Norman R. Bennett

The Golden Age of the Port Wine System, 1781–1807

the eighteenth century, the Portuguese export economy, with the exception of one commodity, relied almost exclusively upon products from the overseas territories. The exception the wine produced in a region bordering the middle reaches of the Douro River, and exported from the northern port of Oporto virtually exclusively to the British Isles became European Portugals most valuable export. During this period, the already close economic and diplomatic ties between Great Britain and Portugal strengthened, each receiving substantial benefits from the other. From the early years of the eighteenth century, British imports had increasingly clothed and fed the Portuguese, while the British appetite for Portuguese wines had provided Portugal with the means to counter British economic dominance. No other trading partner offered Portugal a similar opportunity for profit; indeed, after 1780, the trading balance between the two began to turn in favour of the Portuguese, the result of the combined growth of Portugals manufacturing and port wine sectors, plus the favourable commerce with her colonies. This situation continued until

The Port Wine System in the 1890s

the nineteenth century, the port wine trade was one of the most important components of the Portuguese economy.1 British merchants, trading woollens for wine, and later for products from Brazil and other Portuguese colonial possessions, had visited Portugal from at least the early fourteenth century. The beginning during the 1670s of persisting Franco-British hostilities led to radical changes in the British wine trade. Most drinkers in Great Britain, the worlds principal wine-importing nation, until then had favoured wines from France at the end of the seven-

Book Review: The Immigrant Years: From Britain and Europe to Canada, 1945–1967The Immigrant Years: From Britain and Europe to Canada, 1945–1967. By BroadfootBarry. Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntyre, 1986. Pp. 255.

Broadfoots The Immigrant Years offers limited insights on immigration into Canada in the years following World War 11. The insights, however, must be mined from a mass of undigested data gathered without the slightest regard for scholarly interviewing techniques. No explanation is offered about the identity of informants, or about what standards were used to accept, or delete, information here presented. What we have is a private mine of uncertain value which can be used, but only with careful scrutiny ofgrry finds. Within these limits, and if we accept Canada as a country inhabited only by English speaking inhabitants, the book has some value.

Europeans and Muslims in Nineteenth Century Africa in Comparative Perspective@@@Arab versus European: Diplomacy and War in Nineteenth-Century East Central Africa@@@Richard F. Burton. Twayne's English Authors Series@@@Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade@@@The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the Mid-Nineteenth Century

Norman Robert Bennett. Arab versus European: Diplomacy and War in NineteenthCentury East Central Africa. New York and London: Africana Publishing Company, 1986. 325 pp. Index. Glenn S. Burne. Richard F. Burton. Twaynes English Authors Series. Boston: Twayne, 1985. 168 pp. Index, selected biblio. Dennis D. Cordell. Dar al-Kuti and the Last Years of the Trans-Saharan Slave Trade. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985. 283 pp. Appendices, biblio., figures, index, maps. David Robinson. The Holy War of Umar Tal: The Western Sudan in the midNineteenth Century. Oxford Studies in African Affairs. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985. 434 pp. Biblio., index, maps, tables.

VIRGINIA THOMPSON and RICHARD ADLOFF. Djibouti and the Horn of Africa. Pp. xiii, 247. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1968.

His discussion of India’s slowness in moving toward modern agricultural research is well taken. He criticizes the Package Program for failing to take a firm hold on this problem. But he overlooks the great pride which the Indians have shown in their own research accomplishments, and the cold reception given to any outsider who argued otherwise in the early 1960’s. In fact, the Package experience did much to convince Indian leaders that their research policy must be changed. His most important point in the last chapter, entitled &dquo;Prospects, Problems and Lessons,&dquo; is that India is on the way to solving her food problem. This reviewer would agree that the corner has been turned, a most important conclusion on Mellor’s part. He is right in thinking that the road to self-sufficiency is likely to be difficult. He expects a 4.5 percent agricultural growth rate, which is apparently