Centro Estudos História Atlântico

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translated by Martin A. Kayman and M. Filomena Mesquita

FUNCHAL

1988

If we are to believe certain XV-century geographic charts and a well-known but now lost anonymous narrative of fanciful voyages which either informed the charts or was itself derived from one or other of them (since none of the surviving maps is anterior to the text), the island group of Madeira must have been so well known in the mid-XV-century that cartographers were able to represent it on their drawings with astounding precision.

It has been argued in respect of these charts that the outlines of the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo and the Desertas, with what is moreover still the current toponymy, may have been added after the date of execution of the original designs. This idea gave rise to fierce controversy, and has since been abandoned--and for good reason. In fact, if it is perfectly acceptable that, in certain circumstances, one or other detail of nautical interest may be added or emended on a particular chart prepared for navigation, it is none the less absolutely incomprehensible that an archipelago discovered only in the XV-century (as is argued by those who maintain this thesis) should have been added in all or almost all of the charts of the previous century which were produced after a certain date. It is unreasonable to assume that these cartographic specimens were at the time in the possession of the same mariner, scholar or cartographer--which would be the simplest way-of explaining the more or less uniform character of the supposed additions; by the same token, the idea that-the news of the need to make such additions in the light of recent discoveries should have arrived in time to all the various owners of such precious cartographic specimens seems extremely unlikely, not to say inadmissible.

Furthermore, if it were a matter of additions, one would immediately expect that the calligraphy of the toponyms which accompany the marking of the islands, perchance introduced on an already old chart, would be different from that which had been used hitherto. Now a careful study of the charts in these circumstances has shown this not to be the case and that on the contrary the style of lettering appears constant throughout the coastal areas represented. This argument certainly failed to convince all the historians and critics; without denying the uniformity indicated, they insisted that manuscript lettering prior to the XVI-century and above all prior to the XV-century, even if it indisputably does vary, does so very slowly along the years, retaining more or less constant and impersonal characteristics for long periods of time; this means that it would be difficult to recognise additions to a chart by the format of the lettering of the words which accompany it if it happened that they had been made not very long after the elaboration of the document into which they were supposed to have been introduced.

This observation may appear both pertinent and opportune, but anyone who has had occasion to study manuscript texts of any period of the XIV-century well knows that the fact that the lettering of the period was more standardised than it was to be in later years did not completely obliterate the personal touch of the writer. However, even if we were to admit that the allegedly two calligraphers had the same style, the ink they used would most certainly be different, and there is no indication at all of such a difference on these charts.

In addition, it has to be recognised that the islands of the Madeira archipelago are not represented in the same manner in all the XIV-century charts in which they appear. What we observe is that their contours and relative positions grow increasingly accurate in the more recent charts; only the toponymy remains the same, except for the inevitable variants of a purely linguistic character. This fact can be explained as a consequence of improvements in the knowledge of the position of the islands along the years--that is to say, the designs improved as data were collected in each of a series of visits.

Given these general considerations, if we proceed to a comparative study of XIV-century artography representing the Atlantic off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula and North Africa down to Cape Bojador (nearly always already indicated in these charts by its present name), we will find that the Madeira archipelago was without question known by Europeans, or at least by a handful of Iberian and Italian navigators and cartographers, from the mid-XIV-century. In effect, if the Dulcert chart of 1339, despite registering some of the Canaries, still does not represent the Madeira islands (although we should bear in mind the contrary opinion of a few authors), the latter do appear shortly after (in 1351) on a chart of the so-called Medici atlas; and soon after, on a 1367 chart attributed to the Pizzigani brothers, on a sheet of the 1375 Catalan planisphere of Abraam Cresques (often incorrectly described as the 'Catalan chart of Paris', due to its being conserved at the Bibliothèque Nationale); on the 1390 Pinelli chart, and on the Solleri chart of 1385, as well as on various others.

As has been said, slight modifications in the contours and relative positions of the islands are noticeable from chart to chart, as well as very slight alterations in the spelling of the designations of Madeira (the forms 'Lenyame', 'Lecname', 'Legname', etc.) and of the Selvagens ('Salvatges' and 'Salvages', for example)--these being first indicated, as far as we can tell, on the Pizzigani chart. As far as the 'Desertas' and 'Porto Santo' are concerned, they are always indicated by these names, with only the very slightest orthographic variation.

We may immediately say something about the last of these islands In our opinion it is very possible that the name 'Porto Santo' derives from its having been thought that an Irish saint called Brandan had set foot there almost a thousand years previously. According to a fable which runs through the entire Middle Ages, he and some of his monastic colleagues undertook a long wandering voyage through the Atlantic in search of the Lost Paradise. This explanation is suggested by the fact that on some of the charts including the Madeiran islands some dispersed islands are to be found a little further north Amongst these doubtless imaginary islands (although some have tried to identify them with the Azores) are to be found one or various islands associated by name with the adventures of the saintly Irish monk.

This fact seems to us a clear indication that the authors of those charts believed in the legends that referred to St Brandan's having travelled in that part of the sea. It is highly likely that some unknown version of the tale suggests that he stopped at an island in the locality with which the island of Porto Santo was identified and hence named in consequence of the hypothetical visit. This is no more than a conjecture, which we will leave as such.

News of- the existence of the Madeira archipelago seems to have derived initially from a passage of the anonymous Libro del Conoscimiento, supposedly written by a Castilian mendicant friar around 1350. As in so many other texts of the mediaeval period and of the same genre of 'geographic romance', the author or compiler of this work presents himself as an indefatigable voyager who has travelled through the entire world as it was then known--that is to say, from the Nordic countries to the lands of North Africa, and from the Atlantic islands to the Far East. The account of the itinerary of his imaginary travels is interact here and there with mention of marvellous and incredible events which he had observed in its course. In this way, the text belongs amongst those highly common mediaeval 'books of marvels' which certainly had many interested, not to say avid, readers.

However, if such books were fed mainly by legends and tales of fantastic, miraculous and unusual events, this does not mean that the outline on which the author or compiler based his work had no relation to geographical reality. In our opinion, not only is the contrary the case but moreover the great popularity of such writings would also be due to their including allusions to true facts which the readers may have heard of in other ways. This would lend a credibility to the arbitrarily composed text as a work of total veracity, which in truth it did not deserve.

It is reasonable to assume that the 'books of marvels' were in general based on incomplete oral or written reports and that some in fact reproduced adventures which were really undergone by those who passed them on. Such descriptions were no doubt immediately exaggerated or embroidered by the person who underwent the experience and were subsequently and progressively elaborated as they passed from copy to copy, for it was certainly a temptation for the successive scribes to introduce new elements into the text they were copying in order to make it more attractive; references to countries rich in gold, silver or precious stones, to mention but one example, were a proven device for exciting the imagination of many readers with dreams of fabulous wealth.

Examples of this survived into the XV- and XVI-centuries, as can be seen indeed in Portuguese texts: Álvaro Velho, the supposed draughtsman of the so-called Diário da Primeira Viagem de Vasco da Gama, credulously recorded in his text that precious stones were to be caught by the basketful in an unspecified area of the western African coast. Similarly, the anonymous author of the Portuguese planisphere known as the Cantino (which can be dated with precision as 1502) notes the abundant existence of emeralds, rubies, pearls and so on in various inscriptions relating to areas and localities in the Orient (for example, that which now corresponds to the island of Samatra).

Let us however return to the Libro del Conoscimiento: if we agree that its unknown author undertook no more than a tiny part (if indeed any) of the voyages he describes and attributes to himself, it seems to us equally undeniable that he had access to narratives by other hands concerning at least some of these wanderings, or that he had listened attentively to oral reports by pilgrims who had travelled in places mentioned in the text.

The practice of listening to the accounts of travellers who came from distant lands was very frequent at the time as is shown (to cite but one case) by known documentation relating precisely to the XlV-century in the kingdom of Aragon.

This having been said, we imagine it can be accepted in conclusion that the writing attributed to the Castilian mendicant conveys information of reliable provenance, although perchance corrupted as it passed through the various links of what was very possibly a lengthy chain which brought the information from its original form to the knowledge of the author of the Libro.

Bearing this in mind, let us look at what he wrote in the text with which we are concerned. The Castilian pilgrim, using the first person singular, states as follows: 'I embarked in a ship with some Moors, and we arrived at the first island which they call Gresa [it may be said that it is not easy to arrive at a satisfactory identification of this island] and after this there is the island of Lançarote, which they call thus because the people of this island murdered a Genoese called Lançarote; and from thence I went to another island which they call Bezimarin [likewise difficult to identify] and another they call Rachau [idem] and from thence to another which they call Alegrança and another called Forteventura'. The narrative continues in this vein, referring also to the islands of Tenerife, Inferno, Gomeira and Ferro (all from the Canary group), as well as 'Salvage', 'Lecname' and 'Puerto Santo' from the Madeira group, but failing to mention 'Deserta' or the 'Desertas'.

If we accept, as seems to us to be the case, that the anonymous Libro reproduces narratives compiled by the 'mendicant friar', then, given that scholars date its composition in the mid-XIV-century, we are obliged to conclude that the archipelago of Madeira was discovered, recognised and almost all its islands named before that time.

Is this such an extraordinary conclusion, as has sometimes, and on occasion heatedly, been maintained? It does not seem so to us since we concur in the opinion (indeed shared by various historians) that a vast maritime area which stretches out some 300-400 kilometres from the western end of the Straits of Gibraltar, extending between the latitudes of Cape St Vincent and the Canaries, had by this time been navigated with some frequency by ships from the Peninsula--an area frequently referred to in the XVI-century as the Golfo or Vale das Éguas [the Gulf or Valley of the Mares].

The text of the Libro, as has been observed above, deals with the exploration of the archipelagos of Madeira and the Canaries together, and we have a reliable indication that the latter was in fact visited before 1339, this being the date of the portolan chart by Dulcert mentioned above which includes some of its islands. The archipelago of Madeira thus must have been sighted for the first time between that year and around 1350.

The Canary island group is certainly related to expeditions undertaken by the Italians; on the Dulcert portolan chart its island of Lanzarote is signalled with the arms of Genoa and it may be accepted that, as we read in the Libro del Conoscimiento, a Genoese named Lançarote (surnamed Malocelus) had indeed gone there in the first half of the 1300s with the intention of starting a 'colony' (some authors go so far as to specify the year: 1312); a 'colony' was in fact established and survived for a number of years until the death of its patron at the lands of the locals [guanches], who had never accepted the occupation.

However, the Canaries did not inspire the interest of the Genoese alone. In 1341, for example, preparations were made in Lisbon for an expedition which returned to port after visiting the islands. The expedition was once again organised by Italians, but sailors from the Iberian Peninsula participated, amongst them, in all likelihood if not certainty, a few Portuguese. There is a brief account of this voyage, very probably drawn up by the great writer Giovanni Bocaccio, full of most interesting and apparently reliable information.

The experiment was not particularly inspiring, producing only moderate results in commercial terms; none the less outlet expeditions followed. We also know for sure that the Catalans entered the contest for the Canaries, organising various expeditions which reached the archipelago: Domenec Gual and Desvalers in 1342, Jacme Ferrer in 1346 (this is moreover most expressively indicated by the drawing of a ship in some cartographic specimens), Arnau Roger in 1352, etc.

We know then that the archipelago of the Canaries had been visited successively by Italian, Aragonese and Majorcan ships by the mid-XIV-century, and was already well known by all of them. This was so much the case that in the last year mentioned (1352), the Pope appointed the first bishop to exercise his muniment in the islands.

Despite no corroborative details about them having survived, it is clear that many other voyages to the Canaries were carried out apart from those witnessed by the authenticated documents known to us. This is precisely the case with the voyages organised by the Portuguese which almost certainly took place, despite the absence of any narrative to provide us with even a brief account of the most important incidents encountered by the adventurers who must have completed the voyages.

In the first place we may refer to the fact that in 1344, after the episode of Lançarote's occupation of one of the islands, a plan was put forward to take the archipelago by force--its being well known that part of the islands was inhabited and that the natives, despite disposing only of stones or rudimentary arms, offered fierce resistance to invaders.

The person responsible for the project of seizing a large group of islands (including the Canaries as well as other imaginary islands) was Luís de la Cerda, a descendent of King Alfonso X of Castile (known as 'The Wise') who aimed to establish a small territory there which he would rule as King or Prince.

The Pope even invested Luís de la Cerda in the fictitious principality, against the latter's agreement, as soon as he obtained effective possession of 'his' island territories, to fulfil in return certain obligations voluntarily contracted towards the Curia. The Pope took the matter so seriously as to ask the Kings and Princes of Christendom to support the pretender in his 'crusading' enterprise to place the islands under the spiritual dominion of the Church.

The project was doomed to total failure; but this was for no other reason than that the Kings and Princes who received the Papal call did nothing to help the pretender to the throne of the Canaries, and de la Cerda, without arms, ships or men, found himself compelled to abandon his dream.

In the meantime, one King--Afonso IV of Portugal--not only refused to help de la Cerda, but demanded of the Pope his right to be recognised as Prince and Lord of the Canaries, on the basis of the fact that his vassals had already gone to the archipelago under his orders (for which reason he considered it to be under his jurisdiction), as well as the fact that Portugal was the European kingdom closest to thP ielnnl1<

We know of this respectful contestation of a Papal decision by the Portuguese monarch through a document to be found in the Vatican archives. Although doubts about its authenticity have provoked rivers of ink, the history of this polemic need not concern us here; it is enough to say that its authenticity has been confirmed by the most recent examinations of the text from a number of angles (from the analysis of its calligraphy to that of the archival collection in which it is included) and we shall accept it as such.

Afonso IV, in his letter of protest, is very clear in affirming his right to occupy the archipelago with his men, adducing the two reasons mentioned above and immediately preempting any objection by stating that he had already sent ships to explore the islands, although he does not give a precise date for this. On the other hand, in order to prevent the Pope's raising any question in relation to his failure to follow through with his plan, the King explains that he had not pressed on with his undertaking because he had been obliged to involve himself in wars, first with the Castilians (a struggle which began in 1336) and immediately after with the Muslims (begun in 1341). The expedition organised by him would consequently have to have been prior to the first of these dates.

There have been those who have too hastily identified this voyage with that of Lançarote Malocelus, viewed for this purpose as one of the men 'wise in the sea' who had come from Genoa in the service of the Portuguese crown as a result of the famous contract which King Dinis signed with Manuel Pessanha in 1317. And there have been those who have gone on to argue that Afonso IV did not abandon his plans and was himself responsible for the voyage of 1341. But this is open to question; all we can be sure of are the words the King directed to the Pope and these are clear: his subjects had gone to the Canaries with the intention of occupying them.

This entire digression on the exploration of the Canary archipelago during the XIV-century is intended to make it quite clear that there is nothing extraordinary about the archipelago of Madeira being known during the same century. Any ship or group of ships which sailed towards the Canaries could quite easily have sighted Madeira and Porto Santo. All that would be needed to bring the expedition into waters from which Madeira, Porto Santo or the Desertas might be seen would be a small deviation from the direct route which leads to the Canaries, caused by some error of handling or suddenly unfavourable geophysical conditions. And this is very likely what happened, as the charts and the reference by the 'mendicant friar' mentioned above show. The archipelago of Madeira must have been visited by Italian, Aragonese, Majorcan or Portuguese mariners before the middle of the 1300s.

This conclusion is confirmed rather than undermined by the earliest available Portuguese sources relating to Madeira and the islands associated with it in the same insular group, albeit only indirectly or by omission. Those sources are to be found in Diogo Gomes (who was still piloting caravels in the time of the Infante D. Henrique [Henry the Navigator]), the chronicler Gomes Eanes de Azurara, and the Infante D. Henrique himself!

As regards the latter, it hardly makes sense to argue that, in the documents we shall be referring to below, he sought to keep secret the discoveries achieved by his ships in order to protect the five main islands of the Madeira group from the greed of possible rivals; to apply this idea, as part of the so-called 'policy of secrecy' which Jaime Cortesão maintained almost to the point of absurdity, would amount in this case to labelling the great Infante an incompetent. What possible benefit could there in fact have been for him to conceal his 'discovery' of those islands when so many people must have known of their existence from the abundant charts on which they were registered?

If D. Henrique never declared himself the discoverer of these islands through his sailors, it was certainly because at the time of the launching of the Discoveries he also knew that they existed, even their approximate locality.

In fact the Infante speaks of the islands of Madeira more than once in diplomas under his seal, but he presents himself merely as the man who took the initiative of ordering them to be settled. Thus, in a deed passed in favour of Tristão Vaz Teixeira on 8 May 1440, granting him wide prerogatives to settle Madeira, the Infante does not mention that the island had been discovered by the beneficiary (a fact which would justify the grace), nor by any of the other captains who sailed in his service. In another document, dated I November 1446, in which Bartolomeu Perestrelo is granted Porto Santo for settlement, D. Henrique refers to the island as his but does not order or permit any phrase to be written which even indirectly gives the idea that he was its discoverer.

Azurara goes no further. In chapter 83 of his Crónica dos Feitos da Guiné, which has the symptomatic title of 'how Madeira and the other islands which are found in that part were settled', the chronicler tells us that after 'the raising of the siege of Ceuta by the Infante', 'two noble squires' of his house petitioned him to be permitted to carry 'a fleet against the Moors', setting out as if to explore the land of Guinea, 'whereto he already desired to send'. A ship was equipped to this end but, the journey once begun, 'ill weather' brought them to Porto Santo. There they remained for a few days in order to reconnoitre the land, concluding that it offered excellent conditions for settlement.

This notion was to be endorsed by D. Henrique--but we will be dealing with this below. For now, we merely seek to underline the fact that there is not the slightest allusion to a discovery in Azurara's text; in his opinion D. Henrique's two squires may perhaps have been the first two Portuguese to arrive at the island, but not even this is certain in that the author merely states that they were the first to undertake a superficial analysis of the climatic, hydrographic and geological conditions of Porto Santo in order to conclude that occupation would be possible, indeed to be recommended.

When the island of Madeira is mentioned in the same chapter of the Crónica, we continue to register the absence of any reference to a discovery. According to Azurara, when D. Henrique's navigators set off for the first time they had already decided to settle the island with people and cattle. In other words, they knew of its existence. And this is entirely to be expected: even if Madeira was not previously known (although everything indicates that it was), it certainly would have been discovered in the course of the previous visit to Porto Santo, since it would be totally inexplicable for the two squires who arrived at the latter and stayed there for 'some days' not to have glimpsed the largest island of the archipelago to the south-Southwest.

Whilst, as we have said, Azurara's Crónica contains no reference, not even indirect or disguised, to the discovery of the Madeira archipelago by the Infante D. Henrique's navigators, the same is equally true of Diogo Gomes' narrative. This navigator dictated his memoirs sometime after 1485 to the Gelman traveller, Martinho da Boémia, who rewrote them in Latin. This version, the only one we have, was copied by another visitor from the Germanic lands, Valentim Fernandes, a man who was more at home in Portuguese society. He dedicated himself to compiling a long and most valuable specification of the various notices of voyages undertaken by Portugal up to the beginning of the XVI-century, in order to satisfy the curiosity of his fellow countryman, the humanist Konrad Peutinger.

Thus there may be mistakes of various origins in the text which has come down to us. The memory of Diogo Gomes, who was already an old man when he made his deposition, may have betrayed him; in Martinho da Boémia's Latin version, apart from the latter's own commentaries, there may have occurred involuntary or even deliberate mistakes; and Valentim Fernandes' copy may include inadvertent or deliberate inaccuracies. There has never been a critical study which treated this important piece for the history of the Portuguese Discoveries in its entirety or in terms of these three considerations. We may however assume that whatever errors may perchance have occurred are secondary and touch only on details; for this reason we unreservedly rely on the text and take it at its word.

What does Diogo Gomes tell us about the discovery of Madeira? Absolutely nothing. And yet he speaks of the archipelago on more than one occasion. In one such passage D. Henrique's old captain of caravels says that 'in the time of the Lord Infante D. Henrique, a caravel saw in a storm a small island, which is close to Madeira and which is now called Porto Santo and is unpopulated'.

It seems clear that Diogo Gomes did not know that the island had already for some time possessed the name it still has; however, if we substitute the word 'boat' ['barca'] for 'caravel', we will see that this information is almost identical to that transmitted by Azurara. Here, the fact that Diogo Gomes takes the exploration of the island for granted proves that it must have already taken place. This can be seen from the conclusion to his brief account in which he offers the following important information (not however recorded by Azurara), information which could only have been gathered by that sort of operation: 'On this island of Porto Santo there are many trees called dragon-trees, which provide a very beautiful resin, red in colour, which is called dragon's blood. And that caravel returned and they informed the Int`ante of the land they had found, from which they brought dragon's blood and the branches of other trees...'.

When, as the narrative continues, we read that D. Henrique took the decision to send the pilot Afonso Fernandes to the 'discovered island of Porto Santo' ('insulam inventam de Porto Santo'), it does not seem to us to be correct to understand the expression as signifying that it was D. Henrique who had discovered it; the text merely indicates the fact that the island had been visited, leaving the name of the navigator and the date of the visit unspecified.

Another, slightly later manuscript source from the beginnings of the XVI-century brings us to the same conclusion. This is a text 'concerning the islands of the Oceanic Sea', drawn up by the same Valentim Fernandes and included by him in the compilation sent to Konrad Peutinger.

Fernandes begins by telling us that at the time the Castilians were engaged in the conquest of the Canaries, frequently dispatching armadas to the islands, they used to supply themselves with meat by going regularly to Porto Santo and slaughtering the goats that existed on the island. The first sailors to make harbour there did so 'with the weather'--that is to say, as a result of a storm or contrary winds.

We should note the use of a storm as an explanation for the first approach to the island. As we have seen, Diogo Gomes also uses it, although he does not attribute the event to an anonymous Castilian. And it should also be emphasised that if this supposedly first visitor found goats on the island, someone must have taken them there in an earlier voyage.

How is the island's discovery by the Portuguese explained in this version? We find the answer as Valentim Fernandes continues: what the diligent printer from the court of King Manuel in fact says is that once, when João Gonçalves Zarco was involved 'in a boat [barca] in armada against the Castilians' and was having no success, another Castilian, his companion in the venture, told him: 'My lord, if you desire to take good prey, let us go where I shall tell you, that is to the island of Porto Santo, where the conquerors of Canaria [the generic toponym used to designate the archipelago of which the island of that name forms part] go for their meat and water; thus, when they are there, and all disembarked on land, we may take their ships and then capture them on land'.

Despite differences of opinion among his companions as to this proposal, Zarco finally decided to put the Castilian's suggestion into practice. But they failed to pillage the boats and capture their crews because they arrived at the island too late--although only just, since they reached land in time to find the remains of a recent slaughter: some carcasses and the still-glowing cinders of recent fires.

A parenthesis might be appropriate here. The fact is that an act like that planned by Zarco was not condemnable by the light of the knightly code of honour of the period as it clearly would be today; a knight of that time could engage in privateering, and success would only enhance his honour; to board a ship on the high seas, pillage it and capture its crew was a perfectly lawful act even when the victims were brothers in faith. Gonçalves Zarco's attempt, albeit unsuccessful, was thus in no way disgraceful in terms of the dominant code of honour of the time.

The condemnation and subsequent marginalisation of the privateer, and also of the pirate (the latter designation, however, had always had a certain pejorative weight to it) took place after the XV-century, indeed after the next century. João II, whose India and Elmina fleets were always at risk from privateers, mainly from the French, tried repeatedly to counter the danger through diplomatic channels. But when it proved impossible to come to an understanding with the other Christian Kings (with the King of France in particular) to make them suspend the assistance they gave to the privateer fleets, he did not hesitate, whenever it was possible, to negotiate agreements directly with the privateer captains. And however strange it may seem to us today, these negotiations were often a complete success, their contractual undertakings being fully respected by the privateers with whom he dealt.

Ending this parenthesis, let us return to Valentim Fernandes' narrative. There we read that whilst Zarco failed in his warlike plan, his visit none the less permitted him to evaluate the fine conditions which the island offered for settlement, and this was the first thing he told the Infante when they met at Sagres. It is to be noted however that although the sought-after permission to occupy Porto Santo would have been obtained through D. Henrique, it could only be officially granted by the King. Here the text is quite explicit: 'with which [meaning, it is understood, the news brought by Zarco] the Infante rejoiced and was happy, and wrote straight to the King his father, who was at Santarém, requesting him of his grace those said islands to be settled, and the King bestowed them upon him'.

At the end of this passage we find what appears to be a-misused plural. From the preceding words one in truth has the idea that what was at issue was only the island of Porto Santo and not those of the Madeira archipelago as a whole. But in what follows one gathers the idea that Zarco had in view the occupation of 'islands', despite having visited only Porto Santo. It is thus quite possible that what Valentim Fernandes was saying is that Zarco had associated the island pointed out to him by the indiscreet Castilian with other islands of the same group, which he had perchance sighted in the course of this eccentric voyage, or which he simply knew of from some nautical chart or other in which they may have been represented.

Valentim Fernandes then goes on to tell us how the islands of the Madeira archipelago were occupied and settled, not without serious disagreements between Zarco and the two men whom he had arranged to help him complete the task: Tristão Vaz Teixeira and Bartolomeu Perestrelo. These details do not concern us here; what should be emphasised is that the narrator is consistent with Azurara and with Diogo Gomes in not attributing the discovery of the archipelago to the period of the Infante D. Henrique, as was equally implied, as we have seen, by the texts in which the Infante himself referred to the islands which make up the archipelago.

And yet the Portuguese discovery of the archipelago of Madeira has been proclaimed and maintained by various historians, with such persistence that it has come to take its place in school text-books as an indisputable and accepted fact. What is the origin of this new version of events, in total contradiction with those we have just discussed? It seems to us beyond doubt to be found in João de Barros and the epic vision of the Portuguese discoveries he presents in his Décadas. Despite his attempts always to provide an air of objectivity in his descriptions of the great events, Barros did not hesitate to suppress things he felt to be less than admirable--as he indeed warns us, expressly and scrupulously, in his monumental work.

In the text by this historian two knights, Zarco and Teixeira, on their return from 'the great siege of Ceuta', beg leave of the Infante D: Henrique to set off on a voyage of discovery to the coast of Guinea. The request granted, a boat was ordered to be made ready, and the two resolute adventurers were commissioned 'to journey along the coast of Barbary until they passed that fearsome cape Bojador, and from thence to discover whatever more they may find....'

If what Azurara tells us is correct, what we have here is a clear distortion of the truth. In reality, the idea of navigating beyond Bojador was to animate the Infante's projects only some years after the 'great siege of Ceuta'; furthermore, Zarco and Teixeira would never have been involved in such plans.

That having been said, let us return to Barros. He goes on to say that, having begun the voyage, 'before they could arrive at the coast of Africa, such a great storm came upon them, with the winds blowing contrary to their voyage, that they lost hope of their lives'. They were saved from the great dangers threatening them by the hand of God and had the good fortune to discover 'the island which we now call Porto Santo, the which they then named it for it had cut them off from the danger they had encountered in the days of ill fortune'.

The storm aside, which arises as an ingredient in the explanation of events related in other texts referred to above and which is a very common tonic in other narratives of voyages of discovery, we see that this passage is in clear disagreement with earlier accounts. Here Zarco and Teixeira are indicated as responsible for the discovery of Porto Santo, which is confirmed in another part of the same Década where they are explicitly declared to be the 'first discoverers' of the island. Moreover, Barros holds that the name given to the island and which has survived was given by them -- and we well know that this was not the case.

Barros' account continues with a reference to the initiatives for settling Porto Santo; only after this was begun did they decide to 'go and see if the great dark area of what we now call the island of Madeira was land'.

None of this holds in the light of what we know from the sources we have cited. It is enough to refer to the cartographic sources, since they disprove the idea that Porto Santo and Madeira had only been so baptised in the XV-century. In addition, it is hard to believe that l\Iadeira should have been sighted from Porto Santo as merely an uncertain dark area; each of the islands can be seen without difficulty from the other, and Madeira, being the largest and most conspicuous is even more easily observed from the neighbouring island

Whilst Barros' text can be considered merely a secondary source in clarifying the question with which we are concerned, the same cannot be said of the account of Alvise Cadamosto who lived in Portugal during the mid-XV-century and, with the indispensable authorisation of D. Henrique, undertook business voyages to lands in Africa. In a narrative in which he mainly gives an account of the experience he acquired on these expeditions, Cadamosto also refers to the Madeira archipelago.

In this text the two most important islands in the archipelago are however treated separately. He says of Porto Santo that it is an island 'very small, of about fifteen miles in circumference', and goes on to say that it 'was discovered seven and twenty years ago by the caravels of the Lord Infante, who ordered its settlement...'; the Italian navigator and merchant ends with an explanation for the name given to the island: 'because it was discovered on All Saints' Day'. In respect of Madeira, Cadamosto places the beginning of settlement three years later. However, he gives us clearly to understand that the existence of the island was known before, inasmuch as he not only does not speak of any discovery in the time of the Infante, but this is to an extent confirmed also by his information that the Infante had decided to settle the island 'although to this day [the island] had not been settled'.

If this last and only implicit item agrees with what we are told by other sources contemporary with Cadamosto, it becomes extremely difficult to explain how the 'discovery' of Madeira only took place at a time when Porto Santo had already been known for three years; and the explanation of the name given to the latter island is clearly no more than a phantasy of Cadamosto's.

Thus, without wasting time mentioning information from other XVI-century sources, since none of them provides new data relevant to the problem confronting us, we may conclude that all of them illegitimately dislocate the discovery of the archipelago to the first quarter of the XV-century and that instead this occurred in fact about a century earlier, and the names by which the islands are known were attributed from the time they were first recognised. These conclusions can be put forward with a fair amount of certainty thanks above all to the cartography; moreover, the latter is in no way contradicted by the sparse documentation which has come down to us.

Nevertheless, the history of the discovery of Madeira--which comes down in the last analysis to what we have just said--contains a further romantic episode which we cannot fail to register here, despite the fact that all the authors who have recently concerned themselves with it have found it to be untrue--and with abundant reasons, as we shall see.

The romance circulated already in the time of Valentim Fernandes, whose account was certainly collected and adapted either from an earlier version by Francisco Alcoforado, supposedly one of the Infante's squires, or from some oral tradition of uncertain provenance. From this it passed successively, almost always improved with attractive elaborations, through Antonio Galvão's Tratado dos Descobrimentos (1563), Gaspar Frutuoso's Saudades da Terra (written prior to 1591 but only printed in 1876), Father António Cordeiro's História Insulana (1717), Manuel Constantino's Insulae Materiae Historia (1599) --the only text which tried to expunge the fascination of a love story from the legend--and Francisco Manuel de Melo's Epanáfora Amorosa (1654). The list could be continued up to today, but we will stop with the XVII-century writer since it was mainly from his version that the relation between 2 pair of runaway English lovers and the discovery of Madeira came to embellish any texts--in most cases with total credulity.

Let us then take a look at the little story as it is told by Valentim Fernandes. Once upon a time there was an English nobleman, Machin by name, who was banished for some unspecified but serious offence; forced or resolved to quit his land and planning to take refuge in the Iberian Peninsula, he purchased for the purpose a small ship of 40 tonnes, loaded it with his possessions and his 'concubine' ['manceba'] and servants, as well as a flock of goats to feed them all, and set off on the sea.

We can assume that his destination was Portugal insofar as he came in sight of the Berlengas. But the ship was caught at that moment by a furious tempest (once again we register the sudden appearance of a storm to explain the course of the narrative!) which took them many leagues out of control until they came to the island of Porto Santo. They were astonished to find shelter so far out to sea and decided to refresh themselves from their past labours on the island, disembarking also the animals they had brought 'since they were thin and full of hunger'.

As the weather cleared 'they saw more land across the sea and set sail to see what land it was, and arrived at the port which is now called Machico'. They had arrived, then, at Madeira, and the place where they had made harbour appeared to the English nobleman to be an appropriate spot for them to settle, which they immediately proceeded to do.

Having- established themselves with the few comforts available in the circumstances, Machin decided to explore the island, advancing into it during three days. Returning to his precarious base, he encountered a surprise awaiting him: the small ship in which he had travelled had disappeared, the crew having decided to flee, taking with them all the unfortunate banished nobleman's possessions. All he had left, apart from a young page, was his 'concubine', who had honourably refused to accompany the fugitives despite their attempts to entice her to do so ('and she said that God would never desire her to have to leave her lord').

As is suitable in such stories, a terrible punishment awaited the cruel sailors of Machin's ship. 'As the weather fell on them' (yet another ambush by the weather!), they were wrecked in the shallows of the Barbary coast, some of them dying and the others being captured.

Despite the spirit shown by Machin, who never tired of enlarging the means of sustenance to be gleaned from the island, his 'concubine' had no illusions about the future which awaited her: she became taciturn, turned in upon herself, and died soon after 'of grief'. And the text explains: 'and this was the first [person] to be buried in this land in a chapel' which her lover had built and which he named the Holy Cross [Santa Cruz].

Machin then decided to save himself and his page. With the elementary means at their disposal the two of them built a skiff and set off on the sea. They too were pushed onto the Moroccan coast, to and behold, in precisely the same spot that the sailors who had abandoned them on Madeira were being held captive!

Machin, despite also being captured, could not contain himself on seeing them and leapt on the nearest sailor with the firm intention of killing- him; but the Moors prevented him from satiating his anger on the man who had betrayed him. It was in this way that his captors knew that their prisoners had discovered two islands lost in the sea facing them, and they decided to go and tell the King of Fez of this, taking Machin with them. The Moorish King, realising that he 'could not profit from these islands', decided to send Machin to King John I of Castile, in order that he might benefit from the discovery. (Note that this detail places the story in consequence at a time well after the earliest references to the islands of Madeira).

The Castilian King, at the time very busy with the war he was carrying on with his namesake in Portugal, paid no attention to the news, and with the death of Machin the case faded from the memory of those who had known of it and it ended up almost totally forgotten. The only thing which prevented its complete disappearance was the fact that the navigators who went to the Canaries or returned from them used to go to Porto Santo for meat, since the goats Machin had left there multiplied, spreading all over the island in a number of large herds.

Let us now move on to D. Francisco Manuel de Melo's text to see how this adventure is enriched in the course of about a century and a half. We can begin by saying that in the Epanáfora the protagonist's name is Robert (although he is also known as 'o Machino'); he is a man from the lower nobility who lived in the time of Edward ITI and had not been condemned for any crime. He was however slightly eccentric in 'disdaining the sport and banquets' to which his peers were given, and 'setting himself apart in higher thoughts'.

In D. Francisco Manuel de Melo's version, if Robert is not a man originally obliged to abandon his homeland, his companion in adventure can even less be pejoratively described as a 'concubine'. Ana de Erfet by name, she was a 'most exquisite maiden' (note the difference here!), 'valued as a marvel amongst marvels' for whom many noblemen of Edward's court were wont to sigh. Ana remained haughtily indifferent to them until fate put Robert in her path and she fell hopelessly in love with him, and he responded with no less ardour.

However, the two young lovers found themselves in two quite differentiated spheres of the nobility, Ana having been born into a much superior class. Moreover, her parents had promised her to a lord of 'high estate'. When they discovered that Ana was madly in love with Machin, they had little trouble in having the lower-class lover thrown into jail and in accelerating the wedding of their daughter to the man of their choice.

From here on the story begins to develop in truly fantastic fashion. Machin is released and, with the help of family and friends, decides to put into practice a most audacious scheme: to go to Bristol, kidnap Ana (after obtaining her consent, and hence with her connivance !) and flee with her by sea to France. The scheme was executed as planned: Ana de Erfert and Robert (Machin managed to cast off from Bristol in their ship in the hope of finding 2 promised land somewhere on the coast of France where they could live in peace and love each other without interference from the rigorous rules of their native circles.

The future that awaited them was however quite different. Because of a deficiency in the navigational instruments or because of the lack of expertise of the sailors (D. Francisco Manuel does not make it clear; he speaks of 'lack of control' ['falta de governo'] and 'excessive winds' ['sobejo vento']), the ship sailed aimlessly; after 13 days' wandering they came in sight not of their chosen destiny, the coast of France. but of a very high and densely wooded land.

Recognising this as an island which could offer comfort and the possibility of a happy place to stay, the two lovers decided to disembark. With the help of their friends and dependents they built rough shelters and resolved to live there with the trees and the flowers, in peace and quiet. The peace and quiet, we must add, lasted but three days: on the third day a sudden storm (yet another!) carried off the ship and its crew, leaving Ana and Robert and a few servants and friends alone on land.

They were all launched on the path of a tragic end. What happened, as in Fernandes' version, is that the ship was wrecked on the Moroccan coast and they were carried off to the Moorish dungeons - or, as the author has it, 'they passed from their bier [the wandering ship] to their tomb [the dungeons]'.

Ana, who had the presentment of a 'lamentable' end, From the first step on, or off, her path' (we must not forget that she had abandoned her husband!), fell into a state of such prostration that 'from that hour until her death, never more were words to travel from her heart to her mouth'. She survived but three days in this touching state!

Machin buried her with heartfelt tears and decorated the tomb with wreaths of flowers (in the later version by the canon Jerónimo Dias Leite, he even inscribed an epitaph in Latin verse which the priest transcribes). And there he would have remained, heart-broken, if his companions had not demanded that he make a last effort to save them from their difficulties. They managed to improvise a primitive craft and set out to sea, which led them to the same fate as the other sailors: the iduslim dungeons.

However, the King of Fez does not intervene in this version, and thus Machin is not rapidly sped on his way to Europe as in Valentim Fernandes' text. On the contrary, he remained captive with his companions for many years. And it was during this long imprisonment that he told his adventures to a Castilian, Juan de Morales, with whom he shared a cell. It was to be this man~ of whom we know nothing, who was to carry the news of the existence of Madeira to the Peninsula, when, having paid the ransom demanded, he was able to return to his country.

No doubt this romantic story of the discovery of Madeira is much more attractive than the colourless narrative, full of doubts, omissions and inconsistencies of fact, with which we began this chapter. The less attractive story is nevertheless the true one; the other is no more than a romance that has been weaved around the island of Madeira and its archipelago, spun with threads whose origin is unknown but which captured the health of various generations of writers and their readers.

2. THE FIRST DONATORIES OF MADEIRA

The administrative system of 'donatures' [donatarias] applied to the crown's lands overseas was introduced first in the Madeira archipelago and subsequently extended to other archipelagos and territories of the Atlantic corridor considered by the King of Portugal as his dominions [as the following paragraph indicates, what we have translated as the 'donature' was an early and particular form of deed used in Portuguese colonisation; its nearest equivalent would be, in a general technical sense, the English 'use'--T.N.].

The donature was a means by which the King, unable to exercise his rights of lordship over these islands and lands directly, delegated his powers, with certain restrictions, to people he trusted. It was the donatory's duty to administrate the land covered by the legal instrument which instituted the donature in the sovereign's name, with all the benefits, rights and obligations therein defined, but also subject to restrictions in various fields, especially that of the administration of justice.

Donatories were established throughout the Atlantic area, not excluding the trading posts of North Africa and, naturally, the territories of Brazil, whilst another solution was adopted in the East where the King's place was taken by a Governor whose administrative, financial, legal and military actions were none the less conducted under directives defined in Lisbon.

The Atlantic Donatories operated in fact in two distinct ways: either they designated captains to exercise their powers for them, with further restrictions. in the dominions conceded by the monarchs; or they removed themselves to the territories to administer them directly and to maximise their profits as donatory-captains. The donature of the Madeira islands was of the first type, as opposed to those which launched the settlement of S. Tomé e Príncipe and, in the XVI-century, the occupation of Brazil, which were of the latter type.

The first and probably most important obligation of the donatory was to have a Portuguese, European and African population conveyed to the dominion named in the deed to settle there and work the land. All the first immigrants were to undertake basic agricultural activities that would guarantee the subsistence of their dependent family groups and provide a surplus for the community that built up around this nucleus of settlers, as well as for export--something of particular interest to the donatory. This first phase of his intervention sought, if you will, to 'colonise' the area of land which constituted the donature.

Obviously, without occupation and settlement, the donatory would not be able to benefit from the royal deed. If he was to exercise the prerogative granted by the monarch to raise a variety of taxes (an important, albeit not the exclusive source of income for the donatory), the lord had to populate and occupy the donature and put the men he conveyed there to productive work.

After completing the operation of arranging and transporting sufficient people to occupy the area, it was the duty of the donatory or of the captain acting in his name to distribute them in settlements, which the former had a decisive role in choosing. He had subsequently to create an administrative structure which would regulate relations within and between the various neighbouring populational groups, to provide for the administration of justice (we repeat, within certain limitations set down by the King) and to prepare the ground for the institution of effective religious observance--in a word, to take all the measures necessary to stimulate the first stages of development of a newly-created community, according to the models in practice in the kingdom.

Land was then distributed to the settlers according to a system of sesmarias [a form of holding similar to the English mediaeval century que use--T.N.], although years or centuries later, when the crown or the state took the place of the donatory, this method of distribution underwent various and in some cases fairly frequent alterations.

We know from a royal document of 30 October 1422 (whose original has been lost but which was incorporated into a confirmation signed by Afonso V) that the Infante D. Henrique was thereby authorised to bestow his lands and those belonging to the Order of Christ, of which he was governor. What this means is that when he began the occupation of the Madeira archipelago in 1425, he was in theory already enabled to convey its lands; this date is indicated as the beginning of the settlement by the Infante himself in his testament of 1460.

The truth is however that the Infante was not yet in effect the donatory of the archipelago at the time of its first occupation. We know this because the authorisation given to João Gonçalves Zarco allowing him to divide up and allot the lands of the archipelago is signed by João I in a document in which the latter describes himself as 'lord and king' with 'absolute power of rule' over the islands. In other words, the administration of the archipelago depended on the King, and he was not inclined to release it in favour of his son.

D. Henrique was only to obtain the donature during the reign of his brother D. Duarte, through the royal charter of 26 September 1433 in which the King explicitly concedes 'his islands' of Madeira, Porto Santo and Deserta to his brother, with all the rights and rents which he, the donor, had hitherto retained for himself; he also explicitly states that he assigns to the Infante D. Henrique 'civil and criminal jurisdiction, save for judgement of death or loss of limb', where he reserved final judgement for himself. The document also authorised the donatory to raise in those islands such 'levies and tithes' as he considered advantageous, as well as the leasing of any land 'in perpetuity or for a term' to whomever he deemed fit, and to make grants of land with their foro [T.N. a form of payment for land], a prerogative which the infante was to enjoy during his lifetime and which was certainly granted him to be used to stimulate settlement. There is one restriction in the text which may be noted: the donatory may not mint his own coin in those territories, since the King explicitly states that he wishes 'his' coin 'to be current' there.

This means that D. Henrique's involvement in the Madeira archipelago from 1425 (if that is indeed the date of the beginning of settlement, which is by no means absolutely certain for some historians) must have been tenuous. He could not have based himself on any legal document to legitimise his initiatives and to enlarge his powers to those of a genuine donatory, a status he only achieved shortly after the death of his father in 1433. It is also to be noted that in that justly famous document, D. Duarte reserved to himself not only the foro but also various royal revenues (such as the fishing tithe); the occupants of the islands were to be exempted from some of these taxes for a while during the first years of the regency of the Infante D. Pedro.

D. Henrique never nurtured a plan to administer the islands considered in D. Duarte's disposition directly. Instead he decided to devolve the obligation to people he trusted through charters of deed passed to this effect: the charter of what was known as the captaincy of Machico in favour of Tristão Vaz Teixeira on 8 May 1440; that of Porto Santo, deeded to Bartolomeu Perestrelo on 1 November 1444; and that of Funchal, which was devolved to João Gonçalves Zarco on I November 1450.

According to the oldest of these documents (and the others have the same sense), we find that the Infante was first concerned to delimit with maximum possible rigour the area in which the knight of his household, Tristão Teixeira, could act; subsequently he goes further and makes the latter an authentic donatory-captain by conveying to him 'civil and criminal jurisdiction, save for death or loss of limb, in which cases the suit shall come to me' (improperly putting himself in the place of the King). But D. Henrique did not hand over all his other powers inasmuch as he expressly warns that 'his commands and rulings must be carried out as in a thing of my own'.

Tristão Vaz Teixeira was however granted rights over the sugar mills, bread ovens and salt in the area of his captaincy; he was enabled to raise a tax on rents already taxed by the Infant (the right of what was called redízima) and to distribute the lands within the area granted him to whom he wished. These grants of land would lapse after five years if the beneficiaries had not made good use of them within that time.

The above should be sufficient to give an idea of how in the archipelago, under the protective shield of the Infante D. Henrique, the captain came to enjoy the status of virtually a donatory with very wide powers, albeit in restricted fields. These powers were later to be withdrawn and reappropriated by the crown.

How are we to explain the fact that, if it is indeed the case that settlement had been initiated in 1425, it took 15 years before the means of effecting that settlement began to be regulated? And there is no question that the process of occupation was fairly advanced by 1440 inasmuch as the document referred to above includes references to the cultivation of sugar cane, which can only be accomplished with the aid of vast agricultural man-power.

This question was already dealt with by Damião Peres in his 1914 study of A Madeira sob os Donatários. First he noted that the captains must already have been exercising the judicial attributions conferred on them by the aforementioned documents of donature, basing his argument on the fact that it is known with absolute certainty that such was the case of Bartolomeu Perestrelo in Porto Santo. Secondly, given that Peres rejected the view that these documents might have been preceded by others with similar or different scope but an analogous ultimate purpose, he ended up by suggesting that it was probable or more comprehensible that 'in the first years the future donatory-captains acted only as delegates of the Infante, although with the widest authority'. And to support this opinion he cites the fact that, in the charter granting the captaincy of Funchal, the Infante himself explicitly says that he grants the deed to Zarco 'because he was the first who, under my command, occupied the said island'.

This interpretation fully explains the presence of the three captains in the Madeira archipelago well before 1440, the year in which, as has been said, the oldest document of deed was signed.

The same historian also observes, and we think he has reason on his side, that D. Henrique 'exceeded himself' in terms of the general spirit of these texts. As we observed at the time, he did not in truth have the right to reserve for himself the decision on the severe sentences mentioned, since the 1433 document left it to the exclusive judgement of the King. Furthermore, D. Duarte granted him the donature of the Madeira archipelago only for his lifetime and it is clear that, under this condition, the Infante should never have included these lands in his will, as he did.

The creation of the captaincies and their confirmation by Afonso V shortly after the battle of Alfarrobeira gave a strong stimulus to the settlements of Porto Santo and Madeira. Thus the two seats of the captaincies were soon raised to towns [vilas]: the precise dates are uncertain, but in the case of Funchal it was prior to 1461 (possibly in 1452) and in that of Machico it was a little later, but most certainly still within the lifetime of Tristão Vaz Teixeira.

With the Infante D. Henrique's death the donature of the islands of Madeira passed to his adopted son, the Infante D. Fernando, and subsequently to his widow, Dona Beatriz, who exercised control over the archipelago as guardian to her younger son, the Duke D. Diogo. Some years later, when the latter, thought to be one of the leading figures of the nobility involved in the conspiracy against João II, was killed by the King (23 August 1484), the donature passed into the possession of D. Manuel, at the time Duke of Beja. When the 'Perfect Prince' condescended to hand over the powers of the donature to the young and rightly terrified Duke, the text of the deed stipulated that it was made to last only for the lifetime of the beneficiary and to revert to the crown after his death. As is well known, with the death of João II some ten years later, the Duke was considered his natural successor and acclaimed king of Portugal. In this way, in the end, the reversion of the Madeira islands to the royal patrimony occurred automatically.

In the meantime the islands had developed economically and socially in such a way as to give more power to the captains and strength to the nobility which surrounded them, the latter in turn also reinforced by the economic power of the bourgeoisie with which it interbred. Well aware of its power, this group came to oppose the determinations of the King and his donatories with independence and arrogance.

In the above-mentioned study Damião Peres summarises the story of one flagrant case of such independence which almost has the air of a rebellion. This is the case of the boycott of an extraordinary tax imposed by Afonso V organised by the captains and other lords of the Madeira archipelago, with the strong support of the population which they served and which served them. This levy had been raised to pay for the enormous expenses incurred by the imprudent war which the King had launched against Castile in support of the claim of his niece, the 'Beltraneja' or 'Excelente Senhora', to the vacant throne. The cost of this unsuccessful adventure had amounted to 36,000 'dobras'* Although it is difficult to convert it into contemporary equivalents, as Veríssimo Serrão points out, there is no shadow of a doubt that this was a massive sum. The crown decided that Madeira would have to provide 1,200,000 'reais' for this surprise collection.

The royal request, or rather, imposition, was not well received by the captains, lords and other persons of the archipelago, who thought the part which they had to pay for the vanity of the 'African' quite excessive. Thus, 'although not aggressively'--in Peres' words--'the nobility of the islands reacted against the payment of the said sum, and the fulfilment of the royal determination was postponed so that it had still not been satisfied by the time that João II ascended to the throne [1481]'.

Nor was it to be paid so soon! It is to be noted that the tax had been reduced still within D. Afonso's lifetime (on 12 July 1481) when an earlier loan worth 400,000 'reais' was taken into account; in addition to this gesture of the 'African', it was also understood that the 800,000 'reais' that remained to make up the original total and which the King did not wish to lose, could be paid in two installments, the first of which would comprise three quarters of the whole.

The donatory of the archipelago had already demonstrated his concern at the resistance presented by the captains and their neighbours, through the voice of his guardian Dona Beatriz. He had written to Madeira on 25 July 1479 in an attempt to persuade the local lords to pay off the tax, calling their attention to the possibility of obtaining 'the commitment that no further [tax] would be raised in the future'.

But his insistence came to nothing. The Madeirans stood firm, refusing any voluntary payment of what must have seemed to them extortion: tax avoidance has always been a form of protest against unjust levies, and on this occasion resistance was massive, and lasted for years!

We could mention other quarrels which show the conflict between the power of the King and that of the lords and inhabitants of the archipelago, and Damião Peres has studied them with great skill. The donatories (Dona Beatriz, D. Diogo and, lastly, D. Manuel) were always, as is to be expected, on the side of the King, functioning indeed in the end as the spokespersons for his desires, whims and demands.

The latent conflict, which could well have grown more severe in time, came to an end through a 'natural' solution: the ascension of D. Manuel to the throne, automatically integrating the archipelago of Madeira into the crown dominions. The King began to exercise his powers directly, without the need for a donature, bringing the captains under his supervision and, up to a point, under his control.

It is however interesting to note that almost at the same time as the figure of the donature was to disappear in the Madeira archipelago, it was reborn in Brazil. Here, only slightly different in appearance but quite different in substance, it was to demonstrate its undeniable efficiency, for this reason causing less conflicts and surviving for a longer time.

3. THE EVOLUTION OF THE ECONOMIC STRUCTURE OF MADEIRA 1429-1500 ,

As we contemplate the rural landscape of Madeira we see the masterpiece of the pioneers of the colonisation of the island. We are taken back to the earliest stages of its occupation by the lacework embroidery of the terraces and water-courses, covering some 720 square kilometers of the surface, which softens the sharp descent of the slopes on both sides of the island. Here, in this double amphitheatre overlooking the sea, during the 1420s the Portuguese launched a process of occupation and socio-economic improvement. Out of an island of derise forest they created a new landscape with its ample stretches of arable land adorned by the nuclei of habitation with the chapels and churches looking over them.

The first expeditions which followed the exploration of the islands launched the bases for this new society by transplanting the agricultural products, means and techniques of the Peninsula to Madeira. It was the exiles and adventurers who furnished the body of its first occupants and the flora and various artifacts which gave form to its daily toil and leisure. It is this that gives the islands their lasting Mediterranean feel. This first adventure in the Atlantic was truly formed by the technologies and products of Mediterranean civilisation combining with the capital and experience of its peoples.

The evolution of the history of Madeira from the XV-century is thus determined by the interaction of the efforts of these Europeans with the effects of the technology and goods which the first to arrive brought in their baggage and with the conditions of the island's eco-system (elevation, climate and soil).

The choice of crops to be transplanted was made ln accordance with the alimentary requirements of the first occupants. In this way corn and vines, the sources of the basic ingredients of the diet of Western Christendom, were grown side by side with sugar-cane and its derivatives. For this reason it is impossible to analyse the economic structure exclusively in terms of models based on the cultivation of only one crop, such as that of the sugar-cycle.

In the XV-century chronicles (Francisco Alcoforado, Diogo Gomes, Zurara) we see farming (corn, wine, sugar) and the natural resources of the archipelago (timbers, cudbear [a lichen dye], dragon's blood) indicated together as the main contributions to the settlers' growing wealth; and a document of 1461 insists on the importance of sugar, grain, wine and timber in the island's exports.

a. Property

Only a small part of the island of Madeira can be cultivated; this is constituted by a corridor, parallel to the coast and about 2 1/2 kilometers deep, amounting in total to no more than some 30,000 hectares (about a third of the surface area of the island). The combination of the sparsity of this tillable area and the restrictions on its occupation and distribution imposed by the island's mountainous formation gave rise to the masterpiece of Madeiran agriculture known as poios [terraces].

These restrictions weighed in the policy of land distribution in the XV-century and implied the evolution of a special system of property sesmarias. Distribution was regulated at first by the crown and later by the Lord. In the first case, João I had stipulated that the lands be 'conveyed unencumbered [forras] and without rent [sem pensao] to those of high quality and to others who possess the means to use them well and to those of lower quality who live from their labour in cutting and stripping timber and in breeding livestock...'. With the creation of the Lordship (1433 until 1497) these competencies were transferred to the donatory who delegated his powers to his captains. These norms governing the distribution of land were to change in the course of time in order to keep pace with demographic movements. For instance the period allowed to the use of the land was lowered from ten to five years and the possibility of a new concession at the end of that period disappeared.

From the 1470s, with the donatory having to intervene promptly through his magistrate [ouvidor] to settle the quarrels over possession and water-rights which were appearing, the policy of land concession ran into trouble. At the same time the amount of arable land became more restricted, putting an end to the regime of land concession by sesmarias as well as to the general practice of burning open new clearings which came to be recognised as an ecological hazard and as a threat to the sugar economy.

The complaints and resultant measures taken by the Lord bear witness to the pressures on the concession of land caused by demographic movements. From the facilities of the 1420s one enters the 1470s with measures limiting concessions so as to preserve common land pastures and to support the principal sugar plantation owners. The excesses of the captains, disregarding the dispositions of the King and the Lord, led to a reduction in the pastures and common lands and to constant complaints from the inhabitants. It should be noted that King Manuel himself went against the regime of land concession when, in 1492, he permitted the captain of Funchal to distribute mountain lands for herding and for grain cultivation and the riverbanks for planting fruit trees; on the other hand, in an attempt to restrain the excesses of the captain, he withdrew the latter's right to suspend land grants.

Between 1433 and 1495 the attribution of sesmarias was performed by the captain in the name of the donatory. The respective charter had to be drawn up by the sheriff's registrar in the presence of the captain and the sheriff. The text had to include the general conditions regulating this type of concession, the boundaries, extent and quality of the land, its productive capacity and most suitable crop as well as the time limits for its use. The tenant or sesmeiro had to behave in accordance with the terms stipulated, entering into full possession at the end of the period stipulated at which point he could sell, bestow, 'barter or do with it or on it as it were a thing of his own The concessions which have resisted the course of time and remained as proof of the legitimate possession of the tillable soil of the island are few. We know of one, made in 1457 to Henrique Alemão, in which it is specified that the beneficiary was to build a house on the concession and to occupy the farmland with vines, sugar cane and vegetables.

The demographic evolution of the Madeira islands, along with the enrichment of the arable zones with crops for export, led to profound changes in the distribution and ownership of land, already clear in fact under the Infante's regime. A readjustment in the structure of ownership appropriate to the new situation became urgent with the need for the increased exploitation of arable land in the light of conditions imposed by internal and external markets. The intensification of the ploughing of the land was also a consequence of the appearance of capital from home and abroad which further provoked alterations in land ownership through a process of purchases or leases in enfeoffment [enfatiota]. In the reign of King Manuel a system of landholding consonant with these changes arose which was to form the origin of the 'colonial contract' [contrato de colonia]. It is to be noted that the leasing of the sugar plantations became generalised in 1494 in the captaincy of Funchal, especially in what was known as the 'Partes do Fundo' and in Camara de Lobos.

The concession of lands by sesmaria was terminated by the law of 9 October 1501 which was enacted in order to prevent the further reduction of the forest area so necessary to sugar growing. From then on acquisition of land could only be made by purchase or lease in enfeoffment or by family conveyance, through inheritance, succession or dowry. Whilst sale and purchase operate as mechanisms for the concentration of property in the hands of the aristocracy and of a bourgeoisie enriched by the fruits of the first phase of colonisation or of recently arrived foreigners, inheritance and dowry worked in the opposite sense to break up large properties. The first known conveyance dates from 1454 and resulted from the sale by Diogo de Teive to Pedro Gonçalves Barbinhas of a terrain in Funchal for 2,000 reais brancos. In 1498 Rui Gonçalves da Camara sold his sesmaria of Lombada da Ponta do Sol to João Esmeraldo. As for the regime of leasing, which became generalised in the last decades of the XV-century, the first record comes from 1484 when Constança Rodrigues leased a property in Santa Catarina to João da Cunha for 5,000 reais ground-rent.

The foreign presence in the structure of ownership is clearly observable from the 1480s with the settlement of various contingents of Italians, Flemish, French and Castilians. Amongst these the leases of the Lombada da Ponta do Sol in 1484 mentioned above, João Esmeraldo, may be singled out as particularly important.

Between the last years of the XV-century and the mid-XVI-century many other foreigners were to join this important Flemish merchant and to reside in the main areas of sugar plantation on the southern slopes of the island. At first attracted by the commercialisation of sugar they came to invest their profits also in planting and irrigation. In addition to João Esmeraldo we might also mention Simão Acciaoli, João de Bettencourt, Pedro Lominhana Berenguer ('the Doctor'), João Drumond, António Espíndola, António Leme, Urbano and Sixto Lomelino, João Mondragão, João Salviati, Adriano Espranger, João Valdevesso, Micer Batista, Maciote de Bettencourt, André França, Pedro Giralte, Martim Leme, Rui Vaz Uzel and Benoco Amador.

Well connected with European high finance and with its principal centres of commerce, they rapidly caught the attention of the island aristocracy and bourgeoisie, with whom they intermarried. Marriage with an attractive dowry was often the simplest way to enlarge one's lands and assert one's position in local society. Such was the case of Benoco Amador who married Petronilha Gonçalves Ferreira, widow of Esteves Eanes Quintal, owner of a large farm in Santo António and of lands in Ponta do Sol; having amassed his estate on one side from buying and leasing land, and on the other from commerce and moneylending, in just a few years Amador became a major owner and trader. The same thing happened with João Esmeraldo, Simão Acciaoli, Pedro Berenguer, João Drummond, Urbano Lomelino, João Salviati and Micer Batista. The latter married a daughter of Tristão Vaz, captain of the donature of Machico.

Despite the strength of its presence on the island, the impact of foreign capital on the agrarian structure remained much less than one might have expected; thus, in an estimate of 1494, 15 foreigners were registered as responsible for a fifth of total production. Although their situation tended to improve somewhat in the XVI-century, it is certain that the foreigners remained in a secondary position in terms of the productive sector.

Since Funchal was the main centre of Madeiran commerce it would be logical to assume that the foreigners would settle in the town and its surroundings, subsequently spreading out to those peripheral districts which were important to the sugar economy, such as Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol and Calheta. It is in fact in these latter places that the foreigners came to hold important positions in sugar production during the XVI-century, figuring as the major owners of extensive plantations, mills and large numbers of slaves. Amongst them the most noteworthy are João de Bettencourt with an output of 2,450 arrobas [I arroba = 15 kilos/32 Ibs weight] in Ribeira Brava, João de França with more than 3,600 arrobas in Calheta and João Esmeraldo, in Ponta de Sol, with 3,300 arrobas. It is true that there were large landowners in Funchal itself, such as Simão Acciaoli, Benoco Amador and João Bettencourt, but their position in the general picture does not attain the levels of those mentioned above. In fact, the highest proportion of foreign production was to be found in Ribeira Brava and Ponta do Sol.

In sum we can say that the resident foreigners were not only concerned with the productive sector but continued to maintain the transport and trade of goods which had attracted them in the first place as their main activity. The foreigner rarely appears as a simple landowner but rather in the triple figure of the landowner-merchant financier.

b. Production

The exploitation of the island was governed by a policy of econonuc development dependent on the interests of international European trade. The selection and transplantation of the new crops was thus determined according to the decisions of those who ran the European economy, as well as by the variations and assymetries imposed by the structure of the soil and the climate. These determinants operated in conjunction with tl;e emergent mechanisms of distribution in the cultures of Mediterranean Europe, the composition of their diets (grain, wine), and the solicitations of the main European markets (sugar and bagasse).

This created a clear tendency towards economic exploitation based on single-crop cultivation. But this came up against the conditions of land distribution imposed by the heterogeneity of the island space which had given rise to special policies for an ordered distribution of land and of the principal agricultural products. This was designed to providc areas of productioll for subsistence and barter that guaranteed the basic conditions necessary foi economic stability. Thus the progressive enlargement of the area of sugar cultivation in Madeira implied the creation of new areas of grain production which would be able to meet the demands of the island and of other markets suffering from shortages.

The settlement and exploitation of Madeira thus developed in terms of a pair of activities. The agrarian character of this nascent society had effectively to negotiate the need to satisfy both the demands of subsistence and those of external solicitations. Both sectors formed the foundations of the paths economic development was to follow, defined on the one hand by the commitment to subsistence agriculture based on the components of the European alimentary diet and, on the other hand, by the introduction of foreign produce capable of activating the mechanisms of trade.

The structure of the productive sector was to adapt itself to these circumstances. The natural resources of the island were exploited within the agricultural sector in a way that was to integrate alimentary products (fish, trees) with products for trade (cudbear, sumach, timber and its derivatives such as resin).

Coming from an area where grain (wheat, barley, rye) was the principal and defining alimentary ingredient, the European settlers who had peopled the islands did not underestimate the quantity needed to sow the new clearings. The phenomenon of the occupation and settlement of the Atlantic islands, characterised in this way by the transplantion of men, techniques, products and forms of power and estate moulded in the image of the settlers' homelands, thus gave rise to a landscape of cornfields, vineyards, gardens and orchardsz all dominated by the thatched house and, later, by the luxurious manorhouse.

In the island of Madelra the agrlcultural landscape up to the seventies was characterised by cornfields embellished with sugar plantations and tresselated vineyards. In short, the Madeira economy was dominated by grain and this, as Fernando Jasmins Pereira says, constituted the basis of the colonisation of the island in the period of the Infante.

The fertility of the soil resulting from clearing the land by burning produced spectacular levels of production as was regularly announced by the historians of the XV- and XVI-centuries who drew attention to the fact that grain was exported to the Portuguese mainland and to the African markets.

According to Francisco Alcoforado and Diogo Gomes, one measure of seed was equal on average to 650 measures of harvested crop--a remarkable situation when we bear in mind that in Europe production of more than 30 measures was rare and 40 was only achieved in exceptional circumstances.

In the mid-century, according to Cadamosto, the island was proelucing 3,000 moios of wheat [I moio = c. 40 bushels--i.e., a wey or load], that is, over two-thirds more than was needed to feed the small population. According to the chroniclers, the surplus was exported to the mainland and sold for 4 reais per alqueire [1 alqueire = 13 litres --or c. 3 bushels--of grain); from 1461, 1,000 alqueires were being sent to the Gulf of Guinea.

None the less, with the intensification of sugar production from the seventies on, the wheatfields diminished in surface area and grain production went into deficit. From 1466, the island, unable to maintain the established output, was even forced to import grain to sustain the residents. Indeed, it was noted in 1478 that production was sufficient for only four months. This situation resulted from the dominance of the sugar-plantations linked to the rapid exhaustion of the soil, and inadequacies in its farming caused by intensive exploitation without the use of any techniques of improvement.

The worsening of the grain deficit during the seventies and eighties led to famine in 1485 and thus became the main preocupation of the local and central authorities. At first they tried to fill the lack with recourse to Barbary, Oporto, Setúbal and Salonica; later it became necessary to establish a productive area capable of satisfying the needs of the Madeirans. This is what happened from 1508 with the definition of the Azores as the main grain producing area of the Portuguese Atlantic; the latter was to fulfil the role of both the grain store of the Madeira archipelago and its substitute for the supply of the African markets.

Madeira, which had established itself in the period of the Infante D. Henrique as an important supplier of wheat, became a net purchaser under the government of D. Fernando, acquiring more than half its requirements from the neighbouring islands of the Azores and Canaries.

The grain crisis in Madeira arose at the same time as the establishment of the same crop in the Azorean soil; indeed Joel Serrão has already observed that the investment in the Azores was a result of the former need: the rapid encouragement of the crop in the Azores archipelago in the sixties and seventies led to a situation in which, by the end of the century, the latter was established as the main wheatgrowing area of the new world.

The pioneers from the peninsula had brought along with their few grains of cereal some young vines of the good stocks existing on the Portuguese mainland in order to produce the wine they needed for their Christian worship and daily meals. The vines adapted well to the island soil and conquered a position of importance in the economy of the archipelago.

Cadamosto was astonished with their rapid growth when he visited Madeira in the mid-XV-century, observing that the island 'had excellent wines and, bearing in mind that the island has only been inhabited for a short while, there is such a remarkable amount that it is enough not only for the inhabitants but for considerable exports'.

The cultivation of vlnes in Madeira at this time already occupied a considerable part of the arable area, especially of the coastal zone around Funchal, where 12 vine plantations and 13 espaliers could be found. In constrast, beyond Funchal, there were only 8 espaliers in the area between Ribeira Brava and Ponta do Sol.

After the low risk of the initial commitment, as witnessed in 1511 by Simão Gonçalves da Camara's observation that the island produced only bread and wine, the efforts of the Madeira pioneers in the mid-century were galvanised by the establishment of new cultures such as sugar-cane. At the same time greater attention also came to be given to those of the island's natural resources which were perceived as having economic value, giving rise to the importance of the cultivation of its trees and of fishing. Thus Zurara (1463-68) refers to the profits of the island being based on bread, sugar, honey, timber, and so on. Incomprehensibly the chronicler does not mention wine, which had already been included by Cadamosto in 1455 as an important product of Madeiran farming.

The rapid advance of sugar-cane in Madeira can best be understood in terms of the fact that, having demonstrated its ability to grow rapidly outside its Mediterranean habitat in this, its first experience beyond Europe, it captured the attention of domestic and foreign capital which invested in the preferential expansion of the crop on the island. Whereas, in the first stages of occupation, the use of the soil was characterised by subsistence farming, from the last decades of the XV-century it moved to that of a single dominant product, a situation that was to be maintained up to the end of the first half of the XVI-century.

The sugar-cane, enjoying the support and protection of the landlord and the crown, conquered the space occupied by the wheatfields, being found throughout the entire arable soil of the island. We can distinguish two areas here: the southern slopes (from Machico to Calheta), with their wind-sheltered and warm climate, where the canes grew at 400 meters; and the northwest, dominated by the plantations of the captaincy of Machico (Porto da Cruz and Faial to Santana), a soil where the mesological conditions did not permit its cultivation bevond 200 meters nor an output as great as that of the first area.

The captaincy of Funchal congregated on its perimeter the best lands for sugar-cane cultivation, which occupied almost all the southern slopes. Only a very small parcel of this area remained for the Machico captaincy along with a vast but uneven area unsuitable for such a crop. Thus, in 1494, only a fifth of the sugar produced in the island came from the latter captaincy.

The plantations were irregularly distributed in the captaincy of Funchal, according to the mesological conditions of the area. Thus, again in 1494, the largest harvest was found in the Partes do Fundo, embracing the districts of Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol and Calheta, with about two-thirds of the production of the captaincy, whilst Funchal and Camara de Lobos produced less than a sixth. This distinction still existed in 1520 with only minimal intervening alterations.

Having completed our description of the geography of Madeiran sugar production, let us turn to its evolution up to the mid-XVI-century.

With the encouragement and support of the landlord, the crown and the local and central administration, the internal conditions for the captains to invest in sugar-cane cultivation and trade were created, encouraging the sugar to prosper to the point where it became for some time the dominant product of the Madeiran economy. The exter nal incentive of the Mediterranean and Northern markets accelerated the process of expansion which was only arrested through the convergence of various endogereous and exogeneous factors. All this will explain the rapid upward and immediate downward movement, for there was no period of stability following its highest point.

The upward phase can be located between 1450 and 1506, notwithstanding the depression of 1497-1499. It is characterised by rapid growth which reached an average of 13% in 1454 and 68% in 1472. In the period following the collapse of 1497-1499, recuperation was so rapid that in 1500-1501 growth reached 110% and between 1502 and 1503 it reached 205%. The strong acceleration in the rate of growth in the first years of the XVI-century reached its maximum in 1506 and was followed by a rapid decline in the next years. It is enough to say that in only four years it dropped to a level below that attained at the beginning of the century. The situation deteriorated further in the next two decades, dropping 60% in the captaincy of Funchal between 1516 and 1537. In the Machico captaincy the drop was gradual in consequence of the progressive impoverishment of the soil and its growing unsuitability for the crop. But from 1521 the tendency to decline is both general and severe with the result that the production of the end of the first quarter of the century reached a level little above that registered in 1470. In the thirties the crisis iD the sugar economy was complete and the island found itself confronted with the need to aban{1an the Dlantations and to replace them with vineyards.

c. Trade

The development of the trade relations of a particular market are not the result only of the availability of tradeable products; it also requires the presence of a set of those conditioning factors which make trade possible. Amongst such propicious factors are the existence of means and channels of communication, of agents qualified to perform the various services required, and of the instruments of payment suitable to the volume and time-scale of exchange, In the case of Madeira the importance of these factors was appreciated by the islanders who showed themselves capable of encountering the mechanisms they required to attain a high level of development.

The Europeans imposed and dominated the circuits of trade, making this area a peripheric region chosen to serve as a market of reserve for the formers' mercantile needs. In addition, the monarchs of the Peninsula, committed to a monopolistic system of commerce, limited the room for manoeuvre of all those involved in trade by intervening assiduously through exhaustive regulamentation of economic activity. . It was this excessive interventionism, allied to bad weather, storms at sea, plague, piracy and privateering, which was mainly responsible for the blockage of commercial circuits at certain times in the century under analysis.

In order to ensure that the regulations referred to above were respected, the central and island administrations were obliged to keep a close eye on all aspects of the economy. This preoccupation was constant and embraced all sectors of activity. The authorities intervened in production, in the processing of raw materials and in the distribution and exchange of local and foreign products. The municipality legislated through by-laws and edicts, regulating in detail all sectorial activities. The crown in its turn intervened through its own institutions with professional regulations and warrants. In this way the activities and products which defined the subsistence and market economies were subject to the inter ventionism of both the court and local government.

They intervened mainly in relation to sugar, a product which attracted the particular attention of the landlord, especially under King Manuel. As donatory and monarch, the latter's action contributed decisively to the full establishment of this crop and the definition of the northern market as its preferential destiny.

In addition to the policy of regulating those occupied in the sugar harvest, rigorous norms of quality control were established through the alealdamentos [a form of customs declaration--T.N.].

The maintenance and permanence of this commercial activity implied the creation of support structures proportional to available capital resources. This was set up by the Peninsular and foreign agents who initiated its economic exploitation in such a way that the islands were able to enter the commercial circuits of the Atlantic without difficulty, putting into action a complicated network of routes which were in their turn instigated by that trade.

From the mid-XV-century Madeira maintained a regular trade with the mainland kingdom stimulated at first by timber, cudbear and wheat and subsequently by sugar and wine. With the appearance of foreigners interested in the sugar trade, this movement extended to the cities of Northern Europe and the Mediterranean. Its evolution was so rapid and profitable that the royal treasury imposed a levy on the movement of the city port to pay for the expense of its enclosure and the building of its walls. In accordance with the calculations made, the levy of one vintém on ships' tonnage would raise 100,000 reais, and that of 1% on merchandise would raise 250,000 reais.

Such a large sum could only have been a consequence of sugar. Indeed, it was this product which caused Madeira's decisive take-off and its consequent integration into the European economy. The island's accelerated rate of growth was responsible for attracting various waves of European immigration. This situation was characterised in 1508 in King Manuel's justification for raising Funchal to a city: 'it has grown with a very large population and in it live many knightly lords and men of honour and of great estate, for which reason and because of the great trade of the said island...'.

The establishment of the tendency towards single-crop production was determinant in the Madeira economy and made it heavily dependent on the external market inasmuch as the island needed that market to place its sugar and to supply itself with foodstuffs (meat, fish, vegetables, corn, olive oil, salt) and utensils (iron, rooftiles, pottery, cloth, linen, etc.).

Before the establishment of the sugar economy Madeira had distinguished itself in the mid-XV-century as the main Atlantic storehouse of grain, furnishing the markets and areas of the Portuguese coast which required it. For this reason the crown had outlined a grain policy based on the opening of two distribution routes: the first led to the Portuguese mainland ports (Lisbon, Oporto, Lagos) and was created in 1439 through the provision of tax exemptions; the second was imposed by the crown under Afonso V with the purpose of supplying marketplaces on the Sahara and Guinea coasts. The latter was characterised by the negotiation of contracts with the merchants under regimes of monopoly concession or preferential access. Thus in 1466 all the wheat from the Infante's domains was handled by one Catalan merchant, whilst in 1473 a contract was established with Baptista Lomelim for him to 'take all the wheat that there is off that island'.

The difficulties experienced from 1461 and which worsened in the following decade introduced major alterations in the Madeiran economy and led to an inversion in the corn trade. The attempts of the Infante D. Fernando in 1461 and 1466 to maintain the dominance of grain in the island's economy and the resultant distribution routes collapsed in the face of the high value and profitability of the cultivation of sugar. Commerce was the main agent in relations with Europe, and sugar was the dominant product and object of commerce in Madeira between 1450 and 1550. The regime of the Madeira sugar trade in the XV- and XVI-centuries 'was to oscillate', according to Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, 'between on the one hand a free trade highly restricted by the intervention of the crown or the powerful capitalists and, first, a total monopoly and later a group of monopolies each of which handled output relating to some particular place'. In short, free trade in sugar existed only until 1469, at which time the decline in prices gave rise to the intervention of the landlord who restricted its commerce exclusively to the merchants of Lisbon. The Madeirans, used to dealing with foreigners, reacted angrily to this decision. Not having many alternatives, in 1471 the Infante D. Fernando auctioned all the sugar to a company formed by Gil Vicente, Álvaro Estevess Baptista Lomelim, Francisco Calvo and Martim Anes Boa Viagem. This decision caused a serious conflict between the town council and the contractors.

When the island was still facing difficulties 21 years later, the crown again took up the idea of a monopoly on the sugar trade in 1488 and 1495, although it only succeeded in promulgating and imposing a set of regulatory measures on cultivation, harvest and trade in 1490 and 1496. This policy, decided on in order to defend the profitability of sugar, was once again to result in failure and a new solution was attempted in 1498 with the establishment of a reserve of 120,000 arrobas for export, to be divided between various European channels.

With sugar production stabilised and its commercial markets defined, the Madeiran economy no longer needed such rigorous regulation and thus in 1499 the Monarch revoked some of the prerogatives laid down the previous year, retaining however the regime of contract for its sale. Only in 1508 was all the earlier legislation revoked and a regime of free trade re-established: thus it was announced in the privilege of the captaincy of Funchal in 1515: 'The aforementioned sugar may be carried to the East or the West and to any other parts which the merchants or persons who carry them deem fit without any restr:+int'

The establishment of the channels of export in 1498 precisely defined the market for the consumption of Madeiran sugar, dividing it into three distinct areas: the domestic market, and those of Northern and Mediterranean Europe. The most important marketplaces were those supplying the North Sea area which received more than half the output; of these the most important were the marketplaces of Flanders. In the Mediterranean, first- place was attributed to. Venice. along with the Levantine markets of Chios and Constantinople.

If we compare the official quotas with the sugar actually delivered to the various European marketplaces between 1490 and 1550, we find that the reality was not much different from the schedule: the only relevant differences are to be found in the markets of Turkey, France and Italy in which the marked reinforcement of the position of the latter is to be noted. However, this difference may have resulted simply from the fact that the Italian cities operated as distribution centres for both the Levantine and French markets. We should also note that the Italians handled more than two-thirds of the sugar traded in this period.

The data we have for the Madeiran sugar trade during this period show that it remained constant for the F]emish and Italian markets. The domestic market, restricted to the ports of Lisbon, Vila do Conde and Viana do Castelo, took third place with only about a tenth of the total. Viana do Castelo, nloreover, functioned as a centre for the redistribution of bIadeiran sugar to the North European market.

There were also entrepôts for dealings with the Mediterranean world, especially those of Cadiz and Barcelona. These cities emerge in the period from 1493 to 1537 as posts supporting trade with Genoa, Constantinople, Chios and Águas M ortas.

The ordenance of 1498 not only set down the volume of the various channels but also the form of their commercialisation. In order to facilitate distribution, the crown retained the monopoly of the Rome and Venice channels, -20,000 arrobcls of the Flanders quota and 3,000 of the English, a sum equivalent to one-third of total production. To this were added the exDort tithes (a fifth or a quarter, plus the dizima) which reverted to the King according to the contract established with the major national and foreign companies.

Up to 1504 the quotas and the product of the King's prerogatives were channeled to the European market either by direct shipment, or by free negotiation, or in exchange for pepper. The merchants or commercial companies based in Lisbon, of which the most important were those of the Italian merchants such as João Francisco Affaiti and Lucas Salvago, paid to handle the sugar.

Madeira's trade with Europe was characterised by a large number of products, agents, routes and markets. The most important market was the Peninsula, due to its role in the exploration, occupation and economic improvement of the island. It was to be the connecting link between the island and the main European marketplaces in the North Sea and the Mediterranean. Thus a regular commerce was put into operation from Lisbon, Cadiz and Seville, followed by the other Atlantic and Mediterranean ports of the Peninsula coast. These marketplaces attracted a group of Italian, French, Flemish and English merchants interested in the Atlantic trade and committed to this new market economy. If the first phase of their intervention was limited to the Peninsula, in a second moment, as access to the islands became easier, they came to operate from there, establishing themselves as the principal men of business on the islands and from thence establishing contacts with and direct routes to the main marketplaces of the Mediterranean and the North.

Madeira was the first of the islands to merit an effective occupation and the foundations of its trade were built on the contacts it possessed with the coastal zones of origin of its settlers and with the principal marketplaces of the homes of its visiting merchants. Whilst contacts were at first seasonal and were explained simply by the needs of the peopling and domination of the island, a second phase saw them put onto a regular and constant basis thanks to their trading activity with Western Europe.

The chroniclers of the XV- and XVI-centuries frequently refer to the abundance of wood on the island which, with the opening of various clearings for ploughing, created a profitable trade with the Portuguese kingdom and other lands. According to the same sources, timber production had an industrial character, aimed at the manufacture of vessels, of furniture for export and of crates for packaging sugar. The volume of timber exports was so high that it led to changes in the techniques of naval and civil construction back in mainland Portugal.

The timber trade was probably the first activity to constitute a source of wealth for the settlers and the lords of the island, as can be gathered from the Infante D. Fernando's refusal in 1461 to exempt the islanders from the tithe [dízima] raised on its exportation.

There were constant contacts between Madeira and mainland Portugal throughout the XV- znd XVI-centuries, most frequently with the ports of Lisbon, Viana and Caminha. The seamen and merchants of the northern Peninsula ports, especially of the coastal region of 'entre-Douro-e-Minho', were regular visitors to the port of Funchal, trading cloth and meat in exchange for sugar.

In the first stage Madeira offered its timber and its grain surplus to the continental merchants. However the main trade with home was sugar, sought since the beginning by the domestic merchants who, tried to consolidate their monopoly over the Lisbon route. The island received in exchange a varied group of products which it needed for daily use and consumption, such as tools, cloth, rooftiles, pottery, clay, iron, meat, fish, salt and olive oil. All of this was traded for sugar and the re-export of products such as skins, slaves, pitch and cotton.

Pottery was regularly imported from the main continental ports such as Setúbal, Lisbon and Oporto. By the same token, given the scarcity of clay on the island and thus the very weak development of local pottery, the moulds for the making of sugar must also have come from the continent, particularly from the Barreiro area.

4. THE SOCIAL STRUCTURE OF THE POPULATION OF MADEIRA: ITS EVOLUTION

The settlement of Madeira, begun In the twenties in the small nucleii of Funchal and Machico, spread rapidly along the entire southern coast with new centres at Santa Cruz, Camara de Lobos, Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol and Calheta. Whilst the directions taken by the occupation of the territory were conditioned by the island's mountainous constitution, the extreme fertility of its soil and the pressures of demographic developments gave rise to and necessitated a rapid process of domestication and socio-economic improvement.

The first workmen and labourers were followed by various installments of other sorts of people to help in this rapid first stage of occupation. In the latter group we find 36 dependents of the house of the Infante, mainly servants and squires, who attained positions of preeminence in the development of the structure of ownership and administration.

Whilst the more important people already held comfortable positions at home and went to other parts of the Atlantic to further improve their lot, many lower-class people and those left out by the contemporary regime of succession also flocked to the island; we may note that João Gonçalves Zarco himself demonstrated his awareness of the situation when he asked the court for men of quality to marry his daughters; it was in response to this request that Garcia Homem de Sousa, Diogo Cabral and Diogo Afonso de Aguiar were sent out by the monarch.

In the roll of the justices of the peace in the Funchal captaincy in 1471, we find that the majority were squires (36%), whilst knights and noblemen were few (10% and 5% respectively).

The formation of an island aristocracy from the end of the XV-century can be seen from the ascension of the first settlers and their descendents to a high social condition (as a consequence of their role in the administrative structure and in the sugar harvest or through enoblement by the King). This aristocracy held a distinctive place in the national hierarchy, competing with the old domestic aristocracy in the military adventures in North Africa and the East and in the voyages of discovery on the African coast and in the West.

It is usual to say that the first major settlers responsible for starting the occupation of the island came from the Algarve. The idea has become part of the Algarvian tradition concerning the participation of its inhabitants in the expansionist quest, as expressed in Jerónimo Dias Leite's expression 'many from the Algarve'. But, since there are no facts to back it up, this seems to us to be a somewhat hasty assumption. In a list of the first settlers mentioned in documents and chronicles, the presence of people from the north of Portugal is much greater than that of those from the Algarve (64% to 25%). This is corroborated by the records of the Cathedral parish [afreguesia da Sé] for 1539-1600 which show that half of those betrothed in marriage came from Braga, Viana do Castelo and Oporto whilst those from Faro constituted no more than 3%. It should be noted that some of the most eminent students of Madeira hesitate between the Minho and the Algarve as the origin of the first settlers; however Ernesto Gonçalves is clear in indicating the former as the place of birth of those responsible for the early settlement of Madeira.

The process of settling Madeira involved people from a variety of places; almost the entire kingdom was caught up in this tempting experiment, especially the inhabitants of coastal areas--Lisbon, Lagos, Aveiro, Oporto and Viana--as well as various foreigners skilled in the clearing and cultivation of land. Whilst it is certain that the Algarve was the home of many of the men of the Infante's house who were to play an outstanding role in the launching of the institutional bases of the lordship, it is no less certain that the labourers needed to clear the dense forest and prepare the soil for the introduction of Mediterranean crops came from the north of Portugal, especially from the region of entre-Douro-e-Minho. In the meantime, the Italians came from the Mediterranean with the experience and capital necessary for the launching of the cultivation of sugar and bagasse. But Northern Portugal was to exercise a decisive influence in this process due to both its being the most densely populated part of the country and its long-term links with the Madeiran economy.

The spreading of the news of the nature of the Atlantic island in the Peninsula encouraged its rapid settlement and its equally celebrated socio-economic development. Demographic development was accelerated by ever-larger waves of European immigration. From the small number of settlers who had accompanied the three promoters of settlement in the twenties, we arrive at the forties with the presence of 150 important families, rising to 800 in the following decade and to a population of 5,000 inhabitants in the early XVI-century (1514). This growth in population, reflecting the island's level of economic development, put pressure on its institutional and religious development. The galloping demographic and economic growth may be gauged by the process of creation of municipalites and parishes and the overall evolution of the administrative and fiscal system.

Settlement in the XV-century was directed towards the southern coast. Places of habitation were determined by inlets which provided communication with the outside world and by the extensive clearings which were suitable for agricultural labour. The first chapels for religious worship in Funchal and Machico were joined by others in Santo António, Camara de Lobos, Ribeira Brava, Ponta do Sol, Arco da Calheta and Santa Cruz. Meanwhile, difficulties in communication between the various nucleii of population within the captaincy of Funchal led to a reorganisation of the administrative and fiscal system. The first to arise were the jurisdictions [pedAneos] and alcaydes of Cimara de Lobos and Ribeira Brava, followed in time by the development of a municipal structure designed to meet the incessant aspirations of the inhabitants of the so-called Partes do Fundo. However this only came to pass with the creation of the municipalities of Ponta do Sol and Calheta under King Manuel at the heginning of the XVI-century (1501 and 1502 respectively).

According to the rolls of the justices of the peace available for service in the council of Funchal in 1495, the most important families were to be found within the area of the council seat: 66% belonged to Funchal whilst the rest were distributed among Camara de Lobos (16%), Ponta do Sol (11%) and Calheta (6%).

In the Machico area a second town council was created only in 1515 with its seat at Santa Cruz. The entire northern coast included in the Machico captaincy remained linked to the power structure seated in the new municipality from the XV- to the XVIII-century. Only in 1473 was a separate municipal power structure for the entire extensive northern strip established at S. Vicente. This reflects the way problems of access caused the large wooded area to be neglected, whilst at the same time it serves to indicate the top-heaviness of the administrative structure of the captaincy.

In raising the town of Funchal to a city in 1508, the monarch had referred to the fact that its inhabitants had grown to 'a very large population and in it live many knightly lords and men of honour and of great estate, for which reason and because of the great trade of the said island we hope that with the help of Our Lord the said island -will continue to grow and become ever more noble...'.

In addition to this evolution in its municipal and religious structure as it adapted to the new determining factors of the soeio-economie process, the institutional dynamic of Madeira underwent profound changes in other camps. The initiatives of the lordship after the seventies were particularly important here. Whilst Dona Beatriz created customs posts at Funchal and Machico in 1477 in an attempt to direct the Madeiran economy towards the external market, in 1486 King Manuel gave a decisive impulse to the implantation of an administrative structure adequate to the needs of the end of the century It was he who ceded his own lands (known as the Campo do Duque) and ordered the building of a church, a town hall, offices for the notaries, a custom's hall and public buildings. In this way the town of Funchal grew and its urban fabric gained its renaissance structure.

A new society, with a dynamic similar to that of the homeland, came into being out of the initial nucleus of settlers spread over the various arable terrains of the island. Its structure was based on the preferential status accorded its first inhabitants and developed according to that of the island's institutions and economy.

The Europeans from the Peninsula had a primary importance in the formation of this new society, in which other ethnic groups were poorly represented. Of the latter the only exceptions were the Africans (Moors, Blacks and Canarians [guanches]) who arrived at the island as slaves but who were to have an important role in the launching of the sugar economy.

The range of social categories and statuses was determined by the different social conditions observable within the Madeiran population: the privileged, the people, and the minorities. Without pretending to undertake an exhaustive analysis of this question here, and leaving aside any discussion of concepts and models, we shall now provide a brief account of some of the data we have which shed light on the social structure of Madeira in the XV-century. The scarcity of documentation, especially in relation to the first 50 years of occupation, prevents us from providing a more complete view of its social dynamic in the century following the settlement of the island.

Even so, there is sufficient existing documentation to allow us to describe the means of differentiation between the various social levels. Thus, the Lord and the King both established various social categories in their correspondence with the islanders. In 1425 the monarch distinguishes between noblemen, knights, squires and the people, whilst in 1466 the Lord greets the captains, nobles, knights, alderman [juízes vereadores], the attorney general [procurador] and the justices of the peace [homens-bons]. These two different forms of treatment mirror the social reality of Madeira: in the first case we see a heterogeneous group of privileged men plus the people, whilst in the second we find only the former, whose position depends on their noble state or the functions they exercise.

In 1494 the distinction between the two groups is even clearer. One text refers to the 'middling people' [povo meúdo] and 'craftsmen' [mesteres] as opposed to the 'most important' [principais]. Bearing in mind that in 1508 this opposition had derived from the fact that the latter were people 'of honour and of great estate', we can see that their status was determined not only by birth but also by wealth and the exercise of power, which had given rise to a new island aristocracy.

The exercise of power, especially municipal power, was one of the main distinctive prerogatives of this aristocracy. Those involved in it were listed as the district justices, with an active role in the town council through which they governed. It may be noted that the participation of the representatives of craftsmen in the council was only permitted in 1484. The intervention of this aristocracy was not however limited to the power of the town council. It gradually reached out to the various institutional structures made necessary by economic and demographic development. Thus, between 1454 and 1517, the three aristocratic groups took important positions in the Madeiran institutional structures. The same town hall documents tell us that, during this period, practically the same percentages of nobles, knights and squires were to be found amongst the justices. It is also to be noted that the captains of the donature figure in the first and second categories, whilst the last is made up of their stewards and servants, merchants and the engineers and overseers of the construction of the Cathedral. In 1471, in the same group of 28 justices, 5 were of the captain's household and 7 of the Lord's, clearly demonstrating the importance of these two figures in the social dynamics of Madeira.

Alongside this governing group, a class of leisure with time to participate in military adventures in North Africa, there also existed a numerous train of subordinates (tenants, employees, artisans and slaves) who contributed to the agricultural and mercantile progress of the island. Indeed, their importance in Madeiran society was to increase with that economic progress. As has been said, the artisans only made their voices heard in local government in 1484 through the creation of the 'House of Twenty-Four'. Two years later they were granted an active role in the Corpus Christi procession. Their place in the procession may signify a hierarchisation of crafts in accordance with that established for Lisbon in 1453. The roll of craft representatives drawn up in 1486 by the council indicated a socioprofessional structure formed of masons, engineers, tailors, barbers, wine-growers, weavers, archers, farmers, seedsmen, fishermen, merchants, carters, gold- and silversmiths, notaries and coopers. We have information concerning the years immediately following dealing with craft warrants and officials (blacksmiths, barbers and millers) which testifies to the dimensions achieved by the artisanal structure as a consequence of the new society's having to resort to local production for its basic necessities of articles of daily use, since its isolation and poor contacts with Europe made their regular supply from the mainland impossible. The settling of artisans and their number in certain areas of the town was to give rise to streets nanled after the various crafts practised in them--such as the Rua dos Ferreiros [Street of Blacksmiths], Rua dos Tanoeiros [Cooper Street], Rua dos Caixeiros [Street of Box-makers], etc.

Alongside the craftsmen appeared unskilled labourers and hirelings who performed various tasks in the city and the country and whose services were burdened with a redizima. This tax inhibited their activities and, according to what was said in 1466, put the safety of the land at risk by leading to an increase in slavery. A similar anxiety is apparent in 1489 when it was pointed out that, given the large number of slaves, sending freemen to the African campaigns was a danger to island security.

Thus we find that the slaves were of major importance in Madeiran society in the second half of the XV-century; the strength of their presence generated concern which in turn necessitated the regulamentation of their areas of intercourse and movement. Thence derives the demand that they should wear a sign and reside in their owner's grounds. By the same token the expulsion of all liberated slaves was orderedz except for that of the Canarians. The blacks were paid to sell their lords' fruit, whilst the guanches were herdsmen and experts in irrigation.

From the mid-XV-century a wave of foreign visitors was attracted to Madeira as a result of the priority given to the plantation and exploitation of sugar. Only the ordenances limiting residence in the island hindered their intervention in the bladeiran commercial circuits and their rapid and permanent settlement.

In order to secure a European market for sugar, the crown eased the entry and settlement of Italians, Flemish, French and Bretons in the mid-century by granting them special privileges. But as these foreigners quickly came to exert great influence this began to clash with the interests of domestic merchants and of the crown itself. It was therefore felt necessary to prevent them from 'thus dealing freely with everyone' and the Lord prohibited them from staying as permanent residents on the island. The problem was taken to the courts of Coimbra in 1472-73 and of Évora in 1481 where the national bourgeoisie protested against what was in effect the monopoly of the sugar trade exercised by the Genoese and Jewish merchants and proposed that the trade should be carried out, under the same conditions, from Lisbon.

The monarch, compromised with the advantages enjoyed by the foreigners because of the privileges he had himself granted them, behaved ambiguously, seeking to honour his previous commitments and at the same time respond to present demands. He thus established limitations on the residence of foreigners in the kingdom, subjecting them to special licenses. As for Madeira, he forbade their settlement without his pel mission at the same time as he excluded them from resale on the local market. The council, in its turn, interpreting these ordenances in the light of the wishes of the inhabitants, was only prevented from ordering the expulsion of the foreigners before September 1480 by the intervention of the Lord of the island. The usefulness of their presence on the island was only recognised in 1489 when João II ordered D. Manuel, then Duke of Beja, to treat the foreigners 'as residents and natives of our kingdoms'.

Problems in the sugar market led to the resurgence of the xenophobic policy in the nineties. Foreigners were allowed three or four months between April and mid-September to sell their goods but were not permitted the use of a shop or warehouse. The harm this was o eina the Madeiran economy by driving away the merchants was recognised at last by King Manuel in 1493 when he revoked the former interdictions. The facilities then granted to assist visiting agents to stay led to their becoming regular operators in the marketplace, settling in the island and intervening strongly in the structure of land ownership and administration.

The foreign merchant community in Madeira was dominated by the Italians, followed by the Flemish and the French; all had been drawn to the land by the white gold for which there was so much demand.

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