A Mercantilist Brand:The British East India Company and Madeira Wine, 1756-1834

This study analyses the long-term power of mercantilist brands, contrasting reputation building and protection strategies in the Madeira and Port wine industries in the eighteenth and early nineteenth century. The Portuguese crown created a collective brand for Port in 1756, but Madeira wine only received similar protection in the late twentieth century. This study argues that the Madeira wine industry relied, instead, upon a different type of mercantilist brand, a diffuse and multi-faceted “global” umbrella brand, that of the British East India Company, which more than rivalled the power of the Portuguese state as a product certifier and endorser.