Jácome Ratton

He published his Memoirs (Recordaçoens) in 1813 in exile in London, which remain a significant source on Portuguese economic life in the period.

His Memoirs stress the importance of this – he is highly critical of the backwardness of the Portuguese mercantile classes, who he said hardly used double-entry bookkeeping and were generally unbusiness-like in their ways.

He invested in sea-salt making at Alcochete, near his country estate, and was also responsible for introducing the eucalyptus to Portugal (a rather mixed blessing), as well as the Araucaria ("monkey-puzzle tree").

Ratton was made a Knight of the Order of Christ (who had opposed his mill at their headquarters in Tomar) and ennobled as a nobleman of the royal household.

He lived in Lisbon in the neo-classical Ratton Palace, near his hattery, which (partly remodelled by his son Diogo) is now the home of the Portuguese Constitutional Court, with a large country estate at Barroca d’Alva on the Tagus estuary as well, where he reclaimed land.

The French invasion of 1807 not only destroyed commerce but put the Franco-Portuguese community, of which Jacombe was the most prominent member, in a difficult position.

Diogo's letters to António Araujo de Azevedo, Comte da Barca (1812–1817) were published in 1973 (Paris, Fondation C. Gulbenkian, 1973).