The association of Joaquim Kopke to a shipping firm is an important explanatory
factor of his defense of free trade, a position similar to that of James Forrester and other wine
merchants (Forrester 1844, Forrester 1854).17
Joaquim Augusto Kopke was also president of the Associaçao Comercial do Porto, a
powerful association of merchants and industrialists in the Porto area that defended
liberalization of trade through lowering of import and export duties and what we could call
today deregulation, if this concept makes sense.18
In April 1859, Kopke makes some proposals for lowering among other things the
duties on Douro wine export. Forrester made a similar claim but he proposed lowering export
duties in Portugal and import duties in the United-Kingdom.
The proposal will meet mitigated success. In the ÙK, tariffs will be lowered, but not
substantially given the new methods for calculating wine duties (Forrester 1854). Moreover,
the changes in tariffs for are related to other issues and tariffs for other industries. In
Portugal, export taxes were reduced but given the financial needs of the state during all the
period, duties on wine will be maintained as necessary receipts for the Treasure.
In the 1850s and 1860s, Joaquim Kopke has written on several occasions on the issue
of the Douro crisis, not just the crisis of the oidium and the phylloxera, but also the overall
crisis of overproduction and opposition of interests between the winemakers in the Upper
Douro and the wine merchants in Vila Nova de Gaia and Porto.
As I explained previously, the 1850s are characterized by important changes in the
organization of the port-wine sector. The crisis is affecting both the producers and merchants.
The oidium is attacking the vineyards and production drops considerably. The effect on
winemaker is stronger than merchant. The latter was able to reduce excessive stocks whereas
the former saw the production reduced severely.19 This problem appeared once more with the
phylloxera crisis in the late 1860s and the next two decades.
Three themes are clearly distinguished in the debates of the liberals. The first one is
the question of brandy, a specific problem for the port-wine, the second issue is about the
analysis of the technology in use and the process of production.
17 See the different letters published in the CP during the period by Moser, Graham, Gyrao, Forrester, Cockburns
and other shippers.
18 De-regulation is in itself a new regulation that first destroys the old regulation and second substitutes it by a
new one.
19 Several issues of the jornal O Comércio do Porto (referred to CP onwards) in 1854 and 1855 give cases of 40
to 80 per cent plummeting of wine production. Ninety per cent is probably exaggerated as an overall appraisal of
the impact of the disease. It was, however, frequently referred to in particular cases of specific quintas.
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