Abstract
Three basic trends characterized the economy of imperial Portugal during the last years of the seventeenth century: the beginning of economic recovery after years of recession, the growing dominance of wine and Brazilian tobacco within the national economy, and the continuing shortages of basic foodstuffs. Economic recovery had become increasingly evident after the devaluation of the currency in 1688, though the production of wine and tobacco increased even during the depths of the 1670–1690 recession. These two products were to be among the most important contributors to a revitalized Portuguese economy. Yet, even as the metropolitan economy emerged from years of stagnation, Portugal still found itself very much dependent on other nations for such vital items in the national diet as wheat and codfish. As we will see in the next chapter, Portugal’s post-1690 resurgence owed much to rising production in its Atlantic colonies, especially Brazil.
The Revenues of the Kingdom are so very great that did they all come into the King’s hands, he would be one of the richest Princes in Europe.
The Rev. John Colbatch, Chaplain to the English Factory in Lisbon (1700)
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Notes
Ralph Davis, The Rise of the Atlantic Economies (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973), p. xiii.
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System (New York: Academic Press, 1974), p. 348. For Portugal’s crucial role in the rise of the “modern world system,” see pp. 38–50.
Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, p. 350. As a corollary to this, periods of decline (for example, 1670–1690) tend to increase concentrations of capital in economically stronger core states. Immanuel Wallerstein, “Underdevelopment and Phase-B: Effect of the Seventeenth-Century Stagnation on Core and Periphery of the European World Economy,” in Walter L. Goldfrank, ed., The World-System of Capitalism: Past and Present (London: Sage Publications, 1979), p. 75.
It should be noted that barrels and other containers for wine, olive oil, and other such products also had a place in the export picture and their manufacture increased as commodity shipments rose. This, as discussed in chapter III, led to conflict between prosperous coopers trying to corner the market on wood and their less fortunate brethren. Andrade e Silva, Collecção, 10:461. For a contemporary view of Portuguese commerce (which is especially valuable for the wide range of imported products it lists), see Florentino Bonaccorsi, “O Comércio dos portos de Lisboa, Setúbal e Pôrto nos fins do século XVII, conforme um documento italiano da mesma /epocaχ‡σλ† Boletim da Sociedade de Geografia de Lisboa, series 53, 9–10 (September–October, 1935):337–45.
Virginia Rau, A Exploração e o Comércio do Sal de Setúbal (Lisbon: Instituto para a Alta Cultura, 1951), p. 29.
Virginia Rau, “Os Holandes e a exportação do sal de Setúbal nos fins do século XVII,” Revista Portuguesa de Historia 4 (1950):60–65.
Myriam Ellis, O Monopólio do Sal no Estado do Brasil (1631–1801) (São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo, 1955), pp. 47–51, 145–51.
Joel Serrão, “Em Torno da economia madeirense de 1580 a 1640,” Das Artes e da História da Madeira 1 (1) (1950):22–23.
BA, 44-XIV-1, fl. 274. Sugar cultivation for local use continued, however, and surpluses were usually exported to France or the Netherlands. T. Bentley Duncan, Atlantic Islands (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1972), p. 72.
Fortunato de Almeida, História de Portugal, 6 vols. (Coimbra: Imprensa da Universidade, 1922–1929), 5:325–26.
J. A. Pinto Ferreira, Visitas de Saúde às Embarcações Entradas na Barra do Douro nos Séculos XVI e XVII (Oporto: Câmara Municipal, 1977), pp. 320–21. Although slaves were annually brought from Brazil to Portugal, other such shipments to Oporto are not listed in Pinto Ferreira’s study.
S. Sideri, Trade and Power: Informal Colonialism in Anglo-Portuguese Relations (Rotterdam: Rotterdam University Press, 1970), p. 35.
Alan K. Manchester, British Preëminence in Brazil (Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press, 1933), p. 24.
General discussion of England and the wine trade can be found in A. D. Francis, The Wine Trade (London: A. and C. Black, 1972).
Franz-Paul de Almeida Langhans, Apontamentos para a História de Azeite em Portugal (Lisbon: Tipografia Portuguesa, Lda., 1949), pp. 141–42, 146.
H. E. S. Fisher, The Portugal Trade: A Study of Anglo-Portuguese Commerce 1700–1770 (London: Methuen and Company, 1971), p. 7.
BNL, Fundo Geral, 510, fl. 214v. This price per alquiere was nearly four times the normal price. Godinho, “Portugal and Her Empire, 1680–1720,” p. 527. (In Lisbon, 1 alquiere equaled 13.8 liters, and 60 alquieres equaled 1 moio.) Tentative conclusions on the demographic effects of grain shortages in Portuguese Estremadura can be found in U. M. Cowgill and H. B. Johnson, Jr., “Grain Prices and Vital Statistics in a Portuguese Rural Parish, 1671–1720,” Journal of Bio-Social Science 3 (1971):321–29.
On this, see Harold A. Innis, The Cod Fisheries (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1940), chapters 2–5.
V. M. Shillington and A. B. W. Chapman, The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal (London: Routledge and Sons, 1907[?]), p. 212.
For a discussion of the expansion of the Brazilian whaling industry, see Myriam Ellis, A Baleia no Brasil Colonial (São Paulo: Edições Melhoramentos, 1969).
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© 1981 University of Minnesota
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Hanson, C.A. (1981). Economic Expansion and Foodstuff Shortages. In: Economy and Society in Baroque Portugal, 1668–1703. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-05878-5_8
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