The history of Madeira begins with the discovery of the islands by Portugal in 1419.
There is no record of anyone living on the islands at that time.
Portugal began colonizing the island in 1420. Pre-Portuguese times
Pliny mentions certain Purple Islands, the position of which with reference to the Fortunate
Islands or Canaries might seem to indicate Madeira islands. Plutarch referring to the
military commander Quintus Sertorius , relates that after his return to Cádiz, "he met seamen
recently arrived from Atlantic islands, two in number, divided from one another only by a narrow
channel and distant from the coast of Africa 10,000 furlongs. They are called Isles of the
Blest." The estimated distance from Africa, and the closeness of the two islands, seem to indicate
Madeira and Porto Santo, which is much smaller than Madeira itself, and to the north east of it.
Tenth- or eleventh-century fragments of mouse bone found in Madeira, along with mitochondrial DNA of
Madeiran mice, suggests that Vikings also came to Madeira , prior to colonisation by Portugal.
There is a romantic tale about two lovers, Robert Machim and Anna d'Arfet in time of the King Edward
III of England, fleeing from England to France in 1346, were driven off their course by a violent
storm, and cast on the coast of Madeira at the place subsequently named Machico, in memory of
one of them. On the evidence of a portolan cointained in the Medici Atlas dated 1351,
preserved at Florence, Italy, it would appear that Madeira had been discovered long before that date,
possibly by Portuguese vessels under Genoese captains.
Portuguese discovery 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.
The islands started to be settled circa 1420 or 1425. On September 23, 1433,
the name Ilha da Madeira appears in a map, by the first time, in a document.
The three captain-majors had led, in the first trip, the respective families, a small group
of people of the minor nobility, people of modest conditions and some old prisoners of the kingdom.
The settlement of Madeira and Porto Santo islands was a process defined
by stages involving people from all over the kingdom.
To gain the minimum conditions for the development of agriculture, they had to rough-hew a part of
the dense forest of laurisilva. Then fires were started, which are said to have burned for seven
years. The colonists constructed a large number of canals , since in some parts of the island,
they had water in excess while in other parts water was scarce.
In the earliest times, fish constituted about half of the settlers' diet,
together with vegetables and fruit. The first local agricultural activity with some success was
the raising of wheat. Initially, the colonists produced wheat for their own sustenance but,
later began to export wheat to Portugal.
However, in time grain production began to fall. To get past the ensuing crisis,
Infante Dom Henrique decided to order the planting of sugarcane - rare in Europe and, therefore,
considered a spice - promoting, for this, the introduction of Sicilian
beets as the first specialized plant and the technology of its agriculture.
Sugarcane production became a leading factor in the island's economy, and increased the demand
for labour. Genoese, Flemish and Portuguese traders were attracted to the islands.
Sugarcane cultivation and the sugar production industry developed until the 17th century.
Apparently it is in Madeira that, in the context of sugar production,
slave labour was used in plantations. The colonial system of sugar production
is put into practice on the island of Madeira, on a much smaller scale,
and will be successively applied, on a large scale, in other overseas production areas.
This pattern for sugar cultivation became the model that would soon be transferred
to the Caribbean and Brazil. In Madeira it became evident that a warm climate,
winds to work windmills for sugar crushing and easy access to the sea were,
together with slave labour, important components in what became a huge and
highly profitable industry, which funded industrialisation and European expansion.
Some years before his voyages across the Atlantic, Christopher Columbus, who at the
time was a sugar trader, visited Madeira. It is generally accepted that he was born in Genoa,
Italy as Cristoforo Colon. In Portugal it has been claimed that he was born in that country,
as Salvador Fernandes Zarco but this is disputed.
Columbus married the daughter of a plantation owner on Porto Santo and so
was well aware of the profits to be made. He also understood the necessary growing
conditions for sugar and the navigational technique known as the Volta do mar.
The discoveries of Porto Santo and Madeira were first described
by Gomes Eanes de Zurara in Chronica da Descoberta e Conquista da Guiné. 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.
17th, 18th and 19th centuries Since the 17th century, Madeira's
most important product has been its wine, sugar production having since moved on to Brazil,
São Tomé and Príncipe, and elsewhere. Madeira wine was perhaps the most
popular luxury beverage in the colonial Western Hemisphere during the 17th and 18th centuries.
In the eighteenth and the nineteenth century, visitors to the island integrated four major
groups: patients, travellers, tourists and scientists. Most visitors belonged to the
moneyed aristocracy, with an endless list of aristocrats, princes, princesses and monarchs.
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.
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.
Valdez was forced to flee to England under the protection of the Royal Navy .
In 1891 a census revealed the population on Madeira to be 132,223 inhabitants.
Twentieth century Just before this the Germans
were constructing what is today the "Hospital dos Marmeleiros" , the Germans were given a tax
break and did not need to pay tax on anything needed to construct the hospital. The site
was left abandoned until 1930 when the Madeirans continued to build the Hospital dos Marmeleiros.
Locals say that the reason that the hospital construction was abandoned by the Germans was
not just because of their colonization plans being discovered. It was that during the construction
of the hospital the Germans needed special materials not available on Madeira, so it was
agreed that Madeirans would take the materials up to the site from the German ship in the harbour.
The strongest horses were used to bring up the wooden barrels. The local Madeiran with
the strongest horses bringing up the materials was suspicious that what he was taking up the hill was
heavier than what should be needed to construct the hospital, so he on purpose let one of the
barrels roll down the hill and smash open. It is alleged that it was filled with rifles. When the
locals looked inside what was already constructed they found ammunition and more guns. This caused
the Madeirans to confiscate all German property in Madeira and stop the construction of the hospital.
World War I In 1914 all German property was confiscated
in Madeira, including the ship, the Colmar, built in 1912 which was interned in Madeira in 1914.
In 1916 it was renamed Machico and in 1925 it was bought from the Portuguese
Government and renamed Luso; in 1955 it was scrapped after grounding damage.
On 9 March 1916, Germany declared war on Portugal, followed by Portugal declaring
war on Germany and starting to organise Portuguese troops to go to the Western Front.
The effect of the Portuguese participation in World War I was first felt in Madeira on
3 December 1916 when the German U-boat, U-38, captained by Max Valentiner went into Funchal
harbour on Madeira and torpedoed and sank 3 ships, CS Dacia , SS Kanguroo and Surprise . The
commander of the French Gunboat Surprise and 34 of her crew died in the attack. The Dacia, a British
cable laying vessel, had previously undertaken war work off the coast of Casablanca and Dakar,
was in the process of diverting the South American cable into Brest, France. Following the attack on
the ships, the Germans proceeded to bombard Funchal for two hours from a range of about
2 miles . Batteries on Madeira returned fire and eventually forced the Germans to withdraw.
In 1917 on December 12, two German U-boats, U-156 and U-157 again bombarded Funchal, Madeira. This
time the attack lasted around 30 minutes. Forty, 4.7 inch and 5.9 inch shells were fired. There
were 3 fatalities and 17 wounded, In addition, a number of houses and Santa Clara church were hit.
A priest, José Marques Jardim, promised in 1917 to build a monument should peace ever
return to Madeira. In 1927 at Terreiro da Luta he built a statue of Nossa Senhora da
Paz commemorating the end of World War I. It incorporates the anchor chains
from the sunken ships from Madeira on 3 December 1916 and is over 5 metres tall.
Charles I, the last Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire,
went into exile in Madeira after his second unsuccessful coup d'état in Hungary.
He died there on 1 April 1922 is buried in the Church of Our Lady of Monte.
Charles I had tried in 1917 to secretly enter into peace negotiations with France.
Although his foreign minister, Ottokar Czernin, was only interested in negotiating a general
peace which would include Germany as well, Charles himself, in negotiations with the
French with his brother-in-law, Prince Sixtus of Bourbon-Parma, an officer in the Belgian Army,
as intermediary, went much further in suggesting his willingness to make a separate peace.
When news of the overture leaked in April 1918, Charles denied involvement until the French Prime
Minister Georges Clemenceau published letters signed by him. This led to Czernin's resignation,
forcing Austria-Hungary into an even more dependent position with respect to its
seemingly-wronged German ally. 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.
World War II Portugal in World War II was neutral and
become non-belligerent in 1943. Salazar's decision to stick with the oldest alliance in the world,
cemented by the Treaty of Windsor between Portugal and England , meant that the
Anglo-Portuguese Alliance allowed Madeira to take in refugees on a humanitarian basis;
in July 1940, around 2,000 Gibraltarian 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.
The Gibraltarians are fondly remembered on the island, where they were called Gibraltinos. Some
Gibraltarians had married Madeirans during this time and stayed after the war was over.
Tito Benady, a historian on Gibraltar Jewry, noted that when some 200 Jews of the 2000 evacuees from
Gibraltar were evacuated as non-combatants to Funchal at the start of World War II,
they found a Jewish cemetery that belonged to the Abudarham family.
This is the same family after whom the Abudarham Synagogue in Gibraltar was named.
On November 12th 1940, Adolf Hitler issued Führer Directive No. 18,
which provided the possibility to invade Portugal. 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.
The results of these investigations are to be submitted to me as soon as possible."
On the May 28th 1944, the first party of evacuees left Madeira for Gibraltar;
by the end of 1944, only 520 non-priority evacuees remained on the island.
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.
The monument is a gift and symbol of everlasting thanks given by the
people of Gibraltar to the island of Madeira and its inhabitants.
The city of Funchal and Gibraltar were twinned on 13 May 2009 by their then-mayors,
the mayor of Funchal Miguel Albuquerque and the mayor of Gibraltar,
who had been an evacuee from Gibraltar to Madeira Solomon Levy, respectively. The
mayor of Gibraltar then had a meeting with the then-President of Madeira Alberto João Jardim.
Autonomy On 1 July 1976,
following the democratic revolution of 1974, Portugal granted political autonomy to Madeira,
celebrated on Madeira Day. The region now has its own government and legislative assembly.
On September 1978, the Madeira flag was adopted. The blue part symbolizes the sea surrounding the
island and the yellow represents the abundance of life on the island. The red cross of the Order of
Christ, with a white cross on it, is identical to the one on the flag of Prince Henry's ships
that discovered the island. On September 1980, the official anthem was adopted.
In 1980, the Madeira International Business Centre was created.
From 1976 to 2019, the center-right Social Democratic Party had a majority of MPs in
the regional parliament and ruled on its own. During most of that time,
from 1978 to 2015 , the regional government was headed by Alberto João Jardim,
making him one of the longest-serving democratically elected leaders in the world.
In the 2019 election, PPD/PSD won once again, but lost the majority it had always held.
Now it governs in coalition with the Popular Party.