José Bensaude

José Bensaude (born March 4, 1835 , † October 20, 1922 in Ponta Delgada ) was an important Portuguese entrepreneur.

José Bensaude (1889)

Career

origin

Bensaude comes from a Moroccan-Jewish family. His father Abrahão moved to the island of Sao Miguel ( Azores ) in 1818 . At this point in time, a large wave of Jews migrated to the Azores, who - aided by liberal Portuguese legislation - mostly operated as outpatient textile traders. Three family businesses (Adrahi, Bensaude and Delmar) survived the difficult 1830s due to strong competition.

youth

José Bensaudes early years were marked by intellectual and artistic activities. He attended school until he was 14 years old and at the age of 16 was already noticed as a talented writer of romantic and lyrical poems. They were published in magazines as far as Brazil. He belonged to the intellectual and literary circles of Ponta Delgada and had friendships with young local talents such as the proudhonist writer Antero de Quental and Teófilo Braga . Due to a lack of money, however, he could not afford a degree or business training.

Career

José Bensaude began his professional life in 1858 as the administrator of the assets of a wealthy landowner in São Miguel, Caetano de Andrade de Albuquerque Bettencourt. He stayed here until 1870 and trained his skills in business administration. Thanks to his good reputation as an administrator, he also worked as a secretary on the board of directors for the port expansion of Ponta Delgada from 1861 to 1863.

His father and his relatives had set up a retail system on the islands for the distribution of locally produced and imported agricultural products. After the trade of Ponta Delgada with the smaller islands was no longer profitable, the scope of the business with sailing ships had to be extended to England, Brazil and Newfoundland . As an entrepreneur, José Bensaude contributed to the development of numerous economic sectors on the island of São Miguel . Together with his cousins ​​Henrique, Walter and Abraão, he founded the parent company of Bensaude & C.ª, L.da , to which the Sociedade Exportadora Micaelens also belonged. Until the "orange crisis" caused by plant diseases, the latter had a de facto monopoly on the import and export of many goods via the port of Ponta Delgada, which was completed in 1861, and around 1870 found a replacement for oranges through the cultivation of tea and pineapples ( Sociedade de Cultura de Ananases 1873). He also founded the processing of New Zealand flax in the Azores. Today, however, it is primarily associated with the introduction of the Azorean tobacco industry. In 1866, after numerous experiments, he founded the tobacco factory Fábrica de Tabaco Micaelense in Ponta Delgada together with friends and his cousin Abrahão Bensaude . The factory was still in operation in 2014.

For their business development, the family members accepted long journeys and used complex financial instruments for the time. At the same time, they invested in companies for financial services and shipping such as the Empresa Insulana de Navegação , founded in 1871, which started liner services between Portugal, the Azores and Madeira with the steamship Atlântico in the same year . Since the beginning of the 20th century, José Bensaude has increasingly pursued his charitable and social interests.

family

José Bensaude married Raquel Bensliman (1836–1934) in 1855. The marriage produced four children: the engineer, mineralogist and founder of the Instituto Superior Tecnico Lisbon Alfredo (1856–1941), the shipping historian Joaquim (1858–1952), Esther Bensaúde, married. Oulman (1864-1965) and the doctor and microbiologist Raoul (1866-1938). Since the University of Coimbra, at that time the only university in Portugal, was not open to students of the Jewish faith in the 19th century, José Bensaude decided to send his children and his wife to Germany from 1872 to graduate and study . He visited her there regularly.

José Bensaude died in 1922 and was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ponta Delgada.

His granddaughter Matilde Bensaude did her doctorate as an agricultural economist at the Sorbonne. His grandson Vasco Bensaude was an entrepreneur and philanthropist . Further descendants are the genome researcher Olivier Bensaude at the Institut de Biologie de l ' École normal supérieure (IBENS) and the molecular biologist and science historian Emanuelle Bensaude, who worked in Grenoble and at the Université Paris 1.

Group of companies

In the first half of the 20th century, the Bensaude Group grew into one of the largest corporate groups in Portugal. Among other things, she was involved in the airline SATA and Banco Micaelense , in insurance companies and shipping companies.

In 1975 - in the wake of the 1974 Carnation Revolution - the tobacco industry, banks and insurance companies were also nationalized in the Azores, which led to a significant shrinkage of the Bensaude group. In 1980 the Bensaude Group also sold its share in SATA. Logistics, tourism and other service companies remained in family ownership.

The story of the Bensaude family is an example of a successful globalization strategy of a small company in the ambulatory trade in a very peripheral location after Brazil's independence in 1822, which turned into a promising central Atlantic location when he succeeded not only in the large spatial, but also to overcome cultural distances. Groundbreaking for Bensaude's entrepreneurial success was also his ability to solve problems of agricultural production with experimental, quasi-scientific methods and to pacify social conflicts in the company.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Yedida Kalfon Stillman, Norman A. Stillman: From Iberia to Diaspora: studies in Sephardic history and culture, Brill, 1999, p 31
2. ^ Letter from his uncle Joachim, who lives in Brazil, family archive
3. ↑ ^{a b c} Fatima Sequeira Dias, Indifferentes a Differença, Os Judeus Dos Açores Nos Séculos XIX e XX, ISBN 978-972-8612-36-8
4. ↑ Information about the liner service and picture of the ship
5. ↑ Group website

literature

• Fatima Sequeira Dias, Uma estratégia de sucesso numa economia periférica: a casa Bensaúde e os Açores , 1800–1873, Ponta Delgada 1993.
• Fatima Sequeira Dias, A Fábrica de Tabaco Micaelense: 1866-1995 , Ponta Delgada, Fábrica de Tabaco Micaelense, 1995.
• Fatima Sequeira Dias, Les juifs marocains dans l'Archipel des Acores - début d'une nouvelle mentalité commerciale: l'exemple des Bensaude , in: Civilizations - Revue internationale d'anthropologie et de sciences humanines , 41 (1993), p. 403 -413

Web links

• Website of the Bensaude family
• Website of the Bensaude Tourism Group