The Report of the Visit of Governor Jacinto António Perdigão to the Administrative District of Funchal (1866-1867): A Critical Reading of a Unique Historical Source

Abstract

By an order from the Ministry of the Kingdom, given on August 1^st, 1866, all civil governors, once a year, were ordered to visit the respective administrative districts, with the purpose of reporting about the economic and social situation in which they were found. At the same time, they should pay attention to the problems that were detected. The execution of this ordinance materialized in a collection of very detailed reports about all the districts in the Portuguese kingdom, including the report of Jacinto António Perdigão, the Funchal district civil governor, completed on September 4^th, 1867.
This source has the particularity of being the result of an inspection carried out in a personal and direct manner, unlike other types of reports that already existed and which were prepared, only, based on the information provided by the administrators of the municipalities. As a privileged observer of Madeira and Porto Santo’s insular reality, governor Jacinto António Perdigão left an important set of information, both quantitative and qualitative in nature, susceptible to an interpretive and problematic analysis.
Thus, this essay aims to present a critical reading of this source, revealing an informative construction on the Archipelago of Madeira from the perspective of the civil governor, following an expository line that aims to: 1^st understand the legal framework of this report related to the civil governor’s functions; 2^nd analyse and characterize the statistical and other data presented; 3^rd analyse the problems detected and the solutions proposed by Jacinto António Perdigão.

Keywords

Madeira Islands; District; Civil Governor; Report.