full text

Female: the alter ego of maritime societies? Practices and
representations of gender (Portugal. 16th Century)
Amélia Polónia
Beginning with the first approach to the subject, centered on
women and their protagonism in Early Modern Portuguese maritime
societies, this paper presents the hypothesis, based on long-term
empirical research, that the particular conditions created by the
Portuguese overseas expansion in the 15th and 16th centuries were
bound to have a significant impact on the female universe, expanding
their roles and social participation in communities based on maritime
societies.
The paper presents some conclusions based on a case study,
centred on a small Portuguese maritime town involved in overseas
navigation and trade circuits during the 16th century, Vila do Conde, in
order to further question how the overseas expansion reflects on
women’s contributions to the family, the economy and to social range,
and to analyse how this process reflects on the status and the images of
women in Early Modern European societies.
The main conclusions of this presentation were drawn from an
analysis of documental corpora which include notarised deeds, parish
registers, town council minutes, tax registers, Inquisition proceedings,
and wills, covering the period from 1500 to 1640. Even though the
functional model proposed cannot be uncritically generalised to other
coastal spaces and to other societies strongly marked by maritime
economics and experiences dedicated to overseas expansion, we believe
that general aspects can be highlighted, which structurally frame the
vast social dynamics found within Portuguese and other European
maritime spaces during the 16th and 17th centuries.
1
Underlying the phenomenon under study, the promotion of female
roles, is the absence of men and its consequences on the economic,
societal, family and demographic structures, most noticeable in
maritime communities. In the same way that, in 20th century, during
the First and Second World Wars, female roles increased and women
won autonomy and relevance, so women assumed crucial roles in the
aftermath of the Portuguese expansion.
Four types of correlations are shown: one is established with
economic dynamics, namely with labour markets; the other with social
behaviour, the third with demography and the last one with family
structures.
The picture outlined is based on the case study of a small coastal
town, Vila do Conde, which embodies a very precise socio-demographic
and economic situation. We have to bear in mind the profile of this
specific community, dominated by
-
a socio-professional structure in which activities linked to maritime
transport and trade clearly prevail;
-
an economic universe dominated by capital flow, imbued with
capitalist mentality and mechanisms, albeit operating on a small
scale;
-
a business system ruled by small capital investments, small
partnerships and in which even women figure as investors;
Vila do Conde was a maritime town, in the 16th. Century, framed
by:
-
a limited number of men, and
-
a minimal implantation and territorial dominion (it is a municipality
with almost no agricultural landscape).
In this small town, which did not exceed 8 km² of administrative
dominion and 0.5 km² of effective urban occupation, with a population
oscillating between 3,600 and 5,000 inhabitants during the 1500- 1640
2
period, corresponding to 0.32 percent of the national estimation in
1527, overseas expeditions, trade and emigration were aspects which
nourished the same flow: a draining of male agents, whether transitory
or permanent.
This is borne out by the urban masculinity rate, which revealed a
clear discrepancy compared to the medium European rates in the same
period. In fact, the values obtained based on Vila do Conde baptism
records were close to those pointed out as normal in historical
demographics, but, on the contrary, the results obtained from death
records present a profound variance, where the adult male rate
presents values far below the expected. In a direct correlation, there is
an unavoidable increase of the female rates in this population universe.
A.
Interactions with the world of work
This phenomenon applies directly to the participation of women in
the labour market. The link between overseas expansion and the
promotion of female participation in work becomes unavoidable.
Overseas expansion required supporting industries for maritime
activities,
like
sail-making,
rope-making
and
ships’
provisions
industries, such as biscuit-making. In the absence of male labour, due
to the temporary or definitive absence of men, involved in shipping and
emigration, the demand for female workers became an economically
relevant fact. Simultaneously, the internal development of coastal
villages led to a demand for more servants, which was met by female
migration from surrounding rural areas, as well as for crafts and
trades-people, supplied by women who stayed in a world of men who
had departed.
Female labour is not only prominent in maritime towns, however,
but in the hinterland, too. This is borne out by the sail-making
industry, which developed all over the north of Portugal, rural areas
included, in an economic dynamic where weaving was no longer just a
3
domestic or family activity. It was, rather, an industrial activity which
aimed to export sailcloth to European fairs, and to continental and
overseas shipyards1. Furthermore, it interacted with market strategies,
under the leadership of maritime traders. The same phenomenon also
occurred with respect to the manufacture of rope, in Lisbon, a town
where women figured as a workforce, and even in Ribatejo, as logistical
support to the same shipbuilding industry2.
We believe that, as long as the contextual conditions mentioned
above were sustained, female participation in economic activities,
including the labour market, and their social roles were a relevant
historical fact in Portugal. We observe, in fact, a significantly higher
number of female workers in the labour market of maritime societies.
This is demonstrated by the number of women engaged in crafts, trade
and professional occupations in Lisbon, in the 1550s. They ascended to
37 percent and 44 percent of the total, according to Cristóvão Rodrigues
de Oliveira3 and João Brandão4, respectively.
Works produced, both in France, by Jean Cabantous, Nicole
Dufournaud, Bernard Michon and in the Netherlands, by researchers
like Danielle van den Heuvel; Marjolein van Dekken, Elise van
Nederveen
Meerkerk
or
Ariadne
Schmidt
underline
the
same
behavioural patterns in what regards female participation in labour
markets in similar maritime societies.
To approach this subject properly, we cannot, however, restrict
our study to the world of work. We must also proceed with a broader
socio-economic approach. A case study approach is, in fact, helpful to
1 POLÓNIA, Amélia - A Tecelagem de Panos de Tréu em Entre-Douro-e-Minho
no Século XVI. Contributos para a Definição de um Modelo de Produção. A Indústria
Portuense em Perspectiva Histórica. Actas do Colóquio", coord. Jorge Fernandes Alves,
Porto, CLC-FLUP, 1998, pp. 11-24
2 COSTA, Leonor Freire - Naus e Galeões na Ribeira de Lisboa. A Construção
Naval no Século XVI para a Rota do Cabo, Cascais, Patrimonia, 1997, p. 342-359
3 OLIVEIRA, Cristóvão Rodrigues - Lisboa em 1551. Sumário..., Introduction
and Notes by José da Felicidade Alves, Lisbon, Livros Horizonte, 1987
4 BRANDÃO, João - Tratado da Magestade, Grandeza e Abastança da Cidade
de Lisboa na 2ª Metade do Século XVI: Estatística de Lisboa em 1552, Lisbon, Liv.
Férin, 1923
4
enable us to understand the specific circumstances and variables under
which the main issues in question, female protagonism and male
absence, interact in our model.
B.
Male absences and female socio-economic behaviour
Such a situation has incidence both in the economic, social and
family range. Tax registers express this reality in the number of females
who emerge as head of households, as we proved in the case study for
two different time periods: one in 1568, the other in 1643. In the first
case, 18 percent of the tax-paying heads of households were women, a
percentage that rises to 43 percent in 1643. It does not correspond,
however, to similar rates of active tax contributions:
This fact, directly related to male absences, led to profound
consequences in the society under study, both negative and positive, in
terms of the impacts felt by the female universe.
Among the negative consequences, we can point out phenomena
of family structure breakdown, provoked by occurrences of concubinage
and/or bigamy; by practices of second marriages and by the
constitution
of
second
families
overseas;
situations
of
family
abandonment and lack of provision; or of deviant sexual and social
behaviours such as female homosexuality, highly penalised by judicial
institutions – both civil and ecclesiastic. In the case study presented, all
these occurrences are documented in Inquisition proceedings.
Among the positive consequences, we can highlight how female
roles expanded. The analysis undertaken for the Vila do Conde society,
based mostly on notary records, points to a clear increase in the roles
undertaken by women who, in the absence of men, took charge of
functions which would usually be considered out of their competence.
These functions included, besides educating, endowing and marrying off
their children, taking charge of their own family transactions, which
they managed with skill and aggression.
5
This engagement can be measured by the frequency with which
women were involved in public actions via notarial registrations. In
about 4,000 records between 1560 and 1620, around 1,200 refer to
women, not only as participants, but as central agents, which means
they make up 30 percent of the total. The importance of this dynamism
justifies a more detailed study.
Analysing this universe in terms of marital status, we find what
was to be expected: the prevalence of widows among participants in
notary acts: 63.5 percent of the women belong to this category, while
31 percent are married and only 5.5 percent single. Single parent
families,
resulting
from
the
husband’s
death,
naturally
imply
obligations and functions for women which increase their duties. The
strong showing of widows in our sample is therefore understandable.
The significant role of married women is, on the other hand, associated
with the male absence in this maritime society, which is responsible for
the transfer to their wives of responsibilities and duties which they
would otherwise not perform.
Let us now look at those functions. In a long list of acts, we can
see that collecting goods and money, legal acts and endowments are
among the main actions imputed to these women. Other domains worth
mentioning are directly linked to a range of civic actions. These
concerned everything from writing wills, setting up and running
chapels, to deeds of adoption, pardons, granting freedom to slaves and
the exercise of guardianship, a task which, together with endowment,
was of great importance in family and social life. In total, all these
practices amount to about 9 percent, in our sample.
Finally, we come to economics. In asset transactions, which
almost exclusively concerned real estate, and implied buying, selling,
exchanging, and leasing, the actions done by these women amount to
22.5 percent of all those registered. In addition to collecting money and
assets, largely due to death abroad, we should note: the tax leasehold
partnerships, the guarantees given for ongoing transactions, the
6
participation in trade, the financial investment or the collecting
of
money from shipbuilding, the management of ships, understandably
through delegation, the signing of apprenticeship contracts, the
involvement in credit transactions or financial investments, which are
activities also linked with commerce carried out by third parties, which
these women finance with their capital. All the economic activities
added together represent the largest percentage of the sample:
74 percent.
These data are, at first sight, surprising. But they are similar to
those indicated by E. Coornaert for Flanders. A survey of information
contained in Antwerp’s municipal archives enabled the author to reveal
that a significant number of powers of attorney and bills were signed by
women, and to show that they organised their own accounts ledgers.
Furthermore, widows, as well as married women, were issued with
permits to undertake their own commercial activities5.
If, at the same time, we look at the sociological profile of the
women involved in notarised deeds in Vila do Conde, we find a clear
prevalence of those who are related to seamen, mostly pilots. The
presence of female relatives of merchants is equally conspicuous, even if
the gap is significant. The scale of this representation is clear when we
consider that 75 percent of the women are relatives of pilots, skippers
and seamen.
The reinforcement and extension of female social engagement,
which the above examples demonstrate, inevitably requires better
preparation and qualification to intervene in the public domain with
authority and independence. The signing of public deeds motu proprio,
without the need to resort to an intermediary, is essential in this
domain.
This
issue
is
directly
linked
with
another:
the
self-
representation of women and their assumption of powers and authority.
5 COORNAERT, E.- Les Français et le commerce international à Anvers, Paris,
1961, t. II, pp. 68-69
7
As we know, in societies of the Ancien Régime, and as far back as
the 16th century, illiteracy was widespread and female exclusion from
school was, with the exception of a few intellectuals and members of the
aristocracy, a fact. Thus, it is not to be expected that these women,
related to seamen and merchants, would master the skills required to
sign notarial deeds in which they are centrally involved. This, in fact, is
the reality we find. In our data source, only about 16 percent of the
women involved are able to sign their names.
We do not seek to prove that these are all literate women who
could read and write, and who may have had regular schooling.
However, we do say that it is undeniable that some of them were in that
condition, signing their names firmly, clearly and in an aesthetically
distinguished manner, and with outlines which are repeated without
wavering.
These women undoubtedly knew how to write - and not only their
name. As proof of this, we can cite the case of Francisca Carneira, wife
of a professional pilot, who handwrote her own will, and that of
Catarina Henriques, who entered her own accounts books and credit
records6.
C.
Interaction with the demographic system and the family
space
Finally, demographic structures and family spheres also project
these correlations between male absences related to maritime dynamics
and female protagonism.
The link between overseas expansion, in terms of both shipping
and emigration, and the high proportion of urban female population,
due to the temporary or definitive absence of men has already been
highlighted. Low fertility rates, caused by large inter-generational gaps,
marriages without children, a considerable number of unmarried
6 For further details on these issues, see POLÓNIA, Amélia - Vila do Conde no
Século XVI..., Vol. I, pp. 797-818
8
women, and a high rate of early widowhood emerge as understandable
demographic outcomes of these circumstances.
One of the main consequences of this scenario are single parent
families which confer on women the status of heads of households. As a
result, there is an increase in the number of women who appear as
responsible for maintaining family order, in particular in families of
seamen, merchants and shipbuilders, groups which represent the most
significant proportion of the active male population in the town under
study. Furthermore, in these socio-professional segments, the absences
were keenly felt by the women who remained behind. Considering the
strategic endogamic tendencies, which led to marriages within the same
trade, as well as to the handing down of skills and occupations to
descendants, a woman, or several women in the same family, could
often have husband, father, brothers, and even children, all away at the
same time.
In terms of the direction of family possessions, the number of
endowments identified among the registered documents is essential to
understand the female participation in family affairs, since these
interventions bestow them the right to arrange marriages and associate
goods and families according to economic, political and social interests.
This sphere of action would secure, per se, a truly significant
intervention in family life, with obvious social repercussions.
The guardianship of children, grandchildren or collateral relatives
invests these women with wide-ranging powers and the guidance of
many lives and fortunes. This is all the more relevant when the
legislation in force, especially that which is stipulated by the General
Ordinances of the Kingdom, considers women to be judicially inapt to
perform these functions, and specifies that those nominated guardians
of minors should always be men.
At the same time, the economic situation analysed above also had
a considerable impact in terms of demographic and family contexts. The
growing demand for female labour and economic participation gave
9
single women and widows a better chance to be self-sufficient, leading
to lower rates of marriage and remarriage, as well as increasing the part
played by married women in family income and social control. In fact,
these women not only
amplified their traditional roles in the
organisation of domestic tasks, such as the education of children and
care for the home stability. They extrapolate by far the attributions they
are consigned by Christian normativeness, by also assuming functions
which go beyond the domestic and private sphere into the social and
public sphere, as proven in the notarial records analysed.
This central role in Family life does not seem, however, to be
assumed in confrontation with the male universe, but rather through
active complementarity, that is exercised during male absences. We
believe, though, that in the long term, this protagonism became a
structuring element of female performance in the domestic sphere, and
even in the social sphere. Thus, it was not restricted to the longer or
shorter periods of absence of the head of family. In fact, some
testimonies, which we cannot analyse here in more detail, point to
certain attitudes of confrontation, even at a legal level, when the rights
and functions these women took on as their own were disrespected. We
can also identify some attitudes of female consciousness which led to
the total exclusion of male agents in a successive line of a chapel
administration. As this action was the responsibility of a single, rich
woman, who actively intervened in the world of business, we cannot,
however, consider it the norm.
The weight of women in the social universe of these maritime
communities can also be symbolically determined by the fact that many
of them often became favoured identification references. In societies
marked by the transitory presence of men, due to overseas travel, and
by migration and emigration, the man is frequently identified as a
relative to a woman. He is often seen as son, husband, brother, or
father of someone who is known in day-to-day life as a permanent
10
reference7. It should be noted that a similar situation is indicated by
Caroline Brettell in an anthropological study of a Minho village of the
20th century, which lost many inhabitants to emigration, especially to
Brazil.
In our case study, population mobility, documented in studies
carried out in historical demographics for the area and period analysed,
decisively contributed to this tendency. By attracting a vast young male
population coming from the agricultural hinterland of the seaports,
these spaces concentrated a large number of uprooted individuals. Even
when they married, their family roots continued to be precarious8.
This uprootedness, resulting from massive male migration,
together with significant, but lower, female migration, also tends to
contribute to the dilution of an extended family model and reinforces a
nuclear-type family organisation, where the ties between husband and
wife are strengthened, often underpinned by the absence of children. In
population universes where the absence of men produces fewer children
per
family,
thus contributing
to
increases
in
inter-generational
intervals, childless marriages are not in the least exceptional. Thus, we
find cases of destructured families, as well as cases where bonds of
trust become closer between husband and wife. These can be found
recorded in proxies and wills. This trust is also extended to and visible
in
the
world
of
business,
where
husbands
transfer
economic
responsibilities to their wives, thus revealing a clear relationship of
trust9.
To sum up, by contributing to male absences and implementing
factors of social instability, the process of overseas expansion, when
7 Cf. BRETTELL, Caroline – op. cit.
8 Once more, we base our findings on the example of Vila do Conde, where,
between 1560 and 1620, the percentage of weddings involving couples from the
exterior varies between 38 and 61,4 percent of total weddings (cf. POLÓNIA, Amélia –
Vila do Conde. Um porto nortenho na expansão ultramarina quinhentista..., vol. I, p.
254).
9 All these scenarios are found described in the study developed in Idemibidem, vol. I, p. 808-811 e 814-816.
11
analysed over time, reinforced the role of those who remained behind.
They are given the responsibility of guaranteeing the normal functioning
of community life. It is women who systematically assume many of
these functions, through a sensitive increase in their social, economic
and family protagonism. In spite of philosophical theorisations, of
doctrinal and judicial conceptions and literary representations and the
rights and constraints they are consigned in legislative corpora, women
became central agents in community life. They assumed, with great
normality and according to the demands imposed by the absence of
male agents, be they temporary or definitive, the roles and functions
which unquestionably conferred upon them centrality in the maritime
communities studied.
Having presented the case study, a question remains to be
answered: which is the representativeness of its conclusions, both at
the Portuguese and European level?
Based on other indicators and drawing from Alain Cabantous’
analysis of French maritime societies, we should stress that the effective
impact of the behaviours highlighted here differ, within maritime
societies, according to the effective internal weight of the seafaring
community in the society as a whole.
Similarly, this seems to be important in maritime societies linked
to navigation and overseas trade, more than those whose economic
performances are based on fisheries, or local or regional trade.
Regardless of the experiences they share imposed by their lifestyle, it is
important to capture specific identities, even within the universe of the
maritime communities, in order to understand women’s participation in
the labour market, family and societal dynamics.
If we attempt to establish a more global comparison, it seems
undeniable, however that the same model, even though on different
scales, applied all over Europe, at least throughout the Atlantic
seashore. Alain Cabantous, Nicole Dufournaud, and Bernard Michon
for France; Danielle van den Heuvel, Marjolein van Dekken, Elise van
12
Nederveen Meerkerk or Ariadne Schmidt for The Netherlands, seem to
present, in different contexts, enlightening testimonies of a great
participation of women in labour, household, economic and societal
dynamics in Early Modern Europe10.
10 Cf. final bibliography.
13
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