RATTON

(Jacome, 1736-1820, French-born Portuguese Merchant and Industrialist, Member, 1788-1810, of the Real Junta de Commercio, Agricultura, e Navegação) Manuscript 'Souvenirs', the translation into French by the author

c.1817 of his   Recordaçoens ... sobre occurencias de seu tempo, em Portugal, durante o lapso de sesenta e tres annos e meio, alias de Maio de 1747 a Setembro de 1810, que residio em Lisboa   , (London, 1813, reprinted Coimbra, 1920). In a neat copyist’s hand on the right half of each page, which are numbered in groups of 4 pages 1-118 (81 repeated, 118 is one folio) = 474pp. including 5 blank, small corrections in the author’s hand throughout. The text reproduces the 79 sections of the original, occasionally misnumbered. (The printed Portuguese version has in addition an appendix of the documents referred to in the text, an engraved portrait and a map of Ratton’s estate at Barroca d’Alva). 4to., quarter calf, original gilt lettered spine repaired, repapered boads Apparently the only translation into any language of this important primary source for the recovery of commerce under Pombal and the beginnings of industrialisation in Portugal. The MS is ‘probably unique’, according to an autograph note in French by General Baron Paul Thiébault (1769-1846), to whom it was given by Ratton. Thiébault has supplied a title and “London 1817 (I believe)”, adding that Ratton printed 4 or 500 of the original which he distributed as presents throughout Portugal. “I am referred to”, says Thiébault, “on ff. 113 and 114”, which describe how the General was billeted on Ratton during Junot’s invasion of 1807, “and for this especially it is worth preserving by the binder !”. In the margin of ff. 113 and 114 Thiébault explains why he never imposed other guests on Ratton, and that he had done the same in Italy ten years before, when other officers brought 30 or 40 extra every day.On the night of September 10-11, 1810, the Police swooped on a score of radical writers and journalists and Ratton was added to their number. They were imprisoned and shipped to Terceira in the Azores, and then to England on passports supplied by the British Ambassador in Lisbon. Ratton could only suppose that it was jealousy on the part of the Regency, for earlier in the year it had obtained from Rio de Janeiro a royal decree dismissing him from the Junta after 22 years’ faithful service without so much as a thank you. Ratton refers only occasionally to his own import and export businesses - they included hats, cotton, cognac, and Bohemian window glass. But the immense value of the present work lies in his shrewd observations of all kinds on political economy, business management, accounting procedures (when double entry was almost unknown in his country), the Treasury, bankruptcy, and privileged trading - successful entrepreneurs should be rewarded with honorific titles rather than with a monopoly. He describes vividly the great earthquake of 1st November 1755, when his family lost 300,000 cruzados of merchandise in the fire that broke out, and the temporary wooden barracks that Pombal created to continue government business; the rebuilding of Lisbon; and the different initiatives for trade, industry and commercial education that followed, with their outcomes. He deplores the fact that lawyers are held fit for any post, independent of commercial experience, with telling examples; and describes how he got maps from England which he hung on the walls of the school of commerce, at a time when Lisbon booksellers hardly stocked any. Three successful projects were Ratton’s mill for spinning cotton, with machinery and expertise from England; his factory for hats; and his reclaiming land at Barroca d’Alva for timber, wheat, cattle and salt pans, with a water pump he copied from a Dutch engraving. Throughout Ratton shows a talent for picking a site, for practical judgment, and for improvements to machinery.His account is also important for the post-Pombal period, showing where Pombal’s initiatives were continued or suppressed, and the particular disastrous effects of the French invasion. With many character sketches of ministers and other industrialists.Mahul, Annuaire Necrologique, 1821, says that Ratton was invited by the King to return to Portugal in 1815, but preferred to stay in Paris where he died on 3rd July 1820.

• GBP 1,600.00 > other currencies
• ordernr.: 40021

• bookseller: Clive Farahar & Sophie Dupré (GREAT BRITAIN)