History of Madeira
[1] However, because of “widespread trade routes, a mouse from Scandinavia could easily have boarded a ship in what today is Portugal and sailed over to Madeira, as well as the Azores” (as pointed out by the geographer Simon Connor).
The geographer concludes that there is no evidence of a Scandinavian settlement or sighting of the islands and that the Portuguese were the ones that brought those mice from northern Europe to Madeira.
[citation needed] In 1419 two captains of Prince Henry the Navigator, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, were driven by a storm to the island they called Porto Santo, or Holy Harbour, in gratitude for their rescue from shipwreck.
The next year an expedition was sent to populate the island, and, Madeira being described, they made for it, and took possession on behalf of the Portuguese crown, together with captain Bartolomeu Perestrello.
Arkan Simaan relates these discoveries in French in his novel based on Azurara's chronicle: L’Écuyer d’Henri le Navigateur, published by Éditions l’Harmattan, Paris.
[2] In 1425 King John I officially made Madeira a full province of Portugal, handing it as a gift to Henry the Navigator.
Three strapping young nobles were sent to marry Zarco's daughters, and members of some of Portugal's grandest families came along to help increase the population.
Later on, settlers came in big numbers from the north of Portugal, due to overpopulation, namely from the region of Entre Douro and Minho, who intervened specifically in the organization of the agricultural area.
[3][4] The majority of settlers were fishermen and peasant farmers, who willingly left Portugal after it had been ravaged by the Black Death, and where the best farmlands were strictly controlled by the nobility.
According to a Portuguese legend, Polish King Władysław III survived the Battle of Varna (although the Ottomans claimed to have his head, his body in royal armor was never found) and later settled in Madeira.
He was known there as Henrique Alemão (Henry the German) and married Senhorinha Anes (the King of Portugal was his best man), who gave him two sons.
The production of sugarcane attracted adventurers and merchants from all parts of Europe, especially Italians, Basques, Catalans, Genoese, Portuguese and Flemish.
This meant that, in the second half of the fifteenth century, the city of Funchal became a mandatory port of call for European trade routes.
Columbus married the daughter of Bartolomeu Perestrello, Filipa Moniz, in Porto Santo and so was well aware of the profits to be made.
In Madeira it became evident that a warm climate, winds to work windmills for sugar crushing and easy access to the sea (for transportation of the raw sugar to Europe) were, together with slave labour, important components in what became a huge and highly profitable industry, which funded industrialisation and European expansion.
Many of them were sold to the more appealing American colonies and few that remained became house servants for aristocrats or fed the indigent and criminal class.
Alberto Vieira, a highly respected expert in trans-Atlantic slavery, states that in the period of a deteriorated sugar trade in Madeira "the records show a high slave concentration in the urban areas revealing that we are faced with slavery of a domestic nature, with little or no relation to rural life."
[11][12][13][14] In conclusion, this small scale of sugar production in the island was completely outmatched by Brazilian and São Tomean plantations.
The English traders settled in the Funchal as of the seventeenth century, consolidating the markets from North America, the West Indies and England itself.
[15][16] In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, visitors to the island integrated four major groups: patients, travellers, tourists and scientists.
The first tourist guide of Madeira appeared in 1850 and focused on elements of history, geology, flora, fauna and customs of the island.
[17][18] The British Empire occupied Madeira as a result of the Napoleonic Wars, a friendly occupation which concluded in 1814 when the island was returned to Portugal.
In 1856, British troops recovering from cholera, and widows and orphans of soldiers fallen in the Crimean War, were stationed in Funchal, Madeira.
[19][20] When, after the death of king John VI of Portugal, his usurper son Miguel of Portugal seized power from the rightful heir, his niece Maria II, and proclaimed himself 'Absolute King', Madeira held out for the Queen under the governor José Travassos Valdez until Miguel sent an expeditionary force and the defence of the island was overwhelmed by crushing force.
When news of the overture leaked in April 1918, Charles denied involvement until the French Prime Minister Georges Clemenceau published letters signed by him.
Determined to prevent a restoration attempt, the Council of Allied Powers had agreed on Madeira because it was isolated in the Atlantic and easily guarded.
Salazar's decision to stick with the oldest alliance in the world, cemented by the Treaty of Windsor (1386) between Portugal and England (still in force today), meant that the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance allowed Madeira to take in refugees on a humanitarian basis; in July 1940, around 2,000 Gibraltarian [30] evacuees were shipped to Madeira due to the high risk of Gibraltar being attacked by either Spain or Germany; the Germans had planned but never initiated an attack on the British colony, code-named Operation Felix.
He stated "I also request that the problem of occupying Madeira and the Azores should be considered, together with the advantages and disadvantages which this would entail for our sea and air warfare.
[33] In 2008, a monument was made in Gibraltar and shipped to Madeira, where it has been erected next to a small chapel at Santa Caterina park in Funchal.
During most of that time, from 1978 to 2015 (37 years), the regional government was headed by Alberto João Jardim, making him one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world.
