El negocio corchero en alentejoexplotación forestal, industria y política económica, 1848-1914

Abstract

The present work consists in the study of the cork business in Portugal during the second half of the «long» XIXth century (1848-1914), having the Alentejo as the concrete geographical space for it. Alentejo is defined as the sum of the current Nomenclatures of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS) III that use this designation: Alto Alentejo, Central Alentejo, Alentejo Litoral and Baixo Alentejo. The choice for this regional space is due to its representativeness in the Portuguese cork business, since in the XIXth century it was not only (as it still is) the main cork forest producer, but also where a great part of the cork industry was fixed. Knowing that Portugal nowadays controls all the facets of the cork business –forestry, industry and commerce– but that it did not happen in the nineteenth century, the main objective is to understand, from a detailed analysis of the forest sector, industry and economic policy, if in the Alentejo and, by extension, if in Portugal, the cork business exploited all its potentialities, by comparing it with what was then happening in the Spanish cork sector. In fact, the place that Portugal currently occupies in the cork business was, until the 1930s, occupied by Spain, although it is in Portugal that the cork tree better develops and consequently where there is a greater potential for the production of more and better cork. In order to answer to this problem, this research is based on a multiplicity of sources, both handwritten and printed, produced by private economic agents and public entities, as well as in the bibliography already published on the subject in question, specially about the performance of the Spanish cork industry. The dissertation is structured in six chapters, the first of which is an introductory one and includes the presentation of the theme, the objectives, the existing scientific literature, the sources used and its critique, the geographic and chronological delimitations of the thesis, and the characterization of Alentejo in terms of geography, demography, economy and socially. The second chapter presents a long run vision of the cork business, while the third, fourth and fifth chapters concretize the subject under study, focusing on forest exploitation, industry and economic policy respectively. The last chapter, taking into account the conclusions of each of the previous ones, responds the initial question, concluding that, although the Portuguese cork industry was not benefited from many of the institutional factors that will allow it to rise, as a world leader, in the mid of the twentieth century, in Spain this did not happen either. Thus, the lower economic performance of the Portuguese cork sector was due more to historical issues related to a later start of the sector than to other types of factors. It is also worth mentioning that, because of the study of the cork business in the eighteenth century Alentejo, other questions were raised and the respective conclusions are presented. Specifically, in forestry, the option for fixed rent contracts as a way of obtaining raw materials and, in the industrial sector, the factors of location and industrial relocation.