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Somebodies and Nobodies in the Body Politic: Mentalities and Social Structures in Colonial Brazil
- Stuart B. Schwartz
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- Latin American Research Review / Volume 31 / Issue 1 / 1996
- Published online by Cambridge University Press:
- 05 October 2022, pp. 113-134
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Tolerance and Coexistence in Early Modern Spain: Old Christians and Moriscos in the Campo de Calatrava. Trevor J. Dadson. Colección Támesis Serie A: Monografías 334. Woodbridge: Tamesis Books, 2014. xii + 280 pp. $99.
- Stuart B. Schwartz
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- Renaissance Quarterly / Volume 68 / Issue 1 / Spring 2015
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- 20 November 2018, pp. 329-330
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- Spring 2015
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Contributors
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- By Brittany L. Anderson-Montoya, Heather R. Bailey, Carryl L. Baldwin, Daphne Bavelier, Jameson D. Beach, Jeffrey S. Bedwell, Kevin B. Bennett, Richard A. Block, Deborah A. Boehm-Davis, Corey J. Bohil, David B. Boles, Avinoam Borowsky, Jessica Bramlett, Allison A. Brennan, J. Christopher Brill, Matthew S. Cain, Meredith Carroll, Roberto Champney, Kait Clark, Nancy J. Cooke, Lori M. Curtindale, Clare Davies, Patricia R. DeLucia, Andrew E. Deptula, Michael B. Dillard, Colin D. Drury, Christopher Edman, James T. Enns, Sara Irina Fabrikant, Victor S. Finomore, Arthur D. Fisk, John M. Flach, Matthew E. Funke, Andre Garcia, Adam Gazzaley, Douglas J. Gillan, Rebecca A. Grier, Simen Hagen, Kelly Hale, Diane F. Halpern, Peter A. Hancock, Deborah L. Harm, Mary Hegarty, Laurie M. Heller, Nicole D. Helton, William S. Helton, Robert R. Hoffman, Jerred Holt, Xiaogang Hu, Richard J. Jagacinski, Keith S. Jones, Astrid M. L. Kappers, Simon Kemp, Robert C. Kennedy, Robert S. Kennedy, Alan Kingstone, Ioana Koglbauer, Norman E. Lane, Robert D. Latzman, Cynthia Laurie-Rose, Patricia Lee, Richard Lowe, Valerie Lugo, Poornima Madhavan, Leonard S. Mark, Gerald Matthews, Jyoti Mishra, Stephen R. Mitroff, Tracy L. Mitzner, Alexander M. Morison, Taylor Murphy, Takamichi Nakamoto, John G. Neuhoff, Karl M. Newell, Tal Oron-Gilad, Raja Parasuraman, Tiffany A. Pempek, Robert W. Proctor, Katie A. Ragsdale, Anil K. Raj, Millard F. Reschke, Evan F. Risko, Matthew Rizzo, Wendy A. Rogers, Jesse Q. Sargent, Mark W. Scerbo, Natasha B. Schwartz, F. Jacob Seagull, Cory-Ann Smarr, L. James Smart, Kay Stanney, James Staszewski, Clayton L. Stephenson, Mary E. Stuart, Breanna E. Studenka, Joel Suss, Leedjia Svec, James L. Szalma, James Tanaka, James Thompson, Wouter M. Bergmann Tiest, Lauren A. Vassiliades, Michael A. Vidulich, Paul Ward, Joel S. Warm, David A. Washburn, Christopher D. Wickens, Scott J. Wood, David D. Woods, Motonori Yamaguchi, Lin Ye, Jeffrey M. Zacks
- Edited by Robert R. Hoffman, Peter A. Hancock, University of Central Florida, Mark W. Scerbo, Old Dominion University, Virginia, Raja Parasuraman, George Mason University, Virginia, James L. Szalma, University of Central Florida
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- The Cambridge Handbook of Applied Perception Research
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- 05 July 2015
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- 26 January 2015, pp xi-xiv
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2 - Looking for a New Brazil
- from Part I - The Geopolitical Legacy
- Edited by Michiel van Groesen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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- The Legacy of Dutch Brazil
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- 05 July 2014
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- 09 June 2014, pp 41-58
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Notes on Contributors
- Edited by Michiel van Groesen, Universiteit van Amsterdam
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- The Legacy of Dutch Brazil
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- 05 July 2014
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- 09 June 2014, pp vii-viii
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9 - Public and Private Power
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Early Brazil
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- 05 June 2012
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- 10 August 2009, pp 271-278
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Summary
In theory, the Brazilian colony was governed from Lisbon by centralized royal authority vested in governors, magistrates, and other royal officials, but the earlier system of donatary captains had remained in place in some regions, and local government was often controlled by the municipal councils of the port cities. Thus, powerful individuals, families, and interest groups such as the sugar planters or the merchants often exercised considerable influence on government and the law. The growth of the colony's population and its burgeoning economy in the later sixteenth century had created a number of challenges for the administration of justice. Municipal magistrates and a royal judge sent in 1549 were not able to keep up with the increasing amount of litigation and the prosecution of crime. After an aborted attempt in 1588, a royal court of appeals (Relação) with ten judges (desembargadores) was established in 1609. Its judges not only enforced the law but also made and interpreted legislation and served the governor in an advisory role, as well as taking on other administrative functions. Competing authorities such as the bishops or the donataries resented the proximity and power of the High Court, and so, in the aftermath of the Dutch seizure of Salvador (1624–5), pressure was brought on the Crown to abolish the High Court. It was abolished in 1626 and not reinstituted until 1652. The following anonymous document laments the court's demise and reveals the inequities and continuing problems in the judicial system.
(From Biblioteca Nacional de Lisboa, Colecção Pombalina 647, fols. 69–72).Arguments of the Inhabitants of Bahia against the Suppression of the High Court (1626)
His Majesty has the responsibility of ensuring that his subjects are treated justly. Yet there was [formerly] no justice in the State of Brazil, nor could there be, as there was only one senior Crown judge. After taking detailed advice, the very Catholic and prudent King Philip, the first king of Portugal to bear that name, ordered that there should be established a High Court in Brazil. To that end, he twice sent learned judges out to these Indies.
Driven by the same pressing need and sense of duty, His Majesty's father sent a High Court to this country in 1609. It was very effective and, owing to its establishment on the basis of sound advice, it frustrated the intention of the bishops and of others to suppress it. Their object was to promote their own personal interests, without regard for the public good. Hiding behind a mask of private greed, they even argued that for reasons of State, the High Court was unnecessary in Brazil. Out of respect for the aforesaid former sovereign, it seems right that it should be kept in being, all the more so because without a High Court, justice cannot be administered, and the State would collapse in chaos.
10 - Religion and Society
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Early Brazil
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- 05 June 2012
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- 10 August 2009, pp 279-288
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The missionary clergy, especially the Jesuits, exercised a powerful influence on Catholic religious life in the colony. Brazil was organized around the continued efforts of the missionary clergy among the indigenous peoples and the presence of a diocesan clergy, which administered to the majority of the population. The two spheres, however, were never fully separated, and the members of the religious orders like the Jesuits, Carmelites, Benedictines, and Franciscans – usually referred to as the “regular” clergy – often took an active part in other aspects of religious and cultural life. Then, too, there were various forms of local practice, “superstition,” and heterodoxy carried from Europe that encountered Native American and African practices and beliefs in Brazil. The documents presented here reveal two sides of religious life. The first text is a report on Jesuit activities in northeastern Brazil that underlines the multiple and varied activities of the missionary orders in the colony. It makes clear that the Jesuit activities were not limited to the Native American inhabitants of Brazil. The second text presents two depositions made before a visit of the Inquisition to Brazil, both of which reveal the existence of heterodox thought.
Jesuit Missions: Information for the Lisbon Committee on the Missions, 1702, on General and Economic Matters
(From Serafim Leite S.J., ed., História da Companhia de Jesus no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro and Lisbon, vol. 5 (1945), pp. 569–73).
The following is a brief report on the missions carried out this year in the territory of Bahia and in the Diocese of Pernambuco. A report on those in Rio de Janeiro will be sent separately, should news about them arrive in time. Otherwise, they will be sent in a year's time.
In Pernambuco, Fathers Cosme Pereira and Francisco de Araújo carried out a mission lasting four months and in eighteen places, starting out in Cape Santo Agostinho and ending in Alagoas. The fruits of this mission were the revalidation of thirty-three marriages to which there had been impediments and listening to five thousand, one hundred and ninety-five ordinary confessions. In addition, they heard four hundred and seven general and necessary confessions pertaining to entire lives or to those who had not confessed for many years. There were another thirty heard as a special act of devotion. Holy Communion was distributed to four thousand, nine hundred and seven people. Religious instruction was imparted with particular care to black people. This was also of no little benefit to white people, amongst whom there is just as much ignorance. In that way, the Fathers sought to persuade masters to treat their slaves better, to moderate the punishments that they mete out to them, and to give them all that they need in order to feed and clothe themselves. Many occasions of sin were abandoned, duly remedied by stable marriages. Many made peace with one another, and many deaths were thus avoided, deaths that would certainly have ensued, if the presence of the mission had not caused enemies to become reconciled. By night and by day, it was a major task because certain women in poverty sought absolution at night, and because everybody wanted to make their confession to the missionaries rather than to the [local] secular priests.
Maps
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- Early Brazil
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- 10 August 2009, pp xxii-xxvi
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3 - Royal Government
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Early Brazil
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Instructions Issued to the First Governor-General of Brazil, Tomé de Sousa, on 17 December 1548
The failure of the captaincy system to provide a firm basis for settlement or to clear the coast of European rivals finally moved the king of Portugal, Dom João III, to establish more direct control. In 1549, he sent Tomé de Sousa, a Portuguese commander with experience in North Africa and India, as governor of Brazil. The Governor-General sailed with an expedition of more than one thousand men and created a city, Salvador, on the Bay of All Saints in the captaincy of Bahia, where the donatary had died and there was thus no significant legal obstruction to the establishment of royal control. The expedition also included a senior judge and a royal treasurer. The new governor received his charter, or regimento, in December 1549. It included instructions on the organization of government as well as specific instructions on the creation of Salvador, which became the capital city. The governor was granted considerable powers to establish towns, encourage immigration, collect taxes, and promote trade. The document also demonstrates that the Crown was well aware of the Indian peoples and of previous Portuguese relations with them. The expedition also included six Jesuit missionaries, who immediately began to assume the task of converting the Indians. The instructions contained in this first regimento were often repeated in later instructions to senior officials so that this document served as a model for royal government in Brazil.
(From História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil, vol. III, pp. 345–50.)I the king make it known to you, Tomé de Sousa, gentleman of my household, that I deem it essential, both in the service of God and in my own interests, to maintain and ennoble the captaincies and settlements of my territories in Brazil. It is essential too to instill order and to effect some means by which men may more safely and effectively go over there to populate the territory, thus to glorify our Holy Faith and to bring profit to my realms and territories and to their inhabitants. I have commanded that in that territory a fortress should be built, as well as a large and sturdy township in a place suitable for that purpose. I have ordered that assistance be given by that township to the other settlements, that justice be administered, and that attention be given to those matters that are in my interest and in that of my treasury, not to mention the good of the country. I have been informed that the bay known as Bahia de Todos os Santos is the most suitable place along the Brazilian coastline for such a township and settlement to be located. Accordingly, because of the nature of the harbor and the rivers that flow into it, as well as the productive and healthy characteristics of the land and, indeed, other aspects, I deem it to be in my interest that this township should be constructed in Bahia. For that purpose, a fleet is to sail out there with men, artillery, arms, munitions, and everything else that is necessary. Because of the great faith that I have in you and because I trust that you will know how to serve me with all due loyalty and diligence in a matter of such major importance, I deem it appropriate to send you as governor-general of my territories in Brazil. In that role, you are to build the fortress in the manner set out below and you will be both captain of the fortress and of the territory of Bahia.
Early Brazil
- A Documentary Collection to 1700
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz
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- 05 June 2012
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- 10 August 2009
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Early Brazil presents a collection of original sources, many published for the first time in English and some never before published in any language, that illustrates the process of conquest, colonization, and settlement in Brazil. The volume emphasizes the actions and interactions of the indigenous peoples, Portuguese, and Africans in the formation of the first extensive plantation colony based on slavery in the Americas, and it also includes documents that reveal the political, social, religious, and economic life of the colony. Original documents on early Brazilian history are difficult to find in English, and this collection will serve the interests of undergraduate students, as well as graduate students, who seek to make comparisons or to understand the history of Portuguese expansion.
Index
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- 10 August 2009, pp 305-318
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2 - The Donatarial System
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- Early Brazil
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- 10 August 2009, pp 13-36
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During the two decades after the Portuguese first arrived on the Brazilian coast, their presence remained occasional and intermittent, limited in the main to the visits of small ships loading dyewood. The Portuguese Crown made efforts to clear foreign competitors, especially Norman and Breton ships, from the coast, and to that end Martim Afonso de Sousa captained an expedition in 1532 that sought to ensure Portugal's control of the new land. Acting on his advice and that of his cousin, the powerful courtier Dom António de Ataíde, the king Dom João III divided the coast into territorial grants that could be assigned to individuals who would assume the responsibility of protecting, settling, and developing their areas. The coast was divided into fifteen parcels called hereditary captaincies, and these were assigned to twelve Portuguese courtiers and soldiers, mostly members of the lesser nobility. Each man who received an award, or carta de doação, was called a donatario. Each recipient bore the title of captain as well.
The apparent model for these grants was the Portuguese senhorio, or seignory, which awarded rights and privileges in perpetuity but was not based on feudal obligations. The rights of taxation, justice, administration, and the privileges to promote settlement and economic development were conceded and detailed by the king. The donation that delineated the relationship between the donatario and the king was accompanied by a foral that spelled out the obligations of the colonists to the donatary captains. In the Middle Ages, these had been granted by the lord to the people in his domain, but by the time of the settlement of Brazil, the Crown had taken upon itself the granting of these documents, thus reducing the independence of the nobility. The donatarial captaincies were an imaginative adaptation of Portuguese medieval precedents to the challenge of colonization but proved in the long term to be unsatisfactory. Some areas were never settled; others floundered because of neglect, wars with native peoples, and internal dissension. Nevertheless, the captaincies provided the first administrative structure for the settlement of the colony.
A Royal Charter for the Captaincy of Pernambuco, Issued to Duarte Coelho on 24 September 1534
(From História da Colonização Portuguesa do Brasil [Oporto, 1924], vol. III, pp. 312–13).
King John [III] etc. To all those to whom this letter is addressed I wish it to be known that, with all due favor, I have now made a land donation to Duarte Coelho, a nobleman of my household, for him and for all his children, grandchildren, heirs and successors, in perpetuity. This grant will ensure the due interest and inheritance relating to the captaincy and will ensure the government of sixty leagues of my territory along the coast of Brazil. This territory starts in the south at the River São Francisco, at the Cape of Santo Agostinho, and ends [in the north] at the River Santa Cruz, which is in line with that cape. All this is more fully set out in the Charter of Donation that I have issued to him regarding that territory. It is highly important to have a charter stating the rentals, taxes, and other levies which have to be paid, not only those due to me and to the Crown, but also those due to the captain by virtue of his land donation. Being aware of the quality of this territory, I now once more command that it be inhabited, populated, and developed, since it is expedient that this be done in the most suitable manner and as soon as possible. I consider this decree to be in the service of God and in my own interest, as well as that of the captain and inhabitants of the territory. As I am pleased to grant them this favor, I have deemed it appropriate to order that this charter be drawn up in the following form and manner.
Preface
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- By Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- 10 August 2009, pp ix-xviii
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This collection of documents, many of which are translated here for the first time in English and some of which have not been published before in any language, has been selected to bring to students and general readers basic texts of early Brazilian history. As such, they are part of the broad topic of Europe's expansion in the early modern era and, specifically, of Portugal's role in that process and in the encounter and clash of peoples and cultures that it set in motion. After Vasco da Gama reached India and returned to Portugal in 1498, the way had been opened for trade with Asia by way of the Cape of Good Hope. A second expedition of thirteen ships sailed for India in March 1500 under the command of Pedro Alvares Cabral, but on the outward voyage, its route out into the Atlantic, taken to avoid the contrary winds and currents along the West African coast, brought this fleet to an unexpected landfall on what most (but not all) historians believe was, to Europeans at least, an unknown shore. First contact with the local inhabitants was peaceful; the Portuguese carried out a little trade and exploration; a cross was erected on Friday, the first of May; and a mass was celebrated. The fleet's secretary, Pero Vaz de Caminha penned a report in the form of a letter to the king (I-1) about the new land. A ship was dispatched back to Lisbon, and the remainder of the fleet then proceeded on the Cape route toward India. Cabral called the new land the “Island of the True Cross” but that denomination was soon replaced by “Land of the Holy Cross,” and then in practice by other less spiritual designations. Some of the early mariners referred to this coast as “the “land of parrots,” others called it the “land of the bedsheets” because the white sand of the beaches looked as though sheets had been laid out on the shore, but the most popular name soon became Brazil, a word of debated etymology derived either from the legends of a mystical Atlantic island named “Brasyl” or from the valuable reddish wood that seemed the color of embers (brasas) extracted from the large brazilwood trees that grew in the forests of the new land. In the sixteenth century, in the age of tapestries and before the age of chemical dyes, the color red was particularly hard to produce, and so word of the new Portuguese “discovery” spread rapidly (I-2). Other Europeans, especially French merchants and sailors from Normandy and Brittany, also began to explore the Brazilian coast, contact the indigenous inhabitants, and trade for brazilwood. Despite this competition, the Portuguese crown remained more interested in the spices and riches of India than in a land of naked “gentiles,” parrots, and dyewood.
8 - Burdens of Slavery and Race
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- Early Brazil
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Slave flight and resistance was a constant feature of Brazilian life. The formation of escaped slave communities called mocambos or quilombos took place everywhere in Brazil, but during the period of the Dutch occupation, a group of escaped slave communities formed into a conglomerate kingdom in a mountainous area in southern Pernambuco in what is today the state of Alagoas. Despite expeditions mounted against this community of Palmares [place of the palms] by the Dutch and then by the Portuguese, the defenders put up an active guerilla defense throughout the seventeenth century. In the 1680s, expeditions of backwoodsmen from São Paulo as well as local troops were used against the escaped slaves, but only in 1694 were the last resistors defeated and their leader, Zumbi, killed. The following letters and accounts provide an idea of the tactics used to combat the fugitives and the threat that a community of escaped slaves seemed to present to the stability of the slave system as a whole.
The War against Palmares: Letter from the Governor of Pernambuco, Ferão de Sousa Coutinho (1 June 1671) on the Increasing Number of Insurgent Slaves Present in Palmares
(Reprinted from Richard Morse, The Bandeirantes [New York: Alfred Knopf, 1968] and translated from Ernesto Ennes, As guerras nos Palmares Coleção Brasiliana, vol. 127 [São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1938], pp. 133–4.)
Sire. For some years the Negroes from Angola who fled the rigors of captivity and the sugar mills of this captaincy have established numerous inland settlements between Palmares and the forests, where difficult access and lack of roads leave them better fortified by nature than they might be by human art. These settlements are growing daily in number and becoming so bold that their continual robberies and assaults are causing a large part of the inhabitants of this captaincy who live nearest the mocambos to leave their land. The example and permanence of the mocambos each day induces the other Negroes to flee and escape from the rigorous captivity which they suffer and to find freedom amid fertile land and the security of their own dwellings. One might fear that with these advantages they could grow to such numbers that they might move against the inhabitants of this captaincy, who are so few in relation to their slaves. To avoid this danger, I intend to go to Pôrto Calvo with the entrada of this summer, which is the most suitable place from which to wage this war. From there, using bodies of men that will continually relieve each other, I will order roads opened to the above Palmares by means of which their settlements can be besieged and razed consecutively until all are destroyed and this captaincy is left free of the misfortune which so severely threatens it. For many are the obstacles confronting me in this plan, owing to the difficult terrain and the lack of roads and transportation for provisions, which throughout this State can be carried only on the backs of Negroes since there are no roads for wagons nor even for more than men traveling in single file.…And Your Highness may be sure that this State is in no less danger from the audacity of these Negroes than it was from the Dutch. For in their very houses and plantations, the inhabitants have enemies who can overcome them if they should decide to follow the pernicious example and admonitions of those same rebels, who maintain contact with them, and who now have blacksmith shops and other workshops where they can manufacture weapons, since they already possess some firearms which they took from here. Also, this sertão is so rich in metals and nitrate that it furnishes everything for their defense provided they have the skills, which it may be feared many fugitives do possess who are trained in all the crafts. And because irreparable harm generally results when such dangers are ignored, I decided to take measures against any which might arise from these.
11 - Frontiers
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Although the heartland of the Portuguese colony of Brazil remained the coastal strip, by the seventeenth century, slave hunting, cattle ranching, and prospecting had opened up small settlements and trails into the interior. On the perimeter of the major areas of settlement, a number of kinds of frontiers developed. The northern captaincies of Maranhão and Pará constituted a separate colony in many ways. They had been the target of French, Spanish, and other European projects at colonization, but with the foundation of cities such as São Luiz (1614) and Belem (1616), a Portuguese presence was fully established, and the area was created as a separate administrative unit, the State of Maranhão, in 1621. Despite that action, the European population remained small because these areas continued to be something of an economic backwater, even though attempts were made there to develop sugar plantations. Colonists remained dependent on Native American workers and thus clashed with the missionaries in the region, repeating in a way the struggles between colonists and Jesuits that had characterized the Brazilian coast in the sixteenth century. The Jesuits replaced the Franciscans as the major missionary order in the region in the 1640s. They led a campaign against colonist abuses that resulted in a 1655 law limiting enslavement of Indians, but this legislation was ineffective, and the struggle continued between missionaries and colonists well into the following century. Jesuit Father Antônio Vieira, author, preacher, diplomat, and missionary, was sent to Belem as Jesuit Provincial in 1652. His letter to the Crown translated here makes clear the region's problems.
Another kind of frontier developed in the interior. Westward from the coastal settlements of Brazil, especially in the northeastern captaincies of Bahia and Pernambuco, cattlemen had opened up vast stretches of the arid backlands or sertão, sometimes creating properties of great size. Large drives of cattle brought the livestock down to the coast to supply the needs of the colony as described in document 2 and, in doing so, expanded the scope of the colony.
It was, however, the search for precious metals that finally moved the population inland on a large scale. Travelers, colonists, and royal officers had long searched for gold or other precious metals. Companies of trailblazers and backwoodsmen had traversed the interior in search of mineral wealth and of Native Americans who could be used as workers. Setting out from São Paulo and from other towns, these men explored the interior and pushed the frontier of occupation westward. By the 1670s, with the sugar economy in decline, the search for precious metals became intense, but it was only in 1695 that relatively large strikes were made in the mountainous area called Minas Gerais. Gold fever swept through the colony and the empire. Neither Brazil nor the Portuguese empire would ever be the same again. The most famous early account of the mining region was penned by André João Antonil (Giovanni Antonio Andreoni), an Italian Jesuit who came to Brazil in 1681 and became Provincial of Order and rector of the Jesuit College of Salvador. In 1711, he publishedCultura e opulência do Brasil por suas drogas e minas, an analysis of the major economic activities in Brazil including the newly discovered mines, but his descriptions of the routes to the mines were so accurate that the book was banned and almost all the existing copies destroyed.
The State of Maranhão: A Letter from Father António Vieira S.J. (1653)
(From J. Lúcio de Azevedo, ed., Cartas do Padre António Vieira, Lisbon, vol. 1 (1970), pp. 296–305).
Contents
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7 - Government and Society in Dutch Brazil
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Portugal was ruled by the Spanish Hapsburgs from 1580 to 1640. During that period, it profited from the advantages of new markets and opportunities in Spain and its empire, but its commerce and colonies also became a target for Spain's enemies. The rebellious provinces of Holland formed the Dutch West India Company in 1621 to aid in the political and economic struggle against the Hapsburg Crown. Portugal and its colonies and commerce, now ruled by the Spanish Hapsburgs, became prime targets for the Dutch. Pernambuco and subsequently much of the northeastern coast of Brazil were captured after 1630; the Dutch created their own colony in northeastern Brazil and held it until they were expelled in 1654. The report included here provides an overview of that colony during the years in which the Dutch, under the able direction of Governor Johann Maurits von Nassau, sought to make the Brazilian colony a success by extending religious toleration to Catholics and Jews.
(From José Antônio Gonsalves de Mello, ed., Fontes para a História do Brasil Holandês, 1. Economia Açucareira [Recife, 1981], pp. 96–129.)Government by the Dutch
His Excellency Johan Maurits, Count of Nassau, as governor-general, captain and admiral-general, together with the noble members of the High and Secret Council, acting on behalf of their High Powers, the States-General of the United Netherlands, of His Highness the Prince of Orange, and of the noble directors of the General West India Company, constitute the supreme government of those areas of Brazil that have already been conquered or that will be conquered in the future. To them is subordinated the Board of Political Counsellors, which was established to administer justice.
The aforesaid Board of Political Counselors, which should consist of nine members, is at present greatly under strength, with insufficient counselors to conduct its business. Heer Ippo Eysens was killed in October 1636 in Paraíba; Heer Cornelis Adriaensz Jongknecht has also died, just after his return from an expedition to the south; and shortly afterwards, Heer Johan Robbertsen died at Cape Santo Agostinho. Heer Jacob Stachhouwer has become a private citizen, Heer Paulus Seroskerchen has obtained permission to return to the Netherlands, and finally Heer Hendrick Schilt has been dismissed from office. There are currently only three political counselors, namely Heeren Willem Schot, Balthasar Wyntgis, and Elias Herckmans. The last-named has to date been living in Paraíba, of which he is director, and consequently has been unable to attend meetings of the board. Heer Wyntgis used to live on [the island of] Itamaracá as director of that captaincy, but, owing to the board's reduced numbers, we have commanded him to take up residence here, in order to accompany Heer Willem Schot in the exercise of justice. We have appointed a number of assistant counselors to work alongside these counsellors in dealing with criminal matters and with other issues of major importance. Nonetheless, judicial and other concerns, which are the very purpose for which the college exists, are not being exercised as they should be, and as is so necessary for the good of the settlers.
5 - Indians, Jesuits, and Colonists
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Summary
During much of the second half of the sixteenth century, Portuguese colonists and Jesuit missionaries struggled over the best way to control, convert, and employ the indigenous inhabitants of Brazil. Both the colonists who, with the development of a sugar industry, began to enslave the native peoples, and the Jesuits, who wanted to bring them into missionary villages, hoped to convince the Crown that they were best suited to bring the Indians under Portuguese authority and make them subjects of the king useful to the colony. The Crown issued laws limiting or prohibiting the enslavement of Indians in 1574, 1595, 1609, and 1680, but there were always considerable loopholes in the legislation. During the struggle over control of the Indians, both colonists and Jesuits became highly critical of their opponents, but both sides also wrote in some detail about the indigenous peoples of Brazil.
The Tupinambás
Of all the indigenous peoples on the coast, the Tupinambá of Bahia received the most attention from early European observers. In this excerpt, the sugar planter, Gabriel Soares de Sousa, presents an extensive and detailed ethnography that demonstrates the curiosity of the early Portuguese observers but also the limitations in describing Native American cultures imposed by European preconceptions and understandings. His account maintains the usual Portuguese distinction between the Tupi-speaking peoples and the tapuyas, or groups that spoke non-Tupi languages. Although he notes the barbarism and cannibalism of the latter, his account also reveals a familiarity and, at times, admiration for their skills.
(From Gabriel Soares de Sousa, Tratado Descretivo do Brasil em 1587, pp. 299–322.)The Original Inhabitants of Bahia
According to information gleaned from Indians of very great age, the first inhabitants of Bahia and the surrounding area were the Tapuyas. They are a very ancient tribe, and more will be revealed about them in due course. They were expelled from Bahia and areas close to the sea by an opposing tribe, the Tupinaés, who swept down on them from inland, attracted by reports about the fertility of the land and about the plentiful seafood that characterize this province. One tribe waged war on the other until finally the Tupinaés defeated and routed the Tapuyas, forcing them to abandon the coastal areas and retreat into the interior without any real chance of recapturing their former territory. The Tupinaés dominated and ruled over that area for many years, continuing to repel attacks launched from inland by the Tapuyas, the original inhabitants of the coast.
1 - The “Discovery” and First Encounters with Brazil
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Early Brazil
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- 05 June 2012
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- 10 August 2009, pp 1-12
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Summary
The Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha
Following the return to Portugal of Vasco da Gama in 1499 after his successful voyage to India around the Cape of Good Hope, a second fleet of thirteen ships set sail from Lisbon in March 1500, commanded by Pedro Alvares Cabral, to follow the same route. In late April of that year, it made a landfall on the Brazilian coast. After briefly exploring the coast and establishing some contact with the native peoples, the main fleet continued on its way to India, but a small ship was detached to return to Portugal. It carried two letters with details on the new land and its people. The letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha is often described as the foundational document of Brazilian history. Vaz de Caminha, of a noble family from Oporto, was most likely traveling to India to take up a post as the secretary at the trading post to be established there, but he was also serving as scribe for the fleet. In many ways, his report paralleled the first letters of Columbus from the Caribbean, providing details about the geography, peoples, and conditions in the new lands. The letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha disappeared from sight until the late eighteenth century, when it was uncovered in the Portuguese royal archive. It was first published in 1817 (Aires de Casal, Corografia Brasilica [Rio de Janeiro, 1817]) and subsequently has been published in innumerable editions.
(The excerpted translation presented here is from Charles David Ley, ed., Portuguese Voyages, 1498–1663, Everyman's Library, No. 986 (New York: Dutton & Co., pp. 42–45, 53–54, 56–59.)This same day, at the hour of vespers we sighted land, that is to say, first a very high rounded mountain, then other lower ranges of hills to the south of it, and a plain covered with large trees. The admiral named the mountain Easter Mount and the country the Land of the True Cross.
6 - The World of the Engenhos
- Edited by Stuart B. Schwartz, Yale University, Connecticut
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- Early Brazil
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- 05 June 2012
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- 10 August 2009, pp 198-233
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Sugar cane was introduced to Brazil from Madeira and São Tomé and, by the 1540s, was beginning to flourish along the coast, especially in Pernambuco and Bahia, but also in the southern captaincy of São Vicente. The sugar mills (engenhos) required land, labor, and capital. The land was seized or conquered; the labor was first obtained by enslaving the indigenous peoples, which, as we have seen, led to conflicts with the missionaries, and then by the importation of African slaves. The capital was obtained at first from Portuguese and foreign investors and subsequently was raised from other activities in the colony itself. The sugar estates were complex combinations of agriculture and industry because of the need to mill the cane immediately after harvesting it to produce sugar. By 1612, Brazil had 192 engenhos in operation and was exporting more than 10,000 tons a year to Europe. During the seventeenth century, Brazil was the greatest producer of sugar in the Atlantic world.
Excerpt from a Letter from the Administrator of Engenho, São Jorge de Erasmo
Among the first investors in the Brazilian sugar industry was the German banking firm of Erasmo Schetz, which was well established in Antwerp. Schetz funded the creation of an engenho in São Vicente and employed a Flemish agent to run the operation. That man was probably Heliodoro Eobano, whose letter of 1548 is published here. This unsigned letter reveals details about the organization and operations of an early sugar estate. Indigenous people were still the principal workers, but Africans were beginning to appear, especially as skilled workers. Sugarcane was supplied to the mill by cane farmers (called moradores here), a class of farmers that became characteristic of the Brazilian sugar industry. This letter suggests that the organization of Brazilian sugar estates had previously developed elsewhere, probably in Madeira and São Tomé, and even in the mid-sixteenth century was already in full operation in Brazil. This letter was first published by the Belgian historian Edy Stols in “Um dos primeiros documentos sobre o engenho dos Schetz em São Vicente,” Revista de História, 76 (1968), pp. 407–20.
Laus Deo. 13 May 1548, in Santos on the island of São Vicente on the coast of Brazil.