Money Borrowing, Gold Smuggling and Diamond Mining: An Englishman in Pombaline Circles

This article sets out to investigate the nature and consequences of the personal relationship between the English parliamentarian, contrabandist, and diamond trader John Bristow and the Portuguese envoy in London and Secretary of State Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo. A micro-historical enquiry of this relationship can clarify a number of key elements in the eighteenth-century Pombaline reforms. It shows that these policies were influenced by personal connections and pragmatic considerations, perhaps as much as they were by the prevailing mercantilist ideas and macro-economic circumstances