Port anD the Douro uP to Date 13Men who shaPeD the Douro
sebastião José de carvalho e Melo, Marquês de Pombal (1699–1782)
son of a country squire from Pombal near Leiria, sebastião José de carvalho e Melo
was born in Lisbon, educated at coimbra and served briefly in the army. With good
connections through marriage, he received his first public appointment in 1738 and was
posted as ambassador to London. he was thought of as ‘busy and pettifogging’ during
his time in London, but carvalho e Melo seems to have developed a certain jealous
respect for the British and formed the opinion that their ability to provide goods cheaply
stifled the Portuguese. he served as ambassador to austria before being recalled as
Minister of Foreign affairs by José i in 1750. carvalho e Melo already had a reputation for
ruthlessness when he was appointed to the post; the royal secretary alexandre Gusmão,
who coveted the position himself, exclaimed ‘the people will suffer for it’. the ineffectual
José i (1750–1777) steadily entrusted more power to carvalho e Melo, and shortly after
the catastrophic Lisbon earthquake of 1755 he effectively became Prime Minister.
in government, carvalho e Melo was a reformer who believed in making Portugal
a strong and economically self-sufficient nation. he believed in creating companies or
guilds in order to regulate commercial activity, much like salazar two centuries later. in
the douro he created the world’s first demarcated wine region in 1756 (see below). as
his power grew, carvalho e Melo became increasingly authoritarian, imposing strict
laws upon all classes of Portuguese society. he made enemies among the nobility
who viewed him as a social upstart. in 1759 he expelled the Jesuits, creating the basis
for secular education in Portugal, and introduced new taxes on all levels of society to
pay for his reforms. the same year he was made the conde de oeiras and in 1770 he
became the Marquês de Pombal. this is the title by which he is best known.
Pombal continued to exceed the powers vested in him until his royal patron, José i, died
in 1777. José was succeeded to the throne by his rather more proactive daughter, Maria
i, whose first act was to dismiss Pombal from office. on the day after the king’s funeral,
the prisons were opened and 800 victims of Pombal’s reign of terror emerged. Reminded
of a resurrection of the dead, the spanish ambassador wrote that ‘Pombal deserves the
general hatred of the public for his cruelty’. he died at his estate in Pombal in 1782.made up of a president, twelve deputies, a judge-conservator, a fiscal attorney, a secretary
and six advisers, all of whom were linked to the industry. A grower and Dominican monk
named Frei João da Mansilha became Pombal’s right-hand man. The British shippers were
excluded.
The foundation of the Companhia provoked howls of anguish not just from the British
Factory but also from the tavern owners, who blamed the government for the steep rise
in the price of wine. On 23 February 1757 (Ash Wednesday) a protest took place in the
streets of Oporto which quickly descended into a bloody riot. Christened the ‘Tippler’s