Chapter 6 - The rise of Portuguese manufacturing
Note: This is the longest chapter I have written for this TL so far. Researching about the early Portuguese manufacturing industry OTL was a bit of a challenge, since the main source for most of this chapter is from the Cambridge University Press book "An Economic History of Portugal, 1143–2010" by Leonor Freire Costa, Pedro Lains, and Susana Münch Miranda, as well as some sources in Wikipedia both in English and Portuguese, with TTL's economic development in Portugal, as well as in Galicia and Leon taken in consideration. As always, any constructive criticism and feedback is welcome.
As Europe began to enter the age of the Renaissance, industrial output has improved in part due to rising demand in urban areas and a larger labor pool, as well as money and raw materials. In addition, new trade routes and maritime expansion led to new opportunities in the shipbuilding and shipping industries. Portugal was obviously no exception to the rising tide.
In the transition, industrial work is no longer exclusive to self-consumption production, but the rising demands in urban and supra-regional markets led to a start in the rise of manufacturing. The emergence of such industries was in part due to the coordination of labor by agents who had knowledge on regional markets. The process goes by providing a given output to the producers, and providing raw materials, thereby selling the finished goods across up to the international level.
The spread of the method of industrial work impacted the peasant economy, in which the production of raw materials for the regional market had been a secondary use of labor. The involvement of peasants in the industry, propelled by decreasing returns in farming turned rural handicrafts into a source of income, signaling a change in the rural areas. The term for the changes in the rural industry became known as the
putting-out system, in which the merchants loaned raw materials to rural workers who processed the product and deliver the finished goods to the former.
-
The textile industry -
Towns such as Corunha in Galiza and Badajoz in Leão would eventually provide greater output in textiles than ever before for Portugal
Linen production, as well as the spinning and weaving of was a common practice in Portugal, especially in the northern regions like Minho and Beira. The success of the industry was embraced by the entire population stemmed from the widespread use of linen cloth for making clothes and household linens.
In Minho, the linen production intensified in the first decades of the 16th century, and with a dense population that provided a stable labor supply, it spawned a strong rural-based production in which the surpluses flowed to foreign markets in the ports of Viana do Castelo and
Vila do Conde. The regional centers for the textile industry were Braga and Guimarães, where the latter was able to produce 250,000 varas [1], due to in part by royal intervention and the construction of several linen factories that are funded and owned by the crown. Linen production in Minho was rooted in very small plots of land, which did not provide enough revenue for the needs of peasant households. The insufficient income, as well as increasing demands for sailcloth from the shipbuilding industry and reasonable communication by sea and river routes generated a lot of income for the linen industry for the centuries ahead. Besides Minho, other parts of Portugal like Beira and the area around Corunha in Galiza also developed the production of linen. Spinning and weaving was the labor of women, mostly widows, spinsters and some slaves from West and North Africa from the slave raids, who work until they were able to earn their freedom.
For similar reasons, the manufacture of woolens was also prevalent across Portugal. In good pasturing grounds to raise sheep, home weavers manufacture woolen fabrics for a wide range of clothes from coats to hats. The domestic production displayed high levels in some areas of the country, mostly in a strip in the interior from the northern part of Beira Baixa to Baixo Alentejo, areas near Portuguese-Leonese border in towns such as
Arronches,
Portalegre and
Castelo de Vide and around the
Serra da Estrela mountain range. In the southern part of Leão,
Merino sheep are known for having some of the softest and finest wool of any sheep in the Iberian Peninsula. Under João II’s reign, the production of Merino wool was patronized by the crown and the breed became instrumental in Portugal’s economic development, and held a huge monopoly over its domestic wool trade. Urban workshops in
Covilhã, Portalegre,
Badajoz,
Zamora and
Cáceres supervised the rural-based woolen production, creating a wool boom that Portugal would experience in the 16th century.
Under the putting-out system, rural manufacturers delivered the raw materials and the urban workshops specialize in the finishing touches, using more sophisticated techniques such as dyeing and stamping. Through the influence of the merchants and artisans in the rural areas, the influence of the cities extended out to the countryside. During the Renaissance era, this trend accelerated from wool for fine clothes to ropes for naval use. The first phase of fiber production took place around the towns of
Moncorvo, Santarém and
Ferrol in Galiza, with the final products finished in the
cordoarias [2] in Lisboa and Corunha.
Silk production in Portugal was very minor at first due to a shortage in highly specialized labor in towns. The industry was concentrated in the Trás-os-Montes region since the 13th century and began to surge a century later with new mulberry trees planted, with
Bragança becoming the main center of Portuguese silk production. The expulsion of Jews from Sicily in 1494 [3], as well as bringing in some of Portugal’s existing Jewish population led to a boost of the transformation of silk in the region. Silk was also produced in Évora,
Lamego, Lisboa, Porto and Corunha. Silk was sent off to urban centers, with Porto and Corunha attracting some of the production from Trás-os-Montes, although most of them went to Lisboa.
From the second half of the 16th century, the Portuguese textile industry would branch out into the spinning and weaving of cotton. By the 18th century, the crop’s rise to global importance became prominent in Europe’s cultural shift and played a role in Portugal’s status as a global empire. The spinning and weaving of cotton was dependent on importing the raw material where it was prevalent like Cape Verde, Brazil and later on, India and
Terrastralia. Cotton working was centered in the towns of Lamego and
Tomar [4] on the Douro and Tagus rivers, respectively, since they were the traditional centers in production of linen cloth where capital and labor were available. The two centers were critical since the cotton fiber arrived by sea and the finished products went to market by river transportation.
- Diversification -
Other than the textile industry, other sectors played a major role in developing Portugal’s early modern industry. Leather working was extensive and far reaching with specialized workshops across the country and created a myriad of specialized workshops in urban centers, which produced footwear, clothing, furniture upholstery and much more practical uses. Ceramics and pottery making was also extremely common in regions abundant in clay and appropriate minerals such as parts of Beira, Alentejo and Estremadura. Numerous kiln operations in Lisboa and in the Algarve made construction materials for buildings from clay such as roof tiles and bricks, as well as small local ateliers in the rural area for ceramic household items.
The glass museum in Marinha Grande, in the site of the former location of the glass factory
Glassmaking did have a presence in Portugal, but this sector depended on the use of equipment and specialized labor. Sources do record some artisan glassblowers as early as the 15th century, mostly working in Lisboa and Santarém, although the most important factories were found in Coina in the outskirts of Lisboa and
Oliveira de Azeméis, not far from Porto. However, during the initial period, the quality of glass was low due to the royal decree that limited the industry’s growth due to demand for oak and cork oak wood for ship construction. Portuguese glassmaking would later see signs of growing in the mid-17th century when refugees from Bohemia settled in the town of
Marinha Grande [5], where the glass manufacturing industry was established, and adapted their method of glassmaking, with wood from the pine forest used as fuel for the factories. The glass made in Marinha Grande is said to be by many as one of the best glasses not only in the Iberian Peninsula, but in Southern Europe as a whole after Venice due to the efforts of the Bohemian glassmakers.
Iron-working also made a presence in Portugal, as in elsewhere in Europe, it responded to technological constraints and depended on natural mineral deposits. Although there was very little of the metallurgical industry to speak of in the early modern period until the late 18th century, the Portuguese victory in the Castilian Succession War as well as the incorporation of Huelva in 1483 granted the country more numerous iron deposits in its newly gained territories of Galiza and Leão. Small ironmonger workshops by blacksmiths and horseshoers existed since medieval times, with the presence of more iron in the new territories being a boon for the ironmaking industry.
The Rio Tinto river. The river gets its name from centuries of ore mining, making it very acidic and creating a deep reddish hue due to the iron dissolved in the water.
The São Domingos Mine in Alentejo, now abandoned, left a mark in the changing Portuguese mining industry since the Renaissance.
In addition, the incorporation of Huelva was beneficial for Portugal as it turned out that the region is rich in minerals with numerous deposits of copper, silver, gold, iron and manganese, mostly around the
Rio Tinto. The river area has a history of mining since the ancient times by the Tartessians, Iberians, Phoenecians ,Greeks, Romans, Visigoths and Moors. After a period of abandonment in the Middle Ages, the mines were rediscovered in 1507 [6] and the Portuguese government began operating them immediately after it happened. Mining also took place across the Iberian Pyrite Belt around the same time, with the mines being revitalized, mainly producing pyrite. Catholic Swiss and German miners, mostly from the Rhineland, as well as some from Bavaria would eventually settle in Alentejo (between the towns of
Aljustrel and
Mértola) as well in around Huelva and the Rio Tinto in between the late 16th and early 17th centuries to escape the devastation in the region following the sectarian conflicts that plagued Central Europe around that time, further increasing the mining output. The two aforementioned towns of Aljustrel and Mértola would become part of a larger mining transportation route across the Pyrite Belt to Huelva.
The entrance to the former royal weapons and armament factory in Barcarena
The Portuguese arms industry also made a quick start under João II’s reign. After the Castilian Succession War, one of Afonso V’s last accomplishments was to establish a royal weapons factory in the outskirts of Lisboa in Barcarena to supply weapons for a new standing army for Portugal. Under his successor, a foundry and an armament factory was also established on the site in 1512 [7], producing gunpowder and guns. The latter factory would also be the first to make use of hydraulic power in Portugal, thanks to a stable supply of copper and other minerals after the revitalization of the Pyrite Belt and Rio Tinto.
[1] A variable unit of measure equal to 1 meter. OTL, in the early 16th century, 100,000 varas of linen were produced, but the intervention João II made doubled the production TTL.
[2] Royal rope factories
[3] This took place under the reign of Isabel (the OTL Isabella of Castille), who is still ruling Sicily at the time. This is similar to the OTL Alhambra Decrees but on a smaller scale. Jews were expelled from Sicily as part of the Crown of Aragon in 1493 OTL.
[4] These two towns could potentially become prominent later in the 19th century in the same vein as Manchester and Birmingham in the UK OTL and will become one of the starting points of TTL’s Industrial Revolution in Southern Europe, but it’s too early to tell.
[5] OTL Marinha Grande’s glass industry was established in the mid-18th century by English entrepreneur
William Stephens under the patronage of the Marquis de Pombal.
[6] The mines were rediscovered in 1556 and operated again by the Spanish government in 1724 OTL.
[7] The weapons factory in Barcarena would be established in around 1540 OTL. Due to a lack of resources and the Pyrite Belt not being mined at the time, the output of arms-making was not enough to keep up with the demand and the Portuguese have to import artillery from Flanders and Germany.