álvaro Rodrigues de Azevedo, that it became more intensive, and the wines of this island began to be known and esteemed in Europe, around the middle of the 16th century. Foreigners contributed greatly to this, since they were the first here to take up this branch of trade, which came to reach a great scale. In the last quarter of the 17th century there were twenty-seven commercial houses in Funchal dealing in the purchase and export of wine, twenty of them foreign. From the end of the 18th century until the first twenty years of the following century, the island’s wine production was truly extraordinary. Its export, carried on chiefly through English commercial houses, reached an annual average of over twenty thousand pipas, and growers continued to receive a very rewarding price. When, at the beginning of the 19th century, the foreign exporting houses conspired to force a sharp fall in wine prices, the great landowner João de Carvalhal thwarted them by buying the musts at fair prices. This obliged the English merchants to turn to Carvalhal himself and buy the wines on terms quite advantageous to the farmers.

We have no knowledge of benefactions by foreigners on this island in times more remote from our own. In the first half of the 19th century, we know of the notable services rendered by the foreigners John March and Roberto Page, to whom we refer specifically elsewhere in this work. Everyone knows that in recent times some foreigners have amassed large fortunes in Madeira, running into millions. However, we are not aware that their humanitarian feelings, or even ordinary gratitude towards the land that enriched them, have found expression in any works or deeds worth recording here, except the one we have mentioned in the article Libraries (Bibliotecas). (1922)