Note 173 — Chapter IV · JOÃO IV TO JOÃO VI

[“On December 27th, 1703, the famous Methuen Treaty was signed, by which Portuguese wines might be imported into England at a lower duty than those from France and Germany, in return for a similar concession to English manufactured goods. The immediate result of this treaty was that King Pedro acknowledged the archduke Charles, the English candidate, as king of Spain, and that he gave the English a base of operations in the peninsula. The ulterior result was that Englishmen in the eighteenth century drank port wine instead of claret and hock, while the Portuguese imported everything they wanted beyond the bare necessaries of life from England. This was an advantage to both nations, for Portugal is eminently an agricultural country with neither the teeming population nor the materials necessary for manufactures, while England obtained a friendly province from which to import the wine and produce of a southern soil, and a market for the sale of the products of her manufactories. The close connection thus formed went deeper than mere commerce; it established a friendly relationship between the two peoples, which was of infinite advantage to the smaller nation.”—Stephens.d

We shall see later that the Portuguese felt the treaty less a blessing than an incubus on their power to develop manufactures of their own.]