Portugal - Faction Thread.

[numerosdecimus]

The faction of Portugal will be discussed in this thread.

By 1700 Portugal had already lost it's position of comercial monopoly throughout Asia, Africa, Indonesia and the trade between Africa and the Americas. After the Dutch-Portuguese war, which was the first intercontinental war the United Provinces were able to occupy Indonesia, Ceylan, a substancial part of India and monopolize the trade between Japan, although portuguese comercial indentities remained there and were still active. In Africa the Dutch ocupied the region around the cape of of good hope and ocupied Portuguese Ginnea.

While they had lost their monopoly in Asia and Indonesia, the Portuguese were able to win back South America, most of their previous African territories and they were still present in Asia and Indonesia, more speciffically portuguese India, Macau and the eastern half of Timor. Several archipelagos in the Atlantic and along the coast Africa were also under portuguese control.

By this time the Empire was practically present in every continent although not as much as it was during the 16th century, still, several expansion policies and economical reforms were made during the 18th century, a century mostly of constant change and evolution for Portugal.


During the 18th century the inland territories of Brazil were further explored and occupied, the region of Uruguai was in contest with the Spanish and was later on sucessfully under portuguese control.

Portuguese India, mostly Goa, expanded throughout a substancial part of the 18th century, while still holding other scatered territories India such as Damão, Bacaim, Vasai, Chaul, Korlai and Forte de Corjuem, just to name some.

In Africa both Angola and Moçambique gradually expanded and occupied further inland territory, there was a short conquest of the province of Mombassa.

While this century was of change, it was also of great wealth, it was the Portuguese currency at this time that was the main international coin and the one most used in the Americas, it was known as the "moidore", even in England during this time there were entire regions using the portuguese coin, in part because there were several pirate and corsack raids in the port of the city of Porto waiting from the gold shipments from Brasil, and in the other part because of the Meduem treaty.

It was during this time that the largest gold rush in the Americas and one of the largest in history (if not the largest) occored, the gold rush in the Minas Gerais region is estimated to have been a minimum of 10 to 12 times greater than the Californian Gold Rush, to such a point that most gold in Europe during the 18th century came from Brasil.

Other main sources of wealth for Portugal during this century were sugar plantations, tobaco plantations(the largest during the 18th century), precious minerals such as diamonds which came from both Africa and Brasil and of course spice exchange and production.

More will be told shortly after, stay tuned.

[Ludicus]

Portuguese India, mostly Goa, expanded throughout a substancial part of the 18th century, while still holding other scatered territories India such as Damão, Bacaim, Vasai, Chaul, Korlai and Forte de Corjuem, just to name some.

Portuguese fortresses and forts - Índia c1700 and later

The fortress of Diu, an imposing structure was reconstructed after the siege of 1545 by Dom Joao de Castro.The earliest parts date from 1535, with a lot of the building being done between 1546 and 1720.Built by the Portuguese, this eventually became one of their most important forts in all of
Asia. It was massive so it takes well over an hour to see it all. By the mid-1550s, all Gujarati ships entering and leaving the Gulf of Khambhat (Cambay) ports were required to call at Diu to pay Portuguese duties.




Fort Aguada,the largest and most well preserved fort in Goa today is the most prized and crucial fort of Portuguese.It derives its name from several fresh water springs ("Aguada" means 'water' in Portuguese) that existed on its site. For the ships that sailed from Portugal, it was the first stop after a long journey for fresh water supplies before moving inland.
The fort is so large that it envelops the entire peninsula at the south western tip of Bardez.Built on the mouth of river Mandovi, it was strategically located and was the chief defence of Portuguese against the Dutch and Marathas




The Fortress of Panikota, is a magnificent stone structure in the sea,near the coastal city of Ghoghla. In the channel between Ghoghla and an island is a "water fort" or panikota in Gujarati, fortim do mar in Portuguese. Built in 1536, the Fortaleza was besieged by Turks in 1538 and 1546.





Fort of Korjuem,built in 1705,when the inland portuguese expansion began.
In the eighteenth century this fort protected the portuguese from the Marahtas,Bhonsles and Rane Rajputs.This fort is situated 4km north of Pomburpa, alongside the Mapusa river near the village of Aldona



Daman Fort:Renowned for its docks and shipbuilding yards, Daman (known in Portuguese as Damão) was conquered by the Portuguese in 1559.





Korlay/Chaul fort:
The first Portuguese settlement at Chaul took place in 1521 with the construction of the first fort on the south bank of the Kundalika River. In October 1531, the Portuguese erected a new square stone fortress, named Santa Maria do Castello, which contained a church and dwellings for 120 men. A town developed around the fortress, but a 1558 treaty precluded fortifying the town. The town was destroyed in a1570-71 siege by the Nizam Shahi Sultan of Ahmadnagar, but a treaty was concluded which lifted the siege, and the town was rebuilt and surrounded by walls and bastions. A fortress was built on the Morro de Chaul, a rocky promontory on the north side of the river opposite the town. The town withstood several further attacks, and its defense works were expanded in1613.

[Ludicus]

Chapora Fort :
22 km's. from Panaji. The fort is made of red laterite and was built by the Portuguese in 1617, on the site of an earlier Muslim structure (the name Chapora is the corruption of the word "Shahapura" or "Town of the Shah"). Since it was basically built as a border watch post, it was later deserted by the Portuguese in 1892, as the borders of its empire extended farther north (known as New Conquests). The massive ramparts and scattered Muslim tombstones are all that is left of this fort. One can still see the heads of the two tunnels, that formerly provided the supply routes for the besieged defenders.

Terechol Fort
This fort is situated on the northern bank of the Terekhol river. It was built by the Raja of Sawantwadi and was captured by the Portuguese Viceroy, Dom Pedro de Alameida in 1746.The church and the fort were rebuilt then

Mormugão Fort,in ruins today.Its work started in 1624. It covered an area of six miles in circumference, contained towering bulwarks, three magazines, five prisons, a chapel and quarters for the guard. It had 53 guns and a garrison with 4 officers, and was an important fortress on the western coast. Unfortunately, except the chapel and a portion of the boundary wall, little is left of this fort.



Tivim Fort:With the help of the old forts, captured from Adil Shah, the Portuguese raised a formidable protective barrier along with some new fortresses from Colvale to Tivim. The major fort called Forto Novo de Tivim was built by the Count of Linhares in 1635.On March 5, 1739, Khem Sawant (Bhosle) scaled the walls of Colvale fort and captured it. A more terrible fate awaited the military officials at the Tivim Fort, which the Bhosle army captured in October 1739 in a bloody battle. The Bhosle army massacred several military officials, and it was only after the signing of a Treaty by the demoralized Portuguese with the Marathas on September 18, 1740, that the problem was bottled like the proverbial evil spirit. Of course, peace eventually ensured when the Portuguese captured Pernem in 1838.

Cabo da Rama Fort :
The fort derives its name from Rama, the protagonist of the epic Ramayana, who, accompanied by his wife Sita took refuge here during his exile from Ayodhya.
Possession of the fort changed hands many a time as dynasties fell and rose during the ages. In 1763 the Portuguese claimed the Cabo de Rama fort after defeating the Raja of Soonda and renovated it subsequently



.....The ruins....
Fortaleza de S.Tiago,Banastarim:


Baçaim Fortress
For the Portuguese, Diu was an important island to protect their trade, which they had to capture. While devising the means to capture Diu, Portuguese General Nuno da Cunha found out that the governor of Diu was Malik Ayaz whose son Malik Tokan was fortifying Bassein with 14,000 men. Nuno da Cunha saw this fortification as a threat. He assembled a fleet of 150 ships with 4000 men and sailed to Bassein. Upon seeing such a formidable naval power, Malik Tokan made overtures of peace to Nuno da Cunha. The peace overtures were rejected. Malik Tokan had no option but to fight the Portuguese. The Portuguese landed north of the Bassein and invaded the fortification. Even though the Portuguese were numerically insignificant, they fought with skill and valor killing off most of the enemy soldiers but lost only a handful of their own.
On 23 December 1534, the Sultan of Gujarat, signed a treaty with the Portuguese and ceded Bassein with its dependencies of Salsette,Mombaim (Bombay), Parel, Vadala, Siao (Sion), Vorli (Worli), Mazagao (Mazgao), Thana, Bandra,MahimCaranja.
Bassein during the Portuguese period was known for the refinement and wealth and splendor of it's buildings, palaces and for the beauty of it's churches. This Northern Province, included a territory which extended as far as 100kilometers along the coast,between Damao(Daman) and Mombaim (Bombay), and in some places extended for 30-50 kilometers inland. It was the most productive Indian area under Portuguese rule.
In 1719, the province of Bassein numbered about 60,000 inhabitants, of these were 2,000 Portuguese and 58,000 Christian Indians.

There were two medieval gateways, one on seaside called Porta do Mar with massive teak gates cased with iron spikes and the other one called Porta da Terra. There were ninety pieces of artillery, 27 of which were made of bronze and seventy mortars, 7 of these mortars were made of bronze. The port was defended by 21 gun boats each carrying 16 to 18 guns. This fort stands till today with the outer shell and ruins of churches.

Ruins:

[numerosdecimus]

The portuguese in the 18th century may not have the same generalized presence in India that they had during the 16th century, however it was still substancially strong and in the region of Goa they expanded greatly in all directions, especially inland.

[Ludicus]

The portuguese in the 18th century may not have the same generalized presence in India that they had during the 16th century, however it was still substancially strong and in the region of Goa they expanded greatly in all directions, especially inland

The Portuguese conquest of Goa

The Velhas Conquistas (the old conquests) :
Vasco da Gama landed in Calicut in 1498 on the the west cost of India, several hundred miles south of Goa, and thus became the first person to find a sea route from Europe to India around the Cape of Good Hope. The Portuguese were desperate to control the spice trade from India, then controlled by the Arabs, and needed a good port, which turned out to be Goa. In 1510, the Portuguese fleet under Afonso Albuquerque landed in Goa, only to be driven out by Adil Shah (of Bijapur) a few months later. Finally, later that year, the Portuguese with reinforcements, finally usurped Goa (Ilhas region) from Bijapur. In an apparent reprisal for his earlier defeat, Albuquerque ordered the massacare of its muslim inhabitants.By 1543, the Portuguese were able to extend their control over Salcette,Mormugao and Bardez, thus ending their first phase of expansion into Goa. The teritories of Ilhas, Salcette, Mormugao and Bardez formed part of the Portugal's "Velhas Coquistas" or Old Conquests, and formed only one fifthof the total area of modern Goa. With Portugal's command of the seas and its supremacy over the Arabs, Goa became the jewel of its eastern empire. By the end of the 16th century, Goa had already reached its peak and was referred to as "Golden Goa".

Christinization of the Velhas Conquistas:

With the influx of the Portuguese, came their religion. Under Albuquerque's rulecommerce was the primary factor governing Portuguese policy in India. As a result, the Portuguese were initially quite tolerant of the hindu religion,(although not as tolerant of the muslims). From 1540 onwards, under the influence of the Counter Revolution in Europe and with the arrival of the Inquisition in Goa, Portugal's liberal policy towards the hindus was reversed. Many hindu temples were razed and churches built on them; while the few muslims that were there were dispersed or disposed of. The characteristic Portuguese names that many christian Goans have today, is to a very small extent due to inter-marriage between the Portuguese and local Indians. Rather, the converts, were forced to adopt a Portuguese name, usually that of the priest responsible for their conversion.

Empire in Decline

By the mid 17th century, Goa's decline as a commercial port began to mirror the decline of Portuguese power in the East as a result of several military losses to the Dutch and the British.The Dutch had taken control over the spice trade - the original reason for Portugal's Eastern empire. Brazil had now supplanted Goa as the economic centre of Portugal's overseas empire. Having survived two naval assaults by the Dutch in 1603 and 1640, Goa was almost over run by the Marathas in 1683, but was then saved by the presence of a strong Mughal force that was planning to attack the Marathas in an other unrelated battle.

The Novas Conquistas(the new conquests):
In 1741, the Marathas invaded Bardez and Salsete and threatened the city of Goa itself. Fortunately for the Portuguese, a new viceroy, the Marquis of Lourical arrived with substantial reinforcements and defeated the Marathas in Bardez. But the valuable Portuguese territory of Bassein further up the coast was lost to the Marathas. During this period, the Portuguese got involved in several frontier wars which enabled them to extend their control over Ponda, Sanguem, Quepem, Canacona, Pernem, Bicholim and Satari. Hence, although Portugal lost a large number of its asian territories, Goa itself expanded.
This second (and final) phase of Portuguese expansion was rather different from their initial conquests. By the time these territories were added, the zeal for religious conversions had died down. In fact, the Portuguese mistrusting the Jesuits whom they viewed as being puppets of the pope in Rome, banned the order in 1759. By 1835, all religious orders were banned, while the hindu majority were "granted" the freedom to practice their religion. As a result, the "New Conquests" retained their hindu identity, a characteristic that persists until today.

[Ludicus]

In Africa both Angola and Moçambique gradually expanded and occupied further inland territory, there was a short conquest of the province of Mombassa.

Some important Fortresses,East and North Africa coast:

Mozambique fort
Portuguese trading posts and forts became regular ports of call on the new route to the east. 'Mozambique' first described a small coral island at the mouth of Mossuril Bay, then the fort and town on that island, São Sebastião de Moçambique, and later extended to the whole of the Portuguese colonies on the east coast of Africa. The square fort at the northern extremity of the island was built in 1510 entirely of ballast stone brought from Portugal






Ibo Fortress, (North),important port of call on the route to the east.





Forte of Jesus,Mombassa,Kenia
Fort Jesus was built after the Portuguese had been masters of the East African coast for nearly an hundred years.

It was in 1696 that a large Omani Arabs expedition reached Mombasa, from 13 March 1696 the fort was under siege, the fort had a garrison of 50-70 Portuguese soldiers and several hundred loyal coast Arabs. The fort was relieved in December 1696 by a Portuguese expedition, but in the following months a plague killed all the Portuguese of the garrison and by 16 June 1697 the defence of the fort was in the hand of Sheikh Daud of Faza with 17 of his family, 8 African men and 50 African women. On 15 September 1697 a Portuguese ship arrived with some reinforcement and also at the end of December 1697 another ship came from Goa with a few soldiers. After another year of siege, in December 1698, the Portuguese garrison was reduced to the Captain, 9 men and a priest (Fr. Manoes de Jesus). After a siege of two years and nine months the Omani Arabs took the fort. They could do this because the garrison was reduced to nine soldiers the others were death by disease. On the morning of 13 December 1698 the Omani Arabs did the decisive attack and took the fort, just seven days later a Portuguese relief fleet arrived at Mombasa, but it was too late. With the conquest of Fort Jesus the whole coast of Kenya and Tanzania with Zanzibar and Pemba fell to the Omani Arabs
The Portuguese retook the fort in 1728, because the African soldiers in the fort mutined against the Omanits, the Sultan of Pate to which was offered the fort handed the fort over to the Portuguese on 16 March 1728. In April 1729, the Mombasans revolted against the Portuguese and put under siege the garrison that was forced to surrender on 26 November 1729.
The Fort is today know as one of the best examples of 16th century Portuguese military architecture





North Africa,Mazagan,the Portuguese fortified City of Mazagan,until 1769:





Zanzibar,the Portuguese "Old Fort".
Spice island of Zanzibar lies off the coast of Tanzania,portuguese until c1700
The castle was built on the site of an old portuguese church (1550s)
Three cannons carrying the monograms of Kings Emmanuel and Joao 3rd (16th century), said to have been captured by Persian forces during the siege of Hormuz in 1622. In the southern part of the Stone Town of Zanzibar, between the neighbourhoods of Shangani and Vuga, at the sharp corner of the crossing of the Kanuda Road and Vuga Road, stands a beautiful (and perfectly preserved) stone arch which in all town maps is invariably referred to as the "Portuguese Arch"

[Ludicus]

Índia,Rachol Fort:
The fort situated on the crest of laterite hillock was crucial for Hindus, Muslims and Portuguese .With Portuguese control over the fort, the firepower was immediately enhanced and in the days of its power, the fort was protected by more than 100 guns.With Portuguese expansion, concern for territorial security became even more of a concern and new forts in new strategic locations were built. Recontructed in 1746;after the Portuguese abandoned the fort, the rate of decay accelerated and today it is no more than a ruin of the once glorious fort.
Little is visible of its original structure like the archways on the road to the Rachol Seminary.

[Agent Provocateur]

Very interesting, thread. It will be interesting to see hwo they represent Protugal in the game. I have to admit that I know (knew) little about Portuguese history in the 18th cent. I knew Portugal was our oldest ally, 1386 and the Treaty of Windsor apparently - though the details escape me
Being English all I really knew about this era tended to concentrate heavily on the end, or beginning of the next century via British involvement in the Peninsular War. Certainly if the Napoleonic wars come out as an expansion I can't wait to see the Cacadores in action http://www.napoleon-series.org/milit...cacadores.html

[numerosdecimus]

The portuguese military specialties at that time were light infantry, some light ranged cavalry, and the one specialization that never ceased to exist which was fortifications.

Even today civil engeneering is one of the best specialization in Portugal, for instance even MIT asked for some construction software we had in some universities.

During the 15th/16th there were intense preparations for fortifications, forts were pre built in Portugal, every stone was numbered, then the fort could be rebuild in just 4 to 8 days.

[Ludicus]

The portuguese military specialties at that time were light infantry, some light ranged cavalry, and the one specialization that never ceased to exist which was fortifications.

Even today civil engeneering is one of the best specialization in Portugal, for instance even MIT asked for some construction software we had in some universities.

During the 15th/16th there were intense preparations for fortifications, forts were pre built in Portugal, every stone was numbered, then the fort could be rebuild in just 4 to 8 days.

Well,that´s true.

For instance,they showed the Japonese how to build in stone,and it was because of that the damage inflicted on Nagasaki by the A-bomb in 1945,though appaling,was not much more so :




An example,S. Jorge da Mina or Elmina Castle was the first pre-cast building to have been planned and executed in sub - Saharan Africa.
King João II decided to build a fort on the coast in order to ensure the protection of this trade, which was once again held as a royal monopoly. King John sent all materials needed to build this fort from Portugal to the Gold Coast on ten caravels and two transport ships. The supplies, which included everything from heavy foundation stones to roof tiles, were sent in ready-made form along with provisions for six hundred men.
The Mozambique fort, the square fort at the northern extremity of the island of Mozambuique was built in 1510 entirely of ballast stone brought from Portugal.

[Ludicus]

Very interesting, thread. It will be interesting to see hwo they represent Protugal in the game. I have to admit that I know (knew) little about Portuguese history in the 18th cent. I knew Portugal was our oldest ally, 1386 and the Treaty of Windsor apparently - though the details escape me
Being English all I really knew about this era tended to concentrate heavily on the end, or beginning of the next century via British involvement in the Peninsular War. Certainly if the Napoleonic wars come out as an expansion I can't wait to see the Cacadores in action http://www.napoleon-series.org/milit...cacadores.html

Thank you, Agent Provocateur . You are right, the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance is the oldest alliance in the world which is still in force.
So, it´ s time to talk about

a ) political economy, c.1670-1703

b ) Methuen Treaty (1703), Portugal and the European Wars. (War of Spanish Succession)

…………………………………………………………………..

a) Political economy. c.1670-1703


Whilst the English were busied for centuries in raising the structure of their national prosperity upon the most solid foundations, the Spaniards and the Portuguese made a fortune rapidly by means of their discoveries and attained to great wealth in a very short space of time. But it was only the wealth of a spendthrift who had won the first prize in a lottery, whereas the wealth of the English may be likened to the fortune accumulated by the diligent and saving head of a family.
The discovery of America and of the route round the Cape only increased the wealth of both kingdoms after a specious and ephemeral fashion—indeed, by these events a death-blow was first given to their national industry and to their power. For then, instead of exchanging the produce of the East and West Indies against home manufactures, as the Dutch and the English subsequently did, the Spaniards and Portuguese purchased manufactured goods from foreign nations with the gold and the silver which they had wrung from their colonies.
Thus they promoted the industry, the trade, and the maritime power of the Dutch and English, in whom they raised up rivals who soon grew strong enough to destroy their fleets and rob them of the sources of their wealth.

Portugal, however, did make an attempt to develop her manufacturing industry, the first results of which strike us with astonishment.
Portugal, like Spain, had possessed from time immemorial fine flocks of sheep. Strabo tells us that a fine breed of sheep had been introduced into Portugal from Asia, the cost of which amounted to one talent per head.
When the Count of Ericeira became minister in 1681, he conceived the design of establishing cloth manufactories, and of thus working up the native raw material in order to supply the mother country and the colonies with home-manufactured goods. With that view cloth workers were invited from England, and so speedily did the native cloth manufactories flourish in consequence of the protection secured to them, that three years later (in 1684) it became practicable to prohibit the importation of foreign cloths.

From that period Portugal supplied herself and her colonies with native goods manufactured of home-grown raw material, and prospered exceedingly in so doing for a period of nineteen years, as attested by the evidence of English writers themselves.


It is true that even in those days the English gave proof of that ability which at subsequent times they have managed to bring to perfection. In order to evade the tariff restrictions of Portugal, they manufactured woollen fabrics, which slightly differed from cloth though serving the same purpose, and imported these into Portugal under the designation of woollen serges and woollen druggets. This trick of trade was, however, soon detected and rendered innocuous by a decree prohibiting the importation of such goods.

List, Friedrich, The National System of Political Economy

Edit: Later,Pombal's economic policies (1750-1777) were inspired by the protectionist doctrines of Colbert, which gave royal companies monopolies in certain fields. Following the initiatives in this regard established by the count of Ericeira, Pombal prohibited the export of gold and silver. In order to increase cereal cultivation, he prohibited the growing of grape vines in certain areas of the country. He protected the winemaking industry by founding, in 1756, a company with a monopoly on exporting port wine. Pombal created other companies with exclusive rights to commercial activities in various regions of Brazil, as well as a fishing and processing company for sardines and tuna in Portuguese waters. He transformed the silk industry into a textile industry.



Tomorrow:

b ) Methuen Treaty (1703), Portugal and the European Wars. (War of Spanish Succession)

[Ludicus]

Portugal and The treaty of Methuen

There were in all three treaties of 1703 that acquired the name "Methuen". Two “political treaties” were signed in May 1703; and one commercial treaty in December of the same year.

The first two collectively as the "political treaties" and individually as the "offensive" and “defensive”.

The first was the establishment of the war aims of the Grand Alliance(defensive)

Secondly the agreement meant that Spain would become a new theatre of war (ofensive)

The treaty also established the number of the troops the various countries would provide to fight the campaign in Spain.

Finally, it regulated the establishment of trade relations, especially between Britain and Portugal (trade)

Understandably in time of war, the almost forgotten political treaties of May 1703, which also bear Methuen's name, received much more attention.
Joining Portugal and its important safe harbours to the Grand Alliance, bringing Holland and England to Portugal's defence, and pledging on behalf of all the allies to install Archduke Charles instead of Philip of Anjou (Louis XIV's grandson and candidate) on the Spanish throne, the political treaties were of enormous immediate significance.

In 1713, when in the course of Anglo-French (rather than Anglo-Portuguese) negotiations around the Treaty of Utrecht, the English government casually sought to abandon the commercial treaty that Methuen had signed.
There were high-minded reasons for such a switch. Perennial enemies, England and France had continually wasted lives and money in fighting each other to a standstill. St. John in particular
believed that closer relations, particularly commercial relations, could end this:
The most certain way of preventing [enmity], is certainly an open and advantageous commerce between the two kingdoms. Nothing unites like “ interest".
In principle, an alliance with France could cut the Netherlands off from French markets and leave England well positioned to dominate international trade. With eyes on the main prize, the Tory's implicitly dismissed the significance of the Portugal trade, and that was a serious mistake

There believed that closer relations with France, particularly commercial relations, could end this:"......The most certain way of preventing [enemity], is certainly an open and advantageous commerce between the two kingdoms.Nothing unites like “ interest".
In principle, an alliance with France could cut the Netherlands off from French markets and leave England well positioned to dominate international trade.
With eyes on the main prize, the Tory's implicitly dismissed the significance of the Portugal trade, and that was a serious mistake.

The job went to Matthew Prior and Arthur Moore, who is credited (or blamed) for creating the commercial articles offered to France in the peace negotiations. ( In 1710,Moore´s had replaced Locke on the Commission of trade, the body overseeing British commerce whose founding members included John Locke and John Methuen )

Adept of the free trade, Moore's articles favoured the volume of trade over the balance of trade.That is, where the economics of the day had focused almost obsessively on the balance of trade between two countries, with a positive balance signalling a healthy economy and a negative balance malaise, Moore swept this issue aside inherently assuming that the volume of trade overrode concerns about the imbalance such trade might produce.
It was not until David Hume and Adam Smith transformed the field of economics some sixty years later that such a view became acceptable.
At the time being,any attempt to move towards free trade would have to confront the deep fear of returning to imbalance and a languishing economy; in general trade figures showed that England historically ran a deficit when it traded with France.

According The “British Merchant”, breaking with Methuen, in sum, would be from the point of view of the wool interest not only a mistake, but an irreversible mistake. Further, the paper argued, the loss of Portuguese outlets for wool would lead to a loss of the inflow of Portuguese gold, currency that circulated in and sustained many English wool towns. All of this would tip the balance of trade with Portugal from its healthy surplus to the dreaded deficit with its attendant evils of unemployment, loss of rents, and stagnation.”

For their part, the Portuguese faced unenviable choices both in 1703 when the Methuen commercial treaty was made and in 1713 when it was nearly abandoned.
Equally, they could protect their nascent textile industry, and lose their footing in Europe's greatest wine-importing market once a peace opened that market to French wines.
Or they could ensure privileged access to this market for wine, but in so doing surrender their future as a textile producer.
In 1713, they could support the Methuen, or they could support the Treaty of Utrecht, and see the French push them out of the English market.

Negotiations opened in Utrecht at the end of January 1711/12. England sent Matthew Prior.With numerous representatives from all parties, multilateral and bilateral negotiations lasted until the spring of 1712/13, at which point a treaty of peace along with a "Treaty of Navigation and Commerce" between England and France, following the lines set out by Moore two years before, went to London for ratification.

In public at least, the Tory Government was confident that the Treaty of Utrecht would be signed with all the commercial agreements intact, the allies (Portugal) set adrift, and lucrative trade with France opened.
Signs of trouble first arose when the new treaties were laid before the Queen's council in April.

One issue here turned out to be the Methuen commercial treaty, which the government's strategy had almost entirely overlooked.

The choice that the ministry wished to place before people's minds was the peace treaty with France or continued war.
The choice they found themselves unexpectedly wrestling with was articles VIII and IX of the commercial treaty (with France) or the continuation of the Methuen treaty (with Portugal):

VIII: Both sides [i.e. England and France] to have the same Favour in Trade as any foreign Nation the most favoured.
IX: Goods from France to pay no more Duty than the like Goods from any other part of Europe.

With these articles included, ratification of the treaty with France of 1713 would inevitably entail abrogation of the treaty with Portugal of 1703, for the preferential favours promised in the latter were incompatible with equality promised in the former.

The Portuguese government asked the Portuguese official envoy to England, José Brochado, to send a memorandum to Lord Dartmouth and Bolingbroke in early May pointing out the connection between the suspension of the “pragmatics” in Portugal and the preferential duties that Portuguese wines received under the Methuen treaty.
By reminding the English of the relationship between wool and wine this memorandum comes as close to a threat, however, as most diplomatic language ever comes.

Moreover, a number of almost contemporary English historians suggest not only that Brochado was making a threat, however diplomatically couched, but that it was an effective threat,not because it changed the minds of the ministry, but because it roused the English wool interest, making them see that an obscure bill adjusting wine duties for two months was a threat to their livelihood.
Slowly, the English wool interests--from weavers, and clothiers, and stockingers, to the great manufacturers who provided employment for them and the great landowners who maintained sheep to supply them--roused themselves to fight for their lucrative markets in Portugal.

Even so,on the 18th of June, a parliamentary bill to approve the eighth and ninth articles of the treaty commerce with France was given its final reading.

At the debate's end, by a margin of 185 to 194 the vote went against them.
"By so small a majority," Bishop Burnett wrote, "was a bill of such great importance lost".

The Methuen treaty was a little-known commercial pact that the ministers themselves, either by accident or design, ignored.

When they suffered their defeat in 1713, Methuen had been transformed into an unavoidable Ur-text of England diplomacy. Methuen himself had become a near sacred icon of these causes--a man who, as Charles King wrote, when he republished the British Merchant in 1721, "deserves to have his Statue erected in every Trading Town in Great Britain".
If the treaty can be said to have held a distinct and privileged place in the English imagination during most of the eighteenth and part of the nineteenth century, it was elevated to that position not in 1703, when the treaty was made, but in 1713 when it was saved from extinction.
St. John was probably right when he argued that if a free-trade treaty was to be successfully concluded, they would have to work, "More in the character of Statesmen, than of Merchants". But as we have seen, the statesmen were unable to overcome the power of the merchants and their allies.

In the case of the Methuen treaty, it seems that the material actions of merchants, manafacturers, clothiers, weavers, and perhaps the Portuguese,were important to the victory for the Methuen commercial Treaty in 1703.

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Some historians have different views of how long this treaty ran. And many disagree over what its effects (if any) were :
Among the pioneers who studied the impact of international relations are Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations and David Ricardo in The Principles of Political Economy and Taxation.

Adam Smith thought it was bad (for the British)
Adam Smith argued that industry and the wealth of nations relied on free trade and international competition.

David Ricardo suggests it was essentially good for both the British and the Portuguese.
Ricardo developed Adam Smith’s analysis of absolute advantage by exploring the concept of comparative advantage.According to him, even if one country is better at producing everything than another,there are still benefits from trade. Ricardo used Britain and Portugal to show that the overall wealth of the two nations increases if they specialize in those industries in which each has comparative advantage, such as textiles in the case of Britain and wine in the case of Portugal.

Those, like Sideri, without a British bias tend more readily to assume it was good for the British and disastrous for the Portuguese.

Francis is one of several authors who believe that the treaty did not have did not have much affect at all.

Excerpts:
Institutions, Leadership and Long-Term Survival
Teresa da Silva Lopes,Queen Mary, University of London.
The Making of Methuen:The commercial Treaty in the English Imagination
Paul Duguid,University of California,Berkely.

[Ludicus]

Portugal and the War of Spanish Succession

For Portugal, the Succession War began in 1704/05, with the landing of Archduke Karl and strong allied forces in both Valencia and Barcelona. The Habsburg effort was backed by the powerful English fleet, sizable contingents of German professional troops, the armed forces of Portugal, and Catalan and Valencian volunteers.
Truly important was the emotional, patriotic commitment of most Castilian people to the cause of Felipe V, which they identified with Castilian legitimacy and tradition. They were also motivated by a sense of rivalry with the Aragonese and Portuguese, and reacted to the presence of foreign Protestant troops, as well as Portuguese and Catalan soldiers, on Castilian soil.

Military operations on the Portuguese –Spanish frontier, starting in 1704, dragged on for eight years.With British assistance, Portugal withstood a Bourbon offensive in 1704, then participated in successful campaigns by the allies in Spain between 1705 and 1706.

In 1706 a Portuguese army, lead by Marquês de Minas, entered Madrid, where the Habsburg pretender, the Archduke Charles III, one of the Leopold ´s son was acclaimed king.
Charles III, however, was prevented from entering Madrid, by the excessive time he lost whilst receiving homage from those towns under Aragon which supported him, and was soon after defeated at Almansa, one of the most decisive engagements of the War of the Spanish Succession.
Frederick the Great would affirm that Almansa was as "the most scientific battle of our century".

The Battle:

1)Allied Army (Portuguese army : 14700 men: Anglo - Dutch army 4.200) lead by Marquês de Minas Dom António Luís de Sousa.
Commanders for the Allied side:Capitão General António Luiz de Sousa, Marquês da Minas / Tenente General Henry De Ruvigny, Count of de Galway

The army was a mainly Anglo-Portuguese force 18,000, with Dutch, German, and French Huguenot elements.
Portuguese army: 31 brigades/ 28 squadrons
Anglo-Dutch-German- Huguenot army: 11 brigades/ 32 squadrons

The left wing was made up of English and Dutch cavalry, plus a few squadrons of Portuguese; amongst these were placed some battalions of English infantry.
The centre was exclusively composed of infantry, English, Dutch, Portuguese and Huguenot elements
The right wing was formed of both infantry and cavalry and was exclusively Portuguese
Commander for the Borbonic: Berwick.
The Bourbon army of about 24,000 was composed of French and Spanish and Irish troops, with great cavalry superiority.
Despite of the initial success of the Allied left wing, the battle was decided by a skilfull maneuver that destroyed the Allied right wing and routed the entire Allied army.Thus, with Colonel Couto’s account showing no reproaches towards his cavalry, but rather, an understanding that they had to retreat to avoid being massacred.Only the Portuguese infantry holds, attacked by the three sides, and tries to retire fighting, and began an heroic withdrawal, trying to maintain its grouping. Only the resistence to the last man of a Portuguese Terço (Regiment) mitigated a bit the disaster andallowed some 5000 Allied survivors to retreat towards Catalonia. Count Dohna, a Portuguese general and Shrimpton with 2,000 were cut off in the mountains, in a nearby height (called since then Cerro de los Prisioneros or “Prisoner Ridge), withstood all assaults for two days but had to surrender on terms on the third day.

Within a few days after the end of the battle, all of the Kingdom of Valencia was lost for the Allied cause and the Duke of Anjou (the future Philip V of Spain) was firmly consolidated in the Spanish throne.
After 1707 the Portuguese front in western Spain lapsed into stalemate.
Portugal's anti-Bourbon allies failed to provide all the assistance promised, and peace (Treaty of Utrecht) was made in 1713.

This brought some advantages to Portugal, notably in Brazil where, in the north, Portuguese rights to both banks of the Amazon were recognized. (French claims being withdrawn), while in the south the frontier was extended to the River Plate Spanish claims to the colony of Sacramento being retired.
The Portuguese army of some 20,000 was transformed from the old proto-Spanish tercio organization of the seventeenth century into the more modern French regimental system, but altogether it was a very costly war.

De la Cerva, Ricardo; Historia Militar deEspaña”
Voltes,Pedro; La Guerra de Sucesión
Saraiva,J.H., “Portugal, a companion book”, ”History of Portugal”

[Ludicus]

Portuguese Navy 1700-1800

The period 1775-1805 was also the last era of prosperity in the Portuguese eastern trade. Between 1600 and 1775, there had been an annual average of scarcely more than two ships trading between Lisbon and Asia. From 1775 to 1805, the average ranged between ten and twenty, particularly after the French revolutionary wars of the 1790s restricted Dutch-Asian commerce.

Portuguese Atlantic trade routes c. 1760





Portugal began to rebuild its naval fleet between 1750 and 1800.This period marked, since the 16th century, the apogee of the revitalized navy.

Each eleven months were built three new warships

A new dry dock was constructed in Lisbon in order to repair the warships, a new Arsenal was founded in Baia, (Brazil) and the Arsenal of Goa (India) was reconstructed.

Admiral of the Fleet John Jervis, 1st Earl of St Vincent, wrote about the Portuguese warships which were lying in the Tejo River in Set 1807: "These ships, in general, were said to be in good repair; and as to construction, equal, if not superior to the British".


European ships of the line - 1795: (in the beginning of the European conflict)

Britain 115
France 80
Spain 60
Holland 50 *
Portugal 23 **
Russia 22
Denmark 12
Sweden 11

* The Dutch, although with a well- trained crew, were often handicapped by the smaller size of their ships relative the vessels of other nations, particularly England. This was due to the shallow home waters of the Netherlands.

** The Portuguese fleet had an optimal ratio between ships of line / frigates or corvettes : 1 / 3
(Better ratio = better ranking).
In other Navies: the habitual ratio was 1 / 1, 5

Portugal, size of fleet in 1800: 66 ships of war, 800 officers, 20,000 men.
Portugal, Spain and Denmark largely stopped building first –class and second - class ships of line during this time, under duress from the British, with the end of the sailing battleship's heyday in the 1830s. Eventually around half of Britain's ships of the line were 74s (third class) By the end of the 18th century, the rating system had mostly fallen out of common use, ships of the line usually being characterized directly by their number of guns, the numbers even being used as the name of the type, as in "a squadron of three 74s".

Excerpts:
Pereira, J., Campanhas Navais 1793-1807 Volume I - A Marinha Portuguesa na Época de Napoleão.
Nautical Chronical., Vol. 18 (1807), pp 229-330, The Maritime History Virtual Archives
Boxer, Charles R., O Império Marítimo Português 1415-1825
Pemsel H., A History of War at Sea: An Atlas and Chronology of Conflict at Sea from Earliest Times to the present

[ivan_the_terrible]

I know what the slave is thinking - give him a chop from behind with that halberd

[Ludicus]

The Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe-1500-1800

Europe controlled about 35% of the world’s land surface by 1800, a share which increased to 84% by 1914. However important post 1800 imperial expansion was, it was not the crux of the matter. What really counted was the way in which the first 35% was acquired, for it was there that Western Europe established its superiority.

As the fifteenth century gave way to the sixteenth, the Western European superiority at war was not yet apparent. This was in part because that superiority was just emerging; in part because it had not yet been tested beyond its point of origin; and in part because Western Europe’s neighbor to the east, the Ottoman Empire, had itself undergone a military transformation in the preceding half century, acquiring heavy siege guns, disciplined gunpowder armed infantry and a powerful fleet.
With the exception of the Persian War, intended only to hold the Safavids at bay, the Ottoman wars of expansion were decisive, short and, insofar as we can judge, cheap. They were the last of their kind.
The Ottomans posed a continuing threat to the West, but their failure to take Vienna in 1529 proved to be their high water mark.

Western expansion commenced with explosive suddenness at about the same time.
Despite their lack of demographic and economic resources, the Portuguese quickly established a rich maritime empire stretching from the Malabar Coast to Ormuz, the Straits of Malacca and the Spice Islands. After repelling local, Mamluk and Ottoman efforts to dislodge them, the Portuguese enjoyed a century of exclusionary dominance, yielding regional primacy to the Dutch and English only after another century of struggle.
During the same period Spanish conquistadors, carved out an empire of immense size and wealth in the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and Peru.
As with the Portuguese in the east, the main threat to Spanish power in the New World came not from indigenous arms but European interlopers.
In short, the turn of the sixteenth century can be viewed as the beginning of an extended era in which the dominant polities of Western Europe, after checking the expansion of Islam in Europe, determined by trial of arms how much of the rest of the world each would control.
The Andean armies which Francisco Pizarro and his men faced were armed almost entirely with wood and stone and lacked even an effective slashing weapon while contemporary Ottoman forces fought at no great technological disadvantage, if any.
Portuguese military culture, institutions and methods and those of their Spanish neighbors were formed in the same crucible: the 700 year Reconquista in which militant Christendom drove Islam from the Iberian peninsula.
Nor was the influence of the Reconquista confined to Iberia. After the election of Charles I of Spain as Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1529, the same Habsburg monarch controlled both Spain and Austria, causing exchanges of personnel and cross fertilization of ideas. When Charles was elected, German Landsknechts and gunners, the mainstay of Austrian Habsburg armies, had already been exposed to Spanish methods in the Wars of Italy for two decades. Spanish soldiers fought the Ottomans in the Balkans as well as the Mediterranean and were prominent in the defense of Vienna in 1529. At Lepanto Spanish infantes fought side by side with Landsknechts, Italian mercenaries in Spanish and papal service, and Venetian scapoli, and Lepanto was unusual only in scale.

Nor were exchanges of personnel and ideas within this community of arms confined to the land or to Europe. Among the men who sailed with Da Gama, Cabral and Albuquerque were men who had fought Moors and Turks in North Africa.
The Portuguese Magellan fought under Alfonso de Albuquerque in the capture of Malacca and circumnavigated the globe for the King of Spain; among the survivors of his expedition was the gunner Hans of Lübeck.
It is worth noting that the increased communication among the various Western military communities noted above was a new phenomenon.

The Military Revolution is generally understood as the product of a Europe to which the Ottomans were external, yet by the time they established their capital at Edirne, early in the fifteenth century the Ottoman Turks were arguably more a European power which happened to be Muslim than an “Eastern” (whatever that means) power which had gained a lodgment in Europe.
In fact, the Ottomans paralleled and at times anticipated the Military Revolution, notably in the early adoption of individual gunpowder weapons and in the creation of an elaborate, efficient and well articulated bureaucracy dedicated to the prosecution of war.
Moreover, there was a Muslim counterpart to the Christian community of arms outlined above: Ottoman soldiers and technicians seconded to the Mamluks were sent to the Red Sea to fight the Portuguese under an Ottoman commander, Salman Re’is, even before the Mamluks were overthrown; the famed North African corsair, Hayreddin Barbarossa, became Kapudan Pasha, Head Admiral of the Ottoman fleet; in the course of the sixteenth century, Janissaries were dispatched as far afield as Afghanistan and Algiers.
But the Turks ultimately fell behind. Their failure to match the innovations which emerged from the Wars of Italy was pivotal, but that is apparent only with the wisdom of hindsight. It was not at all clear until late in the seventeenth century – if even then – that the Ottomans were following an unsuccessful trajectory.
That the Ottomans would fail to anticipate the military challenges of the seventeenth century was by no means evident until well after the fact.
On learning of the Ottoman victory at Mohács, perceptive and well informed observers might well have been inclined to dismiss Spanish victories in the New World and Italy and Portuguese successes in the Far East as peripheral and put their money on the Turk.
The Infantry Revolution with developments in the technology and tactics of field warfare which began in certain regions of Western Europe around the turn of the fourteenth century, reached maturity in its last quarter. The pivotal actors were the English longbowman and Swiss halberdier and pikeman.
Before this revolution held armies were dominated, in tactical importance if not in numbers, by chivalric elites, specialists in mounted shock action who supported themselves on the proceeds of feudal land holdings and fought primarily to capture for ransom rather than kill. In consequence, battles tended to be relatively bloodless. Although missile troops were important in sieges, their role in battle was peripheral. After the revolution had run its course, the reverse was true on all points: field warfare was dominated by foot soldiers, commoners who served for pay and fought to kill; battles were bloody; missile weapons played an important role in battle and were at times decisive.
Perhaps the most important element of the infantry Revolution was the development by the Swiss of a combination of weapons and tactics which enabled infantry to deliver shock action with devastating impact and to maneuver in the field in the face of first class cavalry.
Though shock action was the essence of Swiss tactics, the pike squares were screened by crossbowmen, and later handgunners, to drive off enemy skirmishers and hold missile armed enemies at bay.
Swiss methods, imitated by the German Landsknechts and refined by the Spanish, laid the foundations of the modern army.
Interestingly, the Ottoman Janissary Corps, the only Islamic infantry elite of consequence from Muhammad’s day until modern times, paralleled the infantry Revolution.
Unlike Western infantry, however, the Janissaries never developed the ability to maneuver independently in the face of cavalry. Perhaps their system worked too well for too long and they became set in their ways.
The next precursor to European expansion was the development, between the last quarter of the fourteenth century and the last quarter of the fifteenth, of sailing vessels, navigational methods and systems of armament which made transoceanic navigation technically feasible and economically remunerative.
This revolution in seafaring emerged from the fusion of Atlantic and Mediterranean technologies to produce the ancestors of the early modern full rigged sailing ship.
These developments extended to all the maritime nations of Europe, though the pace varied from region to region.
The Iberians led the way and Portuguese and Spanish mariners reached Madeira and the Canaries early in the fourteenth century, but as a general proposition routine long range deep sea navigation was beyond the reach of Europeans prior to this revolution. After it had run its course the Iberians still led the way, but European mariners across the hoard possessed the wherewithal to traverse the oceans of the globe.
The caravels of the European voyages of Exploration, with hulls of Atlantic design and Mediterranean construction driven by a mix of Mediterranean lateen sails and Atlantic square sails, were an early product of that revolution.
The Portuguese three masted naus were another. From the nau came the carrack, lineal ancestor of the galleons of the mid sixteenth century and the ships of the line of the seventeenth and eighteenth which played so large a role in European expansion abroad.
Developments in ship design and construction were backed by advances in navigational theory and practice in which Portugal led the way.
At the turn of the fifteenth century, the best nautical charts were sufficiently accurate only for use in the relatively benign conditions of the Mediterranean.
By the last decade of the century, the Portuguese possessed charts sufficiently accurate to support navigation between known points on the Atlantic coasts when used by a skilled navigator in combination with dead reckoning and daily latitude determinations by cross staff.
Of equal importance was the adoption and progressive development of gunpowder ordnance for use afloat: from this point on Chinese and Arab ships and mariners might rival their European counterparts in long range navigation, but they could not in fighting potential.
Guns were used on ships almost as soon as they appeared in Europe, but they were at first light pieces with little more power than bows.
The first guns which had sufficient power to do serious structural damage to ships or seaside fortifications to be routinely mounted on ships were the main centerline bow guns of Mediterranean war galleys around the middle of the fifteenth century.
The weight and recoil of heavy ordnance taxed the structures of ships and forced innovation, first evident in the appearance of sliding carriages for main centerline bow guns about 1500 and in the appearance of the lidded, watertight gunport on sailing vessels shortly thereafter. The latter development was of crucial importance in making it possible to permanently mount heavy guns low in the hulls of seagoing vessels where their weight would trot compromise stability.
The first ships built with a main battery of heavy guns mounted low in the hull behind lidded, watertight gunports were laid down no earlier than the first decade of the sixteenth century.
Next came a revolution in heavy gunpowder ordnance on land which began in the 1420s, apparently in France, England and Flanders, spread from there, and was largely complete by mid century. The “Artillery Revolution” was the product of connected developments in the techniques of positional warfare, gunfounding and powder manufacture, to name but a few ( eg. improved methods of cannon construction, the introduction of corned powder, ordnance of cast bronze)
The next major transformation in European warfare was a revolution in siegecraft and fortification sparked by the power and mobility of the siege train which Charles VIII brought to Italy in 1494.
Shot for shot, the huge bombards of the mid fifteenth century were more powerful than the largest of Charles’ guns. What was new was the mobility of the French cannon, their numbers, the speed with which they fired and the skill of their gunners.
In the event, the advantage which the French derived from the excellence of their artillery was short lived; its main historical importance stems from the revolution in fortification design it unleashed.
The hallmark of this revolution was the trace italienne fortress with its sunken profile.
The key events were the siege of Pisa and Padua and the unsuccessful Ottoman attempt at Corfu in 1537 which showed that a fortress built according to the lessons of Pisa and Padua and competently defended by a small garrison could not be quickly reduced even by the most powerful of foes.
This revolution in positional warfare ended the expansion of gunpowder empires which the Artillery Revolution had sparked. It also provided an economical means of defense for European ports and factories overseas.
The revolution in positional warfare was paralleled by a revolution in tactics.
The Spanish transformed themselves from a predominately light cavalry force adapted to the arid, rolling terrain of southern Spain into a balanced force of pikemen, arquebusiers and cavalry which could take on any army in the world. Infantry was the key element.
Tactical and administrative innovation went hand in hand in the emergence of the columna and the tercio, the first modern permanent fighting organizations of mixed arms.
Ironically, the larger implications of the Combined Arms Revolution can be seen most clearly in a battle which never occurred. After the Ottoman failure to take Vienna in 1529, Sultan Suleiman led his army west again in 1532. Suleiman’s refusal to engage the Habsburg army in 1532 marked the maturation of European methods of land warfare.
It was the developments which culminated in the indecisive 1532 campaign which Sir Charles Oman, writing over a century ago, termed the military revolution of the sixteenth century.
Many years would pass before Ottoman imperial armies returned to the borders of Austria, and when they did it was in much less threatening fashion than in 1529.

Excerpts from:
Guilmartin,J.F “The Military Transformation of Early Modern Europe-1500 1800”

[Ludicus]

The Portuguese Trade with Asia 1600-1800

The decade of the 1630s witnessed catastrophic losses for the Portuguese country traders at the hands of the VOC. One Portuguese source estimated their losses between 1629 and 1636 at some 155 ships destroyed or captured, besides goods worth 7.5 million xerafins (=5.62 million cruzados) lost.

This, however, does not imply, as is sometimes assumed in the literature, that the private Portuguese trade from India practically came to an end around this time.

The 1640s were a peaceful decade for Dutch- Portuguese relations which was a positive factor in the Portuguese merchants’ trade from Nagapattinam. However, the Dutch pass policy forced a movement away from the Malay peninsular ports. But this turned out to be only temporary and, following a relaxation in the Dutch policy, trade with these ports was resumed in the 1670s. The loss of Nagapattinam to the Dutch in 1658 indeed constituted a setback to the Portuguese trade from Coromandel.

But their response was to relocate themselves in large numbers at the port of Porto Novo to the north, which over the last quarter of the seventeenth century emerged as a major country trading port.

As opposed to the dismal period from 1640-1663, when the Carreira da India was virtually moribund and contact between Lisbon and Goa was interrupted for years at a time, a regular seaborne trade between the metropolis and India was definitively re-established’ from 1668 onward when Prince Regent Pedro assumed power in a palace coup.

An analysis on the basis of information available in the Dutch shipping lists of the ownership pattern of the ships, excluding Company ships and small coastal craft, that left this port between 1681-2 and 1685-6 for various Asian destinations shows that the Portuguese were a major group of merchants owning ships and operating from this port.

The number of ships departing and owned by this group was seven out of a total of nineteen in 1681-2, six out of fourteen in 1682-3, six out of ten in 1683-4 and 1684-5, and seven out of fourteen in 1685-6. The single most important ship-owner amongst the Portuguese was one Manuel Teixeira Pinto.

By far the most important port of destination for the Portuguese shipping from Porto Novo was Acheh, followed by Pegu, Malacca, Goa and Manila.
The Portuguese merchants’ trade from Bengal too survived their expulsion from the port of Hugli in 1632.

Francois Bernier noted the existence of a prosperous Portuguese mercantile community in Hugli in 1666. It included substantial traders and shippers such as Joao Gomes de Soto, who had the Bandel church at Hugli rebuilt, and who traded not merely on his own account, but also had close relations with the English Company.

The Dutch shipping lists for the ports of Hugli and Balasore, pertaining to the last quarter of the seventeenth and the early years of the eighteenth century, do contain the names of several Portuguese merchants, ships on whose account arrived at and departed from the two ports over this period. The scale of this shipping would, however,seem to be somewhat smaller than that from southern Coromandel.
The Portuguese merchants based at partner ports also carried on a certain amount of trade with ports on both the east and the west coasts of India.

During the eighteenth century, by far the most important group of these merchants was the one based at Macao.
The growing problems faced by this group in the early years of the century in the neighbouring markets of the South China Sea forced it to turn increasingly to markets in the Indian Ocean. An analysis of the Dutch shipping lists, as well as the information available in the English Company records for the period 1719 to 1754, shows that Portuguese ships called with varying frequency at the ports of Bengal, at Madras and Nagapattinam on the Coromandel coast, at Cochin, Tellicherry and Anjengo on the Malabar coast, and at Surat.

Some of these ships, particularly those calling at Surat, are known to have in fact been owned by Asian merchants flying the Portuguese flag for convenience.
By far the most important ports of call for the genuine Portuguese shipping were Cochin, Tellicherry and Madras.
Over the period 1719 to 1754, Portuguese shipping called at Cochin regularly between 1723 and 1742 except in 1733, with the number of ships each year varying between two and six. Between one and four of these ships were Macao based.
From the early 1740s onward, the main Malabar port of call was Tellicherry, with the number of ships in a year often being as many as six and reaching the top figure of eight in 1749. This shipping was also dominated by that from Macao.
The principal commodity carried to Malabar was Chinese sugar which was exchanged there mainly against pepper and sandalwood. In the case of Madras, the only years between 1719 and 1754 when Portuguese shipping did not call at the port were 1734, 1741, 1747 to 1749, and 1754. The numbers each year, however, were generally more modest than those at Cochin and later Tellicherry, varying between one and five.
Most of these ships were also Macao based.

The emergence in the second half of the eighteenth century of English private traders as major competitors in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea undoubtedly affected the trade of the Macao merchants adversely. But this did not prevent them from continuing to be an important segment of the trading community in the region.

By virtue of being the discoverers of the Cape route to the East Indies, its sole users during the sixteenth century and continuing their presence in the Indian Ocean until the end of the eighteenth century, the Portuguese played the role of the pioneer in facilitating the emergence and the growth of the early modern world economy. They were able to play this role with the active assistance and cooperation of various international consortiums and syndicates as well as merchant networks both in Europe and in Asia.

It was one of the most notable Dutch rulers in the Indies who wrote of the Portuguese that “the greater number regard India as their fatherland, thinking no longer of Portugal…as though they were natives and knew no other fatherland.”

Hence the stubborn and prolonged Portuguese resistance to the assaults of the better-found and better-organized naval power of the Dutch; hence too, together with Albuquerque's conscious policy of integration by miscegenation, the much more marked cultural impression left by the 150 years of Portuguese rule in littoral Ceylon compared with that of the succeeding 150 years of Dutch rule.

Excerpts:
1-“International Consortiums, Merchant Networks and Portuguese Trade with Asia in the Early Modern Period” Om Prakash, Delhi School of Economics University of Delhi.-XIV International Economic History Congress, Helsinki, 21-25 August 2006.


2- "The Pacific since Magellan", Volume I O. H. K. Spate

3 - The “Carreira da India”,1668-1682: maritime enterprise and the quest for stability in Portugal’s Asian empire’, The Journal of European Economic History, vol. 20(1), 1991, pp.7-27).

[Ludicus]

Eighteenth-Century, national and international merchant networks

In 1737, the receiver-general of Cornwall stated that “now and for many years past the importation of Portugal gold coin hath been so great in Cornwall that very little specie of any other kind is to be with there”.

In the 18th century, Lisbon and Cadiz re-established their position as the main trading centres for products originating from South America.
If, during the last quarter of the 17th century, sugar from Brazil had ceased to dominate international trading circuits, thereby plunging the Portuguese Atlantic empire into an economic crisis, the outbreak of mining activity aroused the colony from this lethargy and relaunched the economy on an entirely new basis.

At the same time, the diplomatic negotiations imposed by the circumstances of the war of the Spanish Succession reinforced Lisbon’s position in international trade circuits by forcing Portugal to align with England and Holland.

Thus, both the colonial economy, reinvigorated by the new “cycle of gold”, and these diplomatic negotiations succeeded in once again placing Lisbon firmly on the list of capitals that were highly attractive for the setting up of trading houses.

Lisbon and Porto were Portuguese cities that recorded a high rate of growth in the 18th century - Porto because of the special concessions afforded to Portuguese wine under the terms of those treaties signed in 1703.
For this reason, the convoy system that governed the sailing to Brazil not only reinforced the centrality of Lisbon as the port from which the escorted fleets set sail and arrived, but it also justified the fact that many of the large trading houses, both foreign and Portuguese, integrated the two cities in the foreign trade circuits.

The ambassador Lord Tyrawly guaranteed Newcastle in a letter written in 1752 that “a great body of his Majesty’s subjects reside at Lisbon, rich, opulent and every day increasing their fortunes and enlarging their dealings”

However, the logic of the colonial monopoly rent presupposed difficulties for the infiltration of these merchants into Brazil.

Illicit flows, taking place in the fringes of what was legally permitted, had their own informal institutions, where decorum and discretion were meant to be the order of the day. The ambassador Lord Tyrawly was surprised by the behaviour of certain merchants who spoke publicly of the cash that they had embarked on ships setting sail for England, “as little secrecy send it on board as they do a chest of oranges”.

These improper displays of ostentatious behaviour gave rise to imprecise information that began to circulate in the press, and, for this reason, there may have been a surprise when, in 1769, the minister Lyttleton and the Board of Trade undertook a detailed review of the balance of Anglo-Portuguese trade for previous years and discovered that both the volume and the surplus of the English balance of trade had been regularly exaggerated in the popular mind.

The discovery of the gold mines and the intensification of trade caused the Portuguese crown to take successive steps towards limiting the access of foreigners to the colonial market.Included under this objective was the ban on English ships from joining the Portuguese fleets, a measure that, despite the protests, was nonetheless carried through.
In keeping with the same aim, the crown ordered the expulsion of the English citizens that were resident in the colony, bringing an end to the concessions that had been awarded under the treaty of 1654.

The action of the Portuguese crown, which was marked during the first half of the 18th century by the systematic imposition of restrictions (without, however, calling into question the principles and privileges that had been established in the treaties), ended up achieving positive results.

Foreign merchants were obliged to negotiate with Brazil by using Portuguese merchants as their intermediaries: Boxer wrote:” by about 1730 at any rate, the British merchants at Lisbon and Oporto were trading to Brazil mainly if not entirely through Portuguese merchants resident there”.

The vast majority of transactions with Brazil were in the hands of the Portuguese merchants, just as the control of the trade with Europe largely belonged to foreign merchants. The social segmentation of these global flows suggests that cultural differences contributed to reinforce the political aim of keeping the foreigners out of the colonial monopoly.

In 1751, the foreign merchants who participated in the fleets resorted predominantly to agents who returned to the metropolis bringing gold with them.
In the view of the Marquis of Pombal these travelling agents were seen as cover-men, hence a definite target. They were banned from taking part in the fleets by letter patent of 6 December 1755.
The law decreed a ban on the export of precious metals, but at the same time their flow out of the country was seen as inevitable.

For this reason, whenever there was any seizure of gold, which was the most abundant of the two precious metals in Lisbon, the English complained that such action was totally unjust, arguing that they were merely exporting money that naturally resulted from the “balance” of their trade. The Portuguese, however, evoked the law, claiming that these were cases of smuggling.

But it was not only gold that circulated in the fleets between Brazil and Portugal. Silver arrived in Portugal as a result of the illegal trade carried out through the Colony of Sacramento.
Such silver was the fruit of smuggling, but on this occasion a form of smuggling to which the crown lent its support.

In fact, while the establishment of the Portuguese in areas close to the River Plate, achieved in 1680 with the foundation of the Colony of Sacramento, was intended to give greater dynamism to trade with Brazil, it was also a move that sought, above all, to provide access to the silver that was of such great importance to the Portuguese realm.
The trade that was carried out from there was far too important for the merchants of Brazil and the metropolis to even think about losing the colony of Sacramento.

The interest that Portugal placed in this space was shared by other European powers, especially those that found in the colony an outlet for their manufactures and a gateway to the vast regions of the Bourbon Empire, receiving, most importantly, silver in return.
The local population, in its turn, found in these dealings that provided an alternative to the official Spanish trade an advantageous way of supplying themselves with products at lower prices.
These were therefore sufficient reasons for engaging in an intense smuggling activity that transformed the southern region of Brazil into an economic complex that was integrated into international trade circuits through the port of Rio de Janeiro.
This was a business in which the Portuguese trading houses largely participated.

The goods that were being sent to the colony were, above all, textiles, thus fulfilling the predictions of a Portuguese sergeant-major at the beginning of the 18th century: “The people of these Indies, being rich in silver, are extremely poor in clothes; having the road open, the remedy at their doors and the naturally urgent need, and seeing themselves without hindrance and free of fear, they will send us silver to cover themselves with our clothes”.

In this trading circuit, Rio de Janeiro served as the gateway for the arrival of merchandise originating from Lisbon, thereafter acting as the distribution centre for these same goods southwards, depending on the conditions of the market.
It is not surprising that, between 1748 and 1754, one of the largest importers registered at the Lisbon customs, invested 400 thousand réis in cargoes that were not destined for Rio de Janeiro, but for Buenos Aires instead. This case highlights the importance of colonial Spanish market as an outlet for the products imported into Lisbon.

The l780s and l790s were a time of greatly increased commercial prosperity.
Cotton had become a major new export from Brazil. In England, at the end of the eighteenth century there was an increasing demand for Brazilian products, chiefly sugar and cotton (during the Independence War) and the balance of exchange was reversed in favor of Lisbon. For a few years all the increased supply came from Brazill, while wine exports to Britain almost doubled. For the first time since 1740, the balance of trade with Britain began to run in Portugal’s favor, with credits in 1790-1792 and 1794-1795. The trading stations and fortresses on the Angolan coast of West Africa became increasingly valuable, as the volume of the slave trade to Brazil mounted.


Excerpts from:
“Merchant networks and the Brazilian gold: reappraising national abilities”.
Costa,L.F.; Rocha, M.M. Lisbon – Technical University Social Sciences Department – History.
Pereira , A. The Economic Impact of the 1755 Lisbon Earthquake
Page , M. The first global village
“The Cotton Plant” ,1922

[Ludicus]

As important as it was,gold....

As important as it was, gold was certainly not the only colonial resource that generated substantial revenues to the state.
The duties on the fleets and the monopoly of Brazil wood, for instance, amounted to 200 millions reis in 1716, which was almost 60% of the proceeds of the one-fifth tax on gold.

Then, in 1730s, the gold was joined by the precious stones.
Long established Brazilian exports, such as hides and sugar, also contributed substantially to the government revenues.
The Brazilian exports benefited from the disruption of caused by the War of Spanish Succession.
Although sugar continued to play a prominent part as a source of public income it was surpassed by tobacco, one of the most important resources for the Portuguese crown during. The financial role of tobacco was further enhanced in the last third of the century; after 1763, the monopoly of tobacco trade produced around 17% of the total receipts of the royal treasure with customs tariffs raising the percentage by 3%. (one - fifth of the Portuguese revenue)
Altogether, this meant that Brazil alone generated 40% of the royal income.
Colonial territories on other continents made additional contributions.

The eastern trade still produced valuable receipts (even though its golden age was long gone), some 150 millions reis each year.

As for the African dominions, the contract for the collection of duties on the export of slaves and ivory from Angola, grew during the 18th century exceeding 90 million reis in1760s.

After the American War of Independence, and most of all after the European wars that arose from the French Revolution, Portugal benefited from the problems that befell other colonial powers and its overseas possessions.
In addition to direct trade, which formed 40% of total trade, it supplied half of the exports to foreign nations and was responsible for one-fourth of the imports from aboard, which were re-exported to the dominions.
Its ability to re-export the products of his colonies gave Portugal a decisive edge in its commerce.

Despite the fact that Portugal continued to hold colonies in Africa and Asia after the Independence of Brazil in 1822, the economic heart of the empire had been lost.
Portugal was forced to confront his future without the vast resources of empire, or at least with far more modest ones.
What remains impressive about the colonial enterprise is not that it was virtually lost but that Portugal held it for so long.
Whatever its economics effects, the empire imbued Portugal with a sense of greatness and throughout its history enabled its rulers to elicit consideration from its friends and rivals that helped to determine the nations course.
“The economy of the Portuguese Empire”, S. B. Schwartz
“Costs and Financial trends in the Portuguese empire 1415,-1822”

[Captain Jin]

The historical fiction I was speaking of was one of the books from the Sharpe's series. But there might have been bias on the part of the author.

I appreciate the response, sorry I didn't read the entire thread. I picked through quite a bit but you have done quite a job of putting a deal of information here. Thanks again.