Madeira
Madeira, officially the Autonomous Region of Madeira, is an autonomous region of Portugal, in the Atlantic Ocean about southwest of mainland Portugal. Together with the Azores, it is one of the two autonomous regions of Portugal and a special territory of the European Union. It is the southernmost point and region of Portugal.
Madeira is an archipelago situated in the North Atlantic Ocean, in the region of Macaronesia, just under north of the Canary Islands, Spain, west of Morocco and southwest of mainland Portugal. Madeira sits on the African Tectonic Plate, but is culturally, politically and ethnically associated with Europe, with its population predominantly descended from Portuguese settlers. Its population was 251,060 in 2021. The capital of Madeira is Funchal, on the main island's south coast.
The archipelago includes the islands of Madeira, Porto Santo, and the Desertas, administered together with the separate archipelago of the Savage Islands. Roughly half of the population lives in Funchal. The region has political and administrative autonomy through the Administrative Political Statute of the Autonomous Region of Madeira provided for in the Portuguese Constitution. The region is an integral part of the European Union as an outermost region. Madeira generally has a [|mild/moderate] subtropical climate with Mediterranean summer droughts and winter rain. Many microclimates are found at different elevations.
Madeira, uninhabited at the time, was claimed by Portuguese sailors in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator in 1419 and settled after 1420. The archipelago is the first territorial discovery of the exploratory period of the Age of Discovery.
Madeira is a year-round resort, particularly for Portuguese, British, and German tourists. It is by far the most populous and densely populated Portuguese island. The region is noted for its Madeira wine, flora, and fauna, with its pre-historic laurel forest, classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The destination is certified by EarthCheck. The main harbour in Funchal has long been the leading Portuguese port in cruise ship dockings, an important stopover for Atlantic passenger cruises between Europe, the Caribbean and North Africa. In addition, the International Business Centre of Madeira, also known as the Madeira Free Trade Zone, was established in the 1980s. It includes incentives.
History
Ancient
in his Parallel Lives referring to the military commander Quintus Sertorius, relates that after his return to Cádiz, he met sailors who spoke of idyllic Atlantic islands: "The islands are said to be two in number separated by a very narrow strait and lie from Africa. They are called the Isles of the Blessed."Archaeological evidence suggests that the islands may have been visited by the Vikings sometime between 900 and 1030.
Accounts by Muhammad al-Idrisi state that the Mugharrarin came across an island where they found "a huge quantity of sheep, the meat of which was bitter and inedible" before going to the more inhabited Canary Islands, in Spain. This island, possibly Madeira or Hierro, must have been inhabited or previously visited by people for livestock to be present.
Legend
During the reign of King Edward III of England, lovers Robert Machim and Anna d'Arfet were said to have fled from England to France in 1346. Driven off course by a violent storm, their ship ran aground along the coast of an island that may have been Madeira. Later, this legend was the basis of the naming of the city of Machico on the island, in memory of the young lovers.European exploration
Madeira appears in several medieval manuscripts, including the Book of Knowledge of All Kingdoms from the early 14th century, the Medici-Laurentian Atlas from 1351, the Soleri Portolani from 1380 and 1385 and Corbitis Atlas from the late 14th century. These texts refer to Madeira as Lecmane, Lolegname, ''Legnami, Puerto or Porto Santo, deserte or deserta, and desierta''. It is widely accepted that knowledge of these Atlantic islands existed before their better-documented discovery and successful settlement by the Kingdom of Portugal.In 1418, two captains, João Gonçalves Zarco and Tristão Vaz Teixeira, while exploring the African coast in the service of Prince Henry the Navigator, were driven off course by a storm to an island which they named in gratitude for divine deliverance from a shipwreck.
The following year, Zarco and Vaz organised an expedition with Bartolomeu Perestrello. The trio travelled to the island of Porto Santo, claimed it on behalf of the Portuguese Crown, and established a settlement. The new settlers observed "a heavy black cloud suspended to the southwest" and upon investigation discovered the larger island they called .
Settlement
The first Portuguese settlers began colonizing the islands around 1420 or 1425.The three governors, knights of the Order of Christ and navigators: João Gonçalves Zarco, Tristão Vaz Teixeira and Bartolomeu Perestrelo, along with their respective families, became the first settlers of the archipelago, divided by three captaincies. This colonization process began in 1425, by order of King João I, with people of modest means, some former prisoners of the Kingdom and a group of people from the lower nobility, including fishermen and peasant farmers who willingly left Portugal for a new life on the islands, a better one, they hoped, than was possible in a Portugal which had been ravaged by the Black Death, and where the nobility strictly controlled the best farmlands.
Initially, the settlers produced wheat for their own sustenance. Still, they later began to export wheat to mainland Portugal. In earlier times, fish and vegetables were the settlers' main means of subsistence.
Grain production began to fall, and the ensuing crisis forced Henry the Navigator to order other commercial crops to be planted so that the islands could be profitable. These specialised plants, and their associated industrial technology, created one of the major revolutions on the islands and fuelled Portuguese industry. Following the introduction of the first water-driven sugar mill on Madeira, sugar production increased to over 6,000 arrobas by 1455, using advisers from Sicily and financed by Genoese capital. The accessibility of Madeira attracted Genoese and Flemish traders, who were keen to bypass Venetian monopolies.
Sugarcane production was the primary engine of the island's economy, which quickly afforded the Funchal metropolis economic prosperity. The production of sugar cane attracted adventurers and merchants from all parts of Europe, especially Italians, Basques, Catalans, 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.
Slaves were used during the island's period of sugar trade to cultivate sugar cane alongside paid workers. However, slave owners were only a small minority of the Madeiran population, and those who did own slaves owned only a few. Slaves consisted of Guanches from the nearby Canary Islands. Barbary corsairs from North Africa, who enslaved Europeans from ships and coastal communities throughout the Mediterranean region, captured 1,200 people in Porto Santo in 1617.
Until the first half of the sixteenth century, Madeira was one of the major sugar markets of the Atlantic. Apparently, it is in Madeira that, in the context of sugar production, slave labour was applied for the first time. The colonial system of sugar production was put into practice on the island of Madeira, on a much smaller scale, and later transferred, on a large scale, to other overseas production areas.
Sugar mills were gradually abandoned, with few remaining, which gave way to other markets in Madeira.
In the 17th century, as Portuguese sugar production shifted to Brazil, São Tomé and Príncipe, and elsewhere, Madeira's most important commodity became its wine. Sugar plantations were replaced by vineyards, originating in the so-called 'Wine Culture', which acquired international fame and provided the rise of a new social class, the Bourgeoisie.
With the increase of commercial treaties with England, important English merchants settled on the Island and, ultimately, controlled the increasingly important island wine trade. The English traders settled in Funchal in the seventeenth century, consolidating the markets from North America, the West Indies and England itself. The Madeira wine became very popular in the markets, and it is also said to have been used in a toast during the Declaration of Independence by the Founding Fathers of the United States.File:Sé do Funchal.jpg|thumb|Cathedral of Funchal with its tower of 15th-century Gothic style in the background
Due to high demand during the season, there was a need to prepare guides for visitors. The first tourist guide to Madeira appeared in 1850 and focused on the island's history, geology, flora, fauna and customs. Regarding hotel infrastructures, the British and the Germans were the first to launch the Madeiran hotel chain. The historic Belmond Reid's Palace opened in 1891 as the "Reid's New Hotel" and is still open to this day.
The British first amicably occupied the island in 1801, whereafter Colonel William Henry Clinton became governor. A detachment of the 85th Regiment of Foot under Lieutenant-colonel James Willoughby Gordon garrisoned the island.
After the Peace of Amiens, British troops withdrew in 1802, only to reoccupy Madeira in 1807 until the end of the Peninsular War in 1814. In 1846, James Julius Wood wrote a series of seven sketches of the island. In 1856, British troops recovering from cholera, and widows and orphans of soldiers fallen in the Crimean War, were stationed in Funchal, Madeira.
World War I
During the Great War on 3 December 1916, a German U-boat,, captained by Max Valentiner, entered Funchal harbour on Madeira. U-38 torpedoed and sank three ships, bringing the war to Portugal by extension. The ships sunk were:- CS Dacia, a British cable-laying vessel. Dacia had previously undertaken war work off the coast of Casablanca and Dakar. It was in the process of diverting the German South American cable into Brest, France.
- SS Kanguroo, a French specialized "heavy-lift" transport.
- Surprise, a French gunboat. Her commander and 34 crewmen were killed.
On 12 December 1917, two German U-boats, SM U-156 and SM U-157, again bombarded Funchal. This time the attack lasted around 30 minutes. The U-boats fired 40 shells. There were three fatalities and 17 wounded; several houses and the Santa Clara church were hit.
The last Austrian Emperor, Charles I, was exiled to Madeira after the war. Determined to prevent an attempt to restore Charles to the throne, the Council of Allied Powers agreed he could go into exile on Madeira because it was isolated in the Atlantic and easily guarded. He died there on 1 April 1922 and his coffin lies in a chapel of the Church of Our Lady of Monte.