Brazil

VI

History

The Native Americans who were the original inhabitants of what is now Brazil included the Arawak and Carib groups in the north, the Tupí-Guaraní of the east coast and the Amazon river valley, the Ge of eastern and southern Brazil, and the Pano in the west. For the most part these groups were essentially semi-nomadic peoples, who subsisted by hunting and gathering and simple agriculture. Those groups in the more remote areas of the interior maintained their traditional way of life until the early 21st century, when their existence was threatened by the advancing frontier.

A

European Exploration and Early Settlement

The Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was the first-known European in the region now constituting Brazil. Landing near the site of present-day Recife on January 26, 1500, he subsequently sailed northwards as far as the mouth of the River Orinoco. The newly found territory fell within the region assigned to Portugal by the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494), a Spanish-Portuguese agreement that modified the Line of Demarcation promulgated in 1493 by Pope Alexander VI. Probably for this reason, Spain made no territorial claims on the basis of Pinzón’s discovery. In April 1500 the Portuguese navigator Pedro Álvares Cabral also reached the coast of present-day Brazil and formally claimed the surrounding region in the name of Portugal. The territory was named “Terra da Vera Cruz” (Portuguese, “Land of the True Cross”). An expedition under the command of the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci was sent to Terra da Vera Cruz by the Portuguese government in 1501. In the course of his explorations Vespucci named many capes and bays, including a bay which he called Rio de Janeiro. He returned to Portugal with a cargo of Brazilwood, and from that time forward Terra da Vera Cruz bore the name of the valuable wood Brazil.

In 1530 the Portuguese king John III initiated a programme of systematic Brazilian colonization. As a first step the king divided Brazil into 15 districts or captaincies, and granted each of the districts in perpetuity to a person prominent at the Portuguese court. The grantees, known as donatarios, were vested with extraordinary powers over their domains.

Because of the dangers implicit in the French depredations along the Brazilian coast, King John revoked most of the powers held by the donatarios and placed Brazil under the rule of a governor-general. The first governor-general, Thomé de Souza, arrived in Brazil in 1549, organized a central government, with the newly founded city of Salvador, or Bahia, as his capital, instituted comprehensive administrative and judicial reforms, and established a coastal defence system. Large numbers of slaves were brought into the region from Africa to overcome the shortage of labourers. São Paulo, in the south, was founded in 1554.

In 1555 the French founded a colony on the shores of Rio de Janeiro Bay. The Portuguese destroyed the French colony in 1560, and in 1567 they established on its site the city of Rio de Janeiro.

B

Spanish Rule and Dutch Incursions

Philip II of Spain inherited the Portuguese crown in 1580. The period of Spanish rule was marked by frequent aggressions against Brazil by the English and Dutch, then enemies of Spain. A Dutch fleet seized Bahia in 1624, but the city was recaptured by a combined force of Spaniards, Portuguese, and Native Americans the following year. The Dutch attacked again in 1630, and an expedition sponsored by the Dutch West India Company captured Pernambuco (now Recife) and Olinda. Most of the territory between Maranhão Island and the lower course of the São Francisco River fell to the Dutch in subsequent operations. Under the able governorship of Count Joan Mauritz van Nassau-Siegen, the Dutch-occupied part of Brazil prospered for several years. Nassau-Siegen resigned in 1644, however, in protest against the exploitative policies of the Dutch West India Company. Shortly after his departure the Portuguese colonists, with support from their mother country, rose in rebellion against Dutch rule. The Dutch capitulated in 1654, after nearly a decade of struggle, and in 1661 renounced by treaty their claims to Brazilian territory.

C

Portuguese Restoration

With the successful revolt in Portugal against Spanish overlordship in 1640, Brazil reverted to Portuguese sovereignty and was made a viceroyalty. Generally peaceful conditions prevailed between the Spanish and Portuguese in South America until 1680. In that year the Portuguese dispatched an expedition southwards to the east bank of the estuary of the River Plate and founded a settlement called Colonia. This move led to a protracted period of strife over ownership of the region, which eventually emerged as the republic of Uruguay in 1828.

Brazilian expansion southward had been preceded by penetration of large sections of the interior. Jesuit missionaries had begun to operate in the Amazon Valley early in the 17th century. Before the middle of the century, parties of Paulistas, the name by which residents of São Paulo were known, had reached the upper course of the River Paraná. Because these expeditions were undertaken principally for the purpose of enslaving the Native Americans, the Paulistas encountered vigorous opposition from the Jesuits. Supported by the Crown in their efforts to protect the Native Americans, the Jesuits finally triumphed. Many Paulistas thereupon became prospectors, and a feverish hunt for mineral wealth ensued. In 1693 rich gold deposits were discovered in the region of present-day Minas Gerais. The resultant gold rush brought tens of thousands of Portuguese colonists to Brazil. The economic expansion of the viceroyalty was further stimulated by the discovery of diamonds in 1721 and later by the development of the coffee- and sugar-growing industries.

In 1750 the Treaty of Madrid between Spain and Portugal confirmed Brazilian claims to a vast region west of the limits promulgated in the Treaty of Tordesillas. The Treaty of Madrid was later annulled, but its principles were embodied in the 1777 Treaty of Ildefonso.

The Portuguese foreign minister and premier Marquês de Pombal instituted many reforms in Brazil during the reign of Portugal’s King Joseph Emanuel. He freed the Native American slaves, encouraged immigration, reduced taxes, eased the royal monopoly in Brazilian foreign commerce, centralized the governmental apparatus, and transferred the seat of government from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro in 1763. Pombal expelled the Jesuits in 1760, because their influence among the Native Americans and growing economic power were resented by many Brazilians.

D

The Sojourn of the Portuguese Court

The Napoleonic Wars profoundly altered the course of Brazilian history. Early in November 1807 Napoleon dispatched an army across the Spanish frontier into Portugal. The Portuguese regent, Prince John, and most of his court embarked from Lisbon shortly before the arrival of the French army and sailed for Brazil. Prince John made Rio de Janeiro the seat of the royal government of Portugal and decreed a series of reforms and improvements for Brazil, among them the removal of restrictions on commerce, the institution of measures beneficial to agriculture and industry, and the creation of schools of higher learning.

Prince John inherited the Portuguese crown as John VI in March 1816. In the five-year period before his recall to Portugal, his regime steadily lost favour among the Brazilians. The royal government was corrupt and inefficient, and republican sentiment, widespread in the country following the French Revolution, had gained considerable momentum when the neighbouring Spanish colonies declared their independence. In 1816 King John intervened, occupying Banda Oriental (Uruguay), then under the control of Spanish-American revolutionaries. He crushed a revolutionary uprising in Pernambuco the next year. Banda Oriental was annexed to Brazil in 1821 and renamed Cisplatine Province. Before departing for Portugal in 1821, John VI made his second son, Dom Pedro, regent of Brazil. Sharp antagonism to the king’s Brazilian reforms had developed meanwhile in Portugal; the Cortes, the Portuguese legislature, enacted legislation designed to return Brazil to its former status as a colony. Dom Pedro was ordered to return to Europe. In 1822, responding to the pleas of the indignant Brazilians, Dom Pedro announced his refusal to leave Brazil. He convoked a Constituent Assembly in June, and in September, when dispatches from Portugal disclosed that the Cortes would make no major concessions to Brazilian nationalism, he proclaimed the country’s independence. By vote of the upper House of the Constituent Assembly, he became Emperor of Brazil in the same year. All Portuguese troops in Brazil had been forced to surrender by the end of 1823.