Jácome Ratton - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Jacques, alias Jácome Ratton (Monestier de Briançon

Le Monêtier-les-Bains

Le Monêtier-les-Bains is a commune in the Hautes-Alpes department in southeastern France.-Population:-Skiing:Monetier's slopes are a part of the extensive Serre Chevalier ski area. There are 7 chairlifts and 4 drag lifts with the highest skiing in the domain at 2760m.-Geography:Le...

, Hautes-Alpes

Hautes-Alpes

Hautes-Alpes is a department in southeastern France named after the Alps mountain range.- History :Hautes-Alpes is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on 4 March 1790...

, 7 July 1736 – Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, 3 July 1820) was a Franco

French people

The French are a nation that share a common French culture and speak the French language as a mother tongue. Historically, the French population are descended from peoples of Celtic, Latin and Germanic origin, and are today a mixture of several ethnic groups...

-Portuguese

Portuguese people

The Portuguese are a nation and ethnic group native to the country of Portugal, in the west of the Iberian peninsula of south-west Europe. Their language is Portuguese, and Roman Catholicism is the predominant religion....

businessman, who was a leading figure in the mainly foreign group of industrialists in 18th century Portugal

Portugal

Portugal , officially the Portuguese Republic is a country situated in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula. Portugal is the westernmost country of Europe, and is bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the West and South and by Spain to the North and East. The Atlantic archipelagos of the...

. He published his Memoirs (Recordaçoens) in 1813 in exile in London

London

London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...

, which remain a significant source on Portuguese economic life in the period.

Early life

His father was Jacques (in Portugal called Jácome) Ratton, Sr. (died Mâcon

Mâcon

Mâcon is a small city in central France. It is prefecture of the Saône-et-Loire department, in the region of Bourgogne, and the capital of the Mâconnais district. Mâcon is home to over 35,000 residents, called Mâconnais.-Geography:...

, 1779), the son of a Member of the Conseil du Roi

Conseil du Roi

The Conseil du Roi or King's Council is a general term for the administrative and governmental apparatus around the king of France during the Ancien Régime designed to prepare his decisions and give him advice...

(in effect a Public Prosecutor) in Mâcon of the same name and wife Jeanne Orsel, and soon after the birth of his eldest son by his marriage to Françoise Bellon (died Mâcon, 1794), daughter of Jacques Bellon and ... Berard, emigrated to Portugal, where his brother-in-law Jacques Bellon was already established in Porto

Porto

Porto , also known as Oporto in English, is the second largest city in Portugal and one of the major urban areas in the Iberian Peninsula. Its administrative limits include a population of 237,559 inhabitants distributed within 15 civil parishes...

married to Marie Purat. Jácome, Jr., brought up by his grandparents, was educated in France before joining his parents at the age of fourteen in Portugal - a pattern typical of the French mercantile community, that he was to repeat with his own children. His Memoirs stress the importance of this - he is highly critical of the backwardness of the Portuguese mercantile classes, who he said hardly used double-entry bookkeeping and were generally unbusiness-like in their ways. In 1758 Jacome married Ana Isabel Clamous, daughter of the French Consul in Porto (again, a son would marry the daughter of another Consul), and in 1762, when France and Portugal were on opposite sides in the Seven Years War, he became naturalised Portuguese. His father had moved to Lisbon

Lisbon

Lisbon is the capital city and largest city of Portugal with a population of 545,245 within its administrative limits on a land area of . The urban area of Lisbon extends beyond the administrative city limits with a population of 3 million on an area of , making it the 9th most populous urban...

and was in business, including a partnership with the brother-in-law in Oporto; after Jacome was established he retired to France. The 1755 Lisbon earthquake

1755 Lisbon earthquake

The 1755 Lisbon earthquake, also known as the Great Lisbon Earthquake, was a megathrust earthquake that took place on Saturday 1 November 1755, at around 9:40 in the morning. The earthquake was followed by fires and a tsunami, which almost totally destroyed Lisbon in the Kingdom of Portugal, and...

, vividly described in the Memoirs, caused great losses for the business - 300,000 cruzados according to the Memoirs.

Industrialist

Jacome was an inventive and successful businessman, whose enterprises included a dye-works, a textile

Textile

A textile or cloth is a flexible woven material consisting of a network of natural or artificial fibres often referred to as thread or yarn. Yarn is produced by spinning raw fibres of wool, flax, cotton, or other material to produce long strands...

mill in Tomar

Tomar

Tomar Municipality has a total area of 351.0 km² and a total population of 43,007 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of 16 parishes, and is located in Santarém District...

, a paper mill in Elvas, and factories making felt

Felt

Felt is a non-woven cloth that is produced by matting, condensing and pressing woollen fibres. While some types of felt are very soft, some are tough enough to form construction materials. Felt can be of any colour, and made into any shape or size....

hat

Hat

A hat is a head covering. It can be worn for protection against the elements, for ceremonial or religious reasons, for safety, or as a fashion accessory. In the past, hats were an indicator of social status...

s in Elvas and Lisbon

Lisbon

, the building for which still exists. The Tomar textile mill was the first in Portugal to use modern machinery, and created what was until recently the main industry of the town. The hats were made under a monopoly

Government-granted monopoly

In economics, a government-granted monopoly is a form of coercive monopoly by which a government grants exclusive privilege to a private individual or firm to be the sole provider of a good or service; potential competitors are excluded from the market by law, regulation, or other mechanisms of...

, though he criticises these in his Memoirs, saying that businessmen should be rewarded with titles instead. He traded in cloth, cognac, Bohemian window-glass, and other products. He invested in sea-salt making at Alcochete, near his country estate, and was also responsible for introducing the eucalyptus

Eucalyptus

Eucalyptus is a diverse genus of flowering trees in the myrtle family, Myrtaceae. Members of the genus dominate the tree flora of Australia...

to Portugal (a rather mixed blessing), as well as the Araucaria

Araucaria

Araucaria is a genus of evergreen coniferous trees in the family Araucariaceae. There are 19 extant species in the genus, with a highly disjunct distribution in New Caledonia , Norfolk Island, eastern Australia, New Guinea, Argentina, Chile, and southern Brazil.-Description:Araucaria are mainly...

("monkey-puzzle tree"). His memoirs recount how he made designs for a type of water-pump new to Portugal from a Dutch print

Old master print

An old master print is a work of art produced by a printing process within the Western tradition . A date of about 1830 is usually taken as marking the end of the period whose prints are covered by this term. The main techniques concerned are woodcut, engraving and etching, although there are...

Protege of Pombal

The Marquis of Pombal, the Portuguese Prime-Minister, was keen to encourage industry in Portugal, and consulted with Jacombe, although it was not until after Pombal's death that Jacome was made a member of the Real Junta de Commercio, Agricultura, e Navegação, which played an important part in Pombal's efforts to stimulate, and regulate, Portuguese commerce. Jácome was made a Knight

Knight

A knight was a member of a class of lower nobility in the High Middle Ages.By the Late Middle Ages, the rank had become associated with the ideals of chivalry, a code of conduct for the perfect courtly Christian warrior....

of the Order of Christ

Order of Christ (Portugal)

The Military Order of Christ previously the Royal Order of the Knights of Our Lord Jesus Christ was the heritage of the Knights Templar in Portugal, after the suppression of the Templars in 1312...

(who had opposed his mill at their head-quarters in Tomar) and ennobled as a Nobleman of the Royal Household

Royal Household

A Royal Household in ancient and medieval monarchies formed the basis for the general government of the country as well as providing for the needs of the sovereign and his relations....

. He lived in Lisbon in the neo-classical

Neoclassical architecture

Neoclassical architecture was an architectural style produced by the neoclassical movement that began in the mid-18th century, manifested both in its details as a reaction against the Rococo style of naturalistic ornament, and in its architectural formulas as an outgrowth of some classicizing...

Palaçio Ratton, near his hattery, which is now the home of the Tribunal Constitutional (Portuguese Constitutional Court

Portuguese Constitutional Court

The Portuguese Constitutional Court is a special court, defined by the Portuguese Constitution as part of the judicial branch of the Portuguese political organization. Unlike the rest of the country's courts, the Constitutional Court has important characteristics, such as a special composition,...

, in effect the Supreme Court

Supreme court

A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of many legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, instance court, judgment court, high court, or apex court...

of Portugal), with a large country estate at Barroca d’Alva on the Tagus

Tagus

The Tagus is the longest river on the Iberian Peninsula. It is long, in Spain, along the border between Portugal and Spain and in Portugal, where it empties into the Atlantic Ocean at Lisbon. It drains an area of . The Tagus is highly utilized for most of its course...

estuary as well, where he reclaimed land.

War and exile

The French invasion

Peninsular War

The Peninsular War was a war between France and the allied powers of Spain, the United Kingdom, and Portugal for control of the Iberian Peninsula during the Napoleonic Wars. The war began when French and Spanish armies crossed Spain and invaded Portugal in 1807. Then, in 1808, France turned on its...

of 1807 not only destroyed commerce but put the Franco-Portuguese community, of which Jacombe was the most prominent member, in a difficult position. It did not help that General Paul Thiébault, the chief-of-staff to Junot, the French commander, had billeted himself at Jacome's house, and they became friends. After they lost the Battle of Vimeiro

Battle of Vimeiro

In the Battle of Vimeiro the British under General Arthur Wellesley defeated the French under Major-General Jean-Andoche Junot near the village of Vimeiro , near Lisbon, Portugal during the Peninsular War...

in 1808, the French negotiated a withdrawal

Convention of Sintra

The Convention of Cintra was an agreement signed on August 30, 1808 during the Peninsular War. By the agreement, the defeated French were allowed to evacuate their troops from Portugal without further conflict...

from Portugal with the British (to the fury of British public opinion). In June 1810 the Regency government in Lisbon persuaded the Prince-Regent

John VI of Portugal

John VI John VI John VI (full name: João Maria José Francisco Xavier de Paula Luís António Domingos Rafael; (13 May 1767 – 10 March 1826) was King of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves (later changed to just King of Portugal and the Algarves, after Brazil was recognized...

in Rio de Janeiro to dismiss Jacome from the Junta after twenty-two years, and in September the same year he was arrested along with many "radicals" and exiled to the small island of Terceira in the Azores

Azores

The Archipelago of the Azores is composed of nine volcanic islands situated in the middle of the North Atlantic Ocean, and is located about west from Lisbon and about east from the east coast of North America. The islands, and their economic exclusion zone, form the Autonomous Region of the...

. He managed, perhaps through his Freemason connections, to convert this into exile in England, where he remained until ca. 1816, before moving to Paris, where he died. The King

John VI of Portugal

had invited him to return to Portugal, but though several of his children were there, he declined.

He married Ana Isabel Clamouse, daughter of Bernard Clamouse, from Languedoc

Languedoc

Languedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² .-Geographical Extent:The traditional...

, and Geneviève Hartsoeker, had four sons and four daughters. His son Diogo Ratton was appointed to a commission to improve Portuguese commerce; when no report was published he began to publish his own views in 1821 in a series of short works: Reflexões sobre o Commercio, sobre as Alfandegas, sobre os Depositos, e sobre as Pautas. with his proposal for a "Tribunal do Commercio" and other reforms. Diogo's letters to António Araujo de. Azevedo, Comte da Barca (1812-1817) were published in 1973 (Paris, Fondation C. Gulbenkian, 1973).

Rato, an area of Lisbon, is said by some to be named after him - appropriately the Lisbon Metro

Lisbon Metro

The Lisbon Metro is the metro system of Lisbon, Portugal. Opened in December 1959, it was the first subway system in Portugal.As of 2011, the four Lisbon subway lines total about in length and comprise 52 stations.- History :- Idea :...

Rato station is next to Marquês de Pombal; it is a terminus. A school and a sports centre in Tomar are named after him.

Memoirs

The Memoirs are the principal source for all details of Ratton's life up to 1810:

Recordaçoens de Jacome Ratton sobre ocurrencias do seu tempo em Portugal de Maio de 1747 Setembro de 1810, London: H. Bryer, 1813.
Modern editions: Coimbra: University Press, 1920; Lisbon: Fenda, 1992
A manuscript translation into French by the author also exists (see link below).

External links, and sources

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