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Colonial Brazil (), sometimes referred to as Portuguese America, comprises the period from 1500, with the arrival of the Portuguese, until 1822, when Brazil was elevated to a kingdom in union with Portugal. During the 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the main economic activities of the territory were based first on Paubrasilia extraction (brazilwood cycle), which gave the territory its name;A.J.R. Russell-Wood, Brazil, The colonial era" in Encyclopedia of Latin American History and Culture, vol. 1, p. 410. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons 1996. sugar production (sugar cycle); and finally on gold and diamond mining (gold cycle). Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the workforce of the Brazilian export economy after a brief initial period of Indigenous slavery to cut brazilwood.
In contrast to the neighboring Spanish America, which had several Viceroy with jurisdiction initially over New Spain (Mexico) and Peru, and in the eighteenth century expanded with the viceroyalties of the RÃo de la Plata (Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia) and New Granada (Colombia, Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador and Guyana), the colony of Brazil was settled mainly in the coastal area by the Portuguese and a large black slave population working on Engenho and mines.
The boom and bust of the economic cycles were linked to export products. Brazil's sugar age, with the development of plantation slavery, merchants serving as middle men between production sites, Brazilian ports, and Europe was undermined by the growth of the sugar industry in the Caribbean on islands that European powers seized from Spain. Gold and diamonds were discovered and mined in southern Brazil through the end of the colonial era. Brazilian cities were largely port cities and the colonial administrative capital was moved from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro in response to the rise and fall of export products' importance.
Unlike Spanish America, which fragmented into many republics upon independence, Brazil remained a single administrative unit under a monarch as the Empire of Brazil, giving rise to the largest country in Latin America. Just as Spanish and Roman Catholicism were a core source of cohesion among Spain's vast and multi-ethnic territories, Brazilian society was united by the Portuguese language and Roman Catholicism. As the only Lusophone polity in the Americas, the Portuguese language was - and remains - particularly important to Brazilian identity.
In 1494, the two kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula divided the New World between them in the Treaty of Tordesillas, and in 1500 navigator Pedro Ãlvares Cabral landed in what is now Brazil and laid claim to it in the name of king Manuel I of Portugal. The Portuguese identified in Portuguese brazilwood as a valuable red dye source and an exploitable product, and attempted to force indigenous groups in Brazil to cut the trees.
The initial costs of setting up these commercial posts was borne by private investors, who in turn received hereditary titles and commercial advantages. From the Portuguese Crown's point of view, its realm was expanded with relatively little cost to itself.James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America: A History of Colonial Spanish America and Brazil. New York: Cambridge University Press 1983, pp. 24–26. On the Atlantic islands of the Azores, Madeira, and São Tomé, the Portuguese began plantation production of sugarcane using forced labor, a precedent for Brazil's sugar production in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 26–27.
The Portuguese discovery of Brazil was preceded by a series of treaties between the kings of Portugal and Castile, following Portuguese sailings down the coast of Africa to India and the voyages to the Caribbean of the Genoese mariner sailing for Castile, Christopher Columbus. The most decisive of these treaties was the Treaty of Tordesillas, signed in 1494, which created the Tordesillas Meridian, dividing the world between the two kingdoms. All land discovered or to be discovered east of that meridian was to be the property of Portugal, and everything to the west of it went to Spain.
The Tordesillas Meridian divided South America into two parts, leaving a large chunk of land to be exploited by the Spaniards. The Treaty of Tordesillas has been called the earliest document in Brazilian history,Rollie Poppino, Brazil: The Land and People,Oxford University Press, 1968, p. 44 since it determined that part of South America would be settled by Portugal instead of Spain. The Treaty of Tordesillas was an item of dispute for more than two and a half centuries but clearly established the Portuguese in America. It was replaced by the Treaty of Madrid in 1750, and both reflect the present extent of Brazil's coastline.E. Bradford Burns,A History of Brazil, 2 ed. Columbia University Press, New York, p. 71
The Portuguese colonization, around 80 years earlier, of islands off West Africa such as São Tomé and PrÃncipe, were the first examples of the Portuguese monarchy beginning to move from a crusading and looting-centric attitude, to a trade-centric attitude when approaching new lands. The latter attitude required communication and cooperation with indigenous people, thus, interpreters. This informed Cabral's actions in Brazil.
As Cabral realized that no one in his convoy spoke the language of the indigenous people in Brazil, he took every effort to avoid violence and conflict and used music and humor as forms of communication. Just a few months before Cabral landed, Spanish navigator Vicente Yáñez Pinzón came to the northeastern coast of Brazil and deployed many armed men ashore with no means of communicating with the indigenous people. One of his ships and captains was captured by indigenous people and eight of his men were killed. Cabral no doubt learned from this to treat communication with the utmost priority. Cabral left two Degredado (criminal exiles) in Brazil to learn the native languages and to serve as interpreters in the future. The practice of leaving degredados in new lands to serve as interpreters came straight from the colonization of the islands off of the West African coast 80 years before Cabral landed in Brazil.
After Cabral's voyage, the Portuguese focused their efforts on their possessions in Africa and India and showed little interest in Brazil. Between 1500 and 1530, relatively few Portuguese expeditions came to the new land to chart the coast and to obtain brazilwood. In Europe, this wood was used to produce a valuable red dye to luxury textiles. To extract brazilwood from the tropical rainforest, the Portuguese and other Europeans relied on the work of the natives, who initially worked in exchange for European goods like mirrors, scissors, knives and axes.Alexander Marchant, From Barter to Slavery: The Economic Relations of Portuguese and Indians in the Settlement of Brazil, 1500–1580. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press 1942.
In this early stage of the colonization of Brazil, and also later, the Portuguese frequently relied on the help of Europeans who lived together with the indigenous people and knew their languages and culture. The most famous of these were João Ramalho, who lived among the Guaianaz tribe near today's São Paulo, and Diogo Ãlvares Correia, who acquired the name Caramuru, who lived among the Tupinambá natives near today's Salvador.
Over time, the Portuguese realized that some European countries, especially France, were also sending excursions to the land to extract brazilwood. Worried about foreign incursions and hoping to find mineral riches, the Portuguese crown decided to send large missions to take possession of the land and fight the French. In 1530, an expedition led by Martim Afonso de Sousa arrived in Brazil to patrol the entire coast, expel the French, and create the first colonial villages like São Vicente on the coast.
The social model of conquest in Brazil was one geared toward commerce and entrepreneurial ideals rather than conquest as was the case in the Spanish realm. As time progressed, the Portuguese crown found that having the colony serve as a trading post was not ideal for regulating land claims in the Americas, so it decided that the best way to keep control of their land was to settle it. Thus, the land was divided into fifteen private, hereditary captaincies, the most successful of which being Pernambuco and São Vicente. Pernambuco succeeded by growing sugarcane. São Vicente prospered by enslaving indigenous native people from the land. The other thirteen captaincies failed, leading the king to make colonization a royal effort rather than a private one. Bailey Diffie, A History of Colonial Brazil: 1500–1792, Krueger, Malabar, Florida, 1987, ch 4
In 1549, Tomé de Sousa sailed to Brazil to establish a central government. He brought along Jesuits priests, who set up missions, forbidding natives to express their own cultures, and converting many to Catholicism. The Jesuits' work to dominate the indigenous native’s cultural expression and way of living helped the Portuguese expel the French from a colony they had established at present-day Rio de Janeiro.Bailey Diffie, A History of Colonial Brazil: 1500–1792, Krueger, Malabar, Florida, 1987, pp. 125–147
From the 15 original captaincies, only two, Pernambuco and São Vicente, prospered. The failure of most captaincies was related to the resistance of the indigenous native people, shipwrecks and internal disputes between the colonizers. Failure can also be attributed to the Crown not having a strong administrative hold due to Brazil's reliance on its exportation economy. Pernambuco, the most successful captaincy, belonged to Duarte Coelho, who founded the city of Olinda in 1536. His captaincy prospered with Engenho, sugarcane mills, installed after 1542 producing sugar. Sugar was a very valuable good in Europe, and its production became the main Brazilian colonial product for the next 150 years. The captaincy of São Vicente, owned by Martim Afonso de Sousa, also produced sugar but its main economic activity was capturing indigenous native people to trade them as slaves.
The second Governor General, Duarte da Costa (1553–1557), faced conflicts with the indigenous people and severe disputes with other colonizers and the bishop. Wars against the natives around Salvador consumed much of his government. The fact that the first bishop of Brazil, Pero Fernandes Sardinha, was killed and eaten by the Caeté natives after a shipwreck in 1556 illustrates how strained the situation was between the Portuguese and many indigenous communities.
The third Governor-General of Brazil was Mem de Sá (1557–1573). He was an efficient administrator who managed to defeat the indigenous people and, with the help of the Jesuits, expel the French (Huguenots and some previous Catholic settlers) from their colony of France Antarctique. As part of this process, his nephew, Estácio de Sá, founded the city of Rio de Janeiro there in 1565.
The huge size of Brazil led to the colony being divided in two after 1621 when king Philip II created the states of Brasil, with Salvador as capital, and Maranhão, with its capital in São LuÃs. The state of Maranhão was still further divided in 1737 into the Maranhão e Piauà and Grão-Pará e Rio Negro, with its capital in Belém do Pará. Each state had its own Governor.
After 1640, the governors of Brazil coming from the high nobility started to use the title of Vice-rei (Viceroy). In 1763 the capital of the State of Brazil was transferred from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. In 1775 all Brazilian States (Brasil, Maranhão and Grão-Pará) were unified into the Viceroyalty of Brazil, with Rio de Janeiro as capital, and the title of the king's representative was officially changed to that of Viceroy of Brazil.
As in Portugal, each colonial village and city had a city council ( câmara municipal), whose members were prominent figures of colonial society (land owners, merchants, slave traders). Colonial city councils were responsible for regulating commerce, public infrastructure, professional artisans, prisons etc.
The first Jesuits, guided by Father Manuel da Nóbrega and including prominent figures like Juan de Azpilcueta Navarro, Leonardo Nunes and later Joseph of Anchieta, established the first Jesuit missions in Salvador and in São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga, the settlement that gave rise to the city of São Paulo. Nóbrega and Anchieta were instrumental in the defeat of the French colonists of France Antarctique by managing to pacify the Tamoio natives, who had previously fought the Portuguese. The Jesuits took part in the foundation of the city of Rio de Janeiro in 1565.
The success of the Jesuits in converting the indigenous people to Catholicism is linked to their capacity to understand the native culture, especially the language. The first grammar of the Tupian languages language was compiled by Joseph of Anchieta and printed in Coimbra in 1595. The Jesuits often gathered the aborigines into communities of resettlement called aldeias, similar in intent to the reductions implemented by Francisco de Toledo in southern Peru during the 1560s. where the natives worked for the community and were evangelized. Founded in the aftermath of the campaign undertaken by Mem de Sá from 1557 to force the submission of Salvadoran natives, the aldeias marked the transition of Jesuit policy from conversion by persuasion alone to the acceptance of force as a means of organizing natives with a means to then evangelizing them.Alida Metcalf, "Go-betweens and the colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600". Austin: University of Texas Press (2005), 110–112 Nevertheless, these aldeias were unattractive to the natives due to the introduction of epidemic diseases to the communities, the forced settlement of aldeia natives elsewhere to labor, and raiding of the aldeias by colonists eager to steal laborers for themselves thus causing natives to flee the settlements.Mark Burkholder, Lyman Johnson. "Colonial Latin America". New York: Oxford University Press (2001), 124 The aldeia model would again be used, though also unsuccessfully, by the Governor of the captaincy of São Paulo, , in 1765, in order to encourage mestizos, natives, and mulattoes to abandon slash-and-burn agriculture and adopt a sedentary farming lifestyle.Warren Dean "With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest". Berkeley: University of California Press (1997), 100
The Jesuits had frequent disputes with other colonists who wanted to enslave the natives, but also with the hierarchy of the Catholic Church itself. Following the creation of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of São Salvador da Bahia by the Pope, Bishop Pero Fernandes Sardinha arrived in Bahia in 1552 and took issue with the Jesuit mission led by Manoel da Nóbrega. Sardinha opposed the Jesuits taking part in indigenous dances and playing indigenous instruments since he viewed these activities had little effect on conversion. The use of interpreters at confession by the Jesuits was also railed against by Sardinha who opposed the appropriation of indigenous culture for evangelization.Alida Metcalf, "Go-betweens and the colonization of Brazil, 1500–1600". Austin: University of Texas Press (2005), 102–104 Sardinha also challenged the Jesuit prohibition on waging war against and enslaving the indigenous population, eventually forcing Nóbrega to leave Bahia for the Jesuit mission at São Vicente in late 1552 to return only at the conclusion of the Sardinha's tenure.Kenneth Mills, William B. Taylor, and Sandra Lauderdale Graham, "Colonial Latin America: A Documentary History". Lanham, Md.: SR Books, (2004), 95. The action of the Jesuits saved many natives from slavery, but also disturbed their ancestral way of life and inadvertently helped spread infectious diseases against which the aborigines had no natural defenses. Slave labour and trade were essential for the economy of Brazil and other American colonies, and the Jesuits usually did not object to the enslavement of African people.
Another French colony, France Équinoxiale, was founded in 1612 in present-day São LuÃs, in the North of Brazil. In 1614 the French were again expelled from São LuÃs by the Portuguese.
The period of sugar-based economy (1530 – c. 1700) is known as the sugar cycle in Brazil.James Lockhart and Stuart B. Schwartz, Early Latin America, chapter 7. Brazil in the Sugar Age. New York: Cambridge University Press 1983. The development of the sugar complex occurred over time, with a variety of models.Stuart B. Schwartz, "Free Farmers in a Slave Economy: The Lavradores de Cana in Colonial Bahia," in Dauril Alden, ed. Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press 1973, pp. 147–197. The dependencies of the farm included a casa-grande (big house) where the owner of the farm lived with his family, and the senzala, where the slaves were kept. A notable early study of this complex is by Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre.Gilberto Freyre, The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization. New York: English edition 1956; 1933 Portuguese original edition. This arrangement was depicted in engravings and paintings by Frans Post as a feature of an apparently harmonious society.See the articles by Ernst van den Boogaart and by Elmer Kolfin in The Slave in European Art: From Renaissance Trophy to Abolitionist Emblem, ed Elizabeth McGrath and Jean Michel Massing, London (The Warburg Institute) and Turin 2012.
Initially, the Portuguese relied on enslaved Amerindians to work on sugarcane harvesting and processing, but they soon began importing enslaved Africans from West Africa, though the enslavement of indigenous people continued. The Portuguese had established several commercial facilities in West Africa, where West African slaves were bought from African slave traders. The enslaved West Africans were then sent via to Brazil, chained and in crowded conditions. Enslaved West Africans were more desirable and practical because many came from sedentary, Agrarian society and did not require as much training in how to farm as did members of Amerindian societies, which tended to not be primarily agricultural. (2025). 9780521141925, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780521141925 Africans were also less vulnerable to disease than Amerindians were. The importation of enslaved Africans into Brazil was heavily influenced by the rise of sugar and gold industries in the colony; from 1600 until 1650, sugar accounted for 95% of Brazil's exports.Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2003. Print.
Slave labor demands varied based on region and on the type of harvest crop. In the Bahia region, where sugar was the main crop, conditions for enslaved peoples were extremely harsh. It was often cheaper for slaveowners to literally work enslaved peoples to death over the course of a few years and replace them with newly imported enslaved people. Areas where Cassava, a subsistence crop, was cultivated also utilized high numbers of enslaved peoples. In these areas, 40 to 60 percent of the population was enslaved. These regions were characterized by fewer work demands and better living and working conditions for enslaved peoples as compared to labor conditions for enslaved populations in sugar regions.
The Portuguese attempted to severely restrict colonial trade, meaning that Brazil was only allowed to export and import goods from Portugal and other Portuguese colonies. Brazil exported sugar, tobacco, cotton and native products and imported from Portugal wine, olive oil, and luxury goods – the latter imported by Portugal from other European countries. Africa played an essential role as the supplier of slaves, and Brazilian slave traders in Africa frequently exchanged cachaça, a distilled spirit derived from sugarcane, and shells, for slaves. This comprised what is now known as the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas during the colonial period.
Merchants during the sugar age were crucial to the economic development of the colony, the link between the sugar production areas, coastal Portuguese cities, and Europe.Rae Flory and David Grant Smith, "Bahian Merchants and Planters in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries." Hispanic American Historical Review 58(1978):571–94. Merchants in the early came from many nations, including Germans, Flemings, and Italians, but Portuguese merchants came to dominate the trade in Brazil. During the union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns (1580–1640), to be active in Spanish America as well, especially trading African slaves.Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, p. 221.
Even though Brazilian sugar was reputed as being of high quality, the industry faced a crisis during the 17th and 18th centuries when the Dutch and the French started producing sugar in the Antilles, located much closer to Europe, causing sugar prices to fall.
Quilombos were often viewed by Portuguese colonists as "parasitic," relying upon theft of livestock and crops, "extortion, and sporadic raiding" for sustenance.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels : reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 2. . . Abreu, Johnathan A. (2018). "Fugitive Slave Communities in Northern Brail between 1880 and 1900: Territoriality, Resistance, and the Struggle for Autonomy." Journal of Latin American Geography. Austin: University of Texas Press. 17(1): 199. . Often, the victims of this raiding were not white sugar planters but blacks who sold produce grown on their own plots. Other accounts document the actions of members of quilombos to successfully prospect gold and diamonds and to engage in trade with white-controlled cities.Dean, Warren (1997). With Broadax and Firebrand: The Destruction of the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 103. . . Abreu, Johnathan A. (2018). "Fugitive Slave Communities in Northern Brail between 1880 and 1900: Territoriality, Resistance, and the Struggle for Autonomy." Journal of Latin American Geography. Austin: University of Texas Press. 17(1): 201. .
While the reasons for fugitive settlement are varied, quilombos were rarely wholly self-sufficient and although inhabitants may have engaged in agricultural pursuits, they depended on a kind of parasitic economy where proximity to settled areas were usually prerequisites for their long-term success. Unlike the palenque in Spanish America or Maroons settlements in the West Indies, Portuguese officials rebuked any kind of agreements to standardize the quilombos out of the fear of drawing even more fugitive slaves to their communities.Stuart Schwartz. "Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery". Urbana: University of Illinois Press (1992), 108–112. The largest of the quilombos was the Quilombo dos Palmares, located in today's Alagoas state, which grew to many thousands during the disruption of Portuguese rule with the Dutch incursion.Lockhart and Schwartz, Early Latin America, pp. 220–221. Palmares was governed by leaders Ganga Zumba and his successor, Zumbi. The terminology for the settlements and leaders come directly from Angola, with quilombo, an Angolan word for military villages of diverse settlers, and the nganga a nzumbi "was the priest responsible for the spiritual defense of the community." The Dutch and later the Portuguese attempted several times to conquer Palmares, until an army led by famed São Paulo-born Domingos Jorge Velho managed to destroy the great quilombo and kill Zumbi in 1695. Brazilian feature film director Carlos Diegues made a film about Palmares called simply Quilombo. Of the many quilombos that once existed in Brazil, some have survived to this day as isolated rural communities.
Portuguese colonists sought to destroy these fugitive communities because they threatened the economic and social order of the slave regime in Brazil.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels : reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 4. . . Kent, R. K. (1965). "Palmares: An African State in Brazil." The Journal of African History 6(2). p. 174. . There was a constant fear among colonists that enslaved peoples would revolt and resist slavery. Two settler objectives were to discourage enslaved peoples from trying to escape and to close down their options for escape. Strategies used by Portuguese colonists to prevent enslaved people from fleeing included apprehending escapees before they had the opportunity to band together.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels: reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 3. . . Anderson, Robert Nelson. (1996). "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil." Journal of Latin American Studies 28(3). Slave catchers mounted expeditions with the intent to destroy fugitive communities. These expeditions destroyed mocambos and either killed or re-enslaved inhabitantsSchwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels: reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 4. . . Anderson, Robert Nelson. (1996). "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil." Journal of Latin American Studies 28(3). These expeditions were conducted by soldiers and mercenaries, many of whom were supported by local people or by the government's military.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels : reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 5. . . Anderson, Robert Nelson. (1996). "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil." Journal of Latin American Studies 28(3). As a result, many fugitive communities were heavily fortified.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels : reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 6. . . Anderson, Robert Nelson. (1996). "The Quilombo of Palmares: A New Overview of a Maroon State in Seventeenth-Century Brazil." Journal of Latin American Studies 28(3). Amerindians were sometimes utilized as ‘slave catchers’ or as part of a larger set of defenses against slave uprisings that had been orchestrated by cities and towns.Schwartz, Stuart B. (1992). "Rethinking Palmares: Slave Resistance in Colonial Brazil". Slaves, peasants, and rebels : reconsidering Brazilian slavery. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 4. . . At the same time, some Amerindians resisted the colonizers’ efforts to prevent uprisings by surreptitiously incorporating into their villages those who had escaped slavery.
Many of the details surrounding the inner political and social structure of the quilombos remain a mystery, and the information available today is limited by the fact that it usually comes from colonial accounts of their destruction. More is known about the Quilombo dos Palmares because it was "the longest-lived and largest fugitive community" in Colonial Brazil. Like any polity, Palmares and other quilombos changed over time. Quilombos drew on both African and European influences, often emulating the realities of colonial society in Brazil. In Palmares, slavery, which also existed in Africa, continued. Quilombos, like plantations, were most likely composed of people from different African groups. Religious syncretism, combining African and Christian elements, was prevalent. The Bahian quilombo of Buraco de Tatu is described as a "well-organized" village in which people probably practiced monogamy and lived on rectangular-shaped houses that made up neat rows, emulating a plantation senzala. Quilombos were often well fortified, with swampy dikes and false roads leading to "covered traps" and "sharpened stakes," like those used in Africa. The gender imbalance among African slaves was a result of the planters' preference for male labor, and men in quilombos not only raided for crops and goods, but for women; the women taken back to the quilombos were often black or mulatto.
In Minas Gerais, the mining economy particularly favored the formation of quilombos. The skilled slaves that worked in mines were highly valuable to their owners, but, as long as they continued to cede their findings, they were often allowed freedom of movement within the mining districts. Slaves and freed blacks made up to three-fourths of the region's population, and runaways could easily hide among the "sea of coloreds." The region's mountains and large tracts of unsettled land provided potential hideouts. Civil unrest combined with other forms of resistance against the colonial government severely hindered the anti- quilombo efforts of slaveowners and local authorities. In fact, to the dismay of colonial authorities, slaves participated in these anti-government movements, often armed by their owners.
As mentioned, indigenous people could be both allies and enemies of runaway slaves. From the late 1500s and as late as 1627, in southern Bahia, a "syncretic Messianic religion" called Santidade gained popularity among both indigenous people and runaway slaves, who joined forces and carried out raids in the region, even stealing slaves from Salvador.
Key to understanding inland expansion in Brazil is understanding the colony's economic structure. Brazil was constructed as an export colony, and less so as a place for permanent European settlement. This led to a culture of extraction that was unsustainable in terms of land and labor uses.
At sugar plantations in the north, land was worked exhaustively with no concern for ensuring its long-term productivity. As soon as the land was exhausted, plantation owners would simply abandon their plots, shifting the sugar frontier to new plots as the supply of land seemed endless to them. Economic incentives to increase profits drove this pattern of planting, while the abandoned lands rarely recovered.
The expeditions to inland Brazil are divided into two types: the entradas and the bandeiras. The entradas were done in the name of the Portuguese crown and were financed by the colonial government. Its main objective was to find mineral riches, as well as to explore and chart unknown territory. The bandeiras, on the other hand, were private initiatives sponsored and carried out mostly by settlers of the São Paulo region (the Paulistas). The expeditions of the bandeirantes, as these adventurers were called, were aimed at obtaining native slaves for trade and finding mineral riches. Banderia expeditions often consisted of a field officer, his slaves, a chaplain, a scribe, a mapmaker, white colonists, livestock, and medical professionals, among others. In several-month-long marches, such groups entered lands that were not yet occupied by colonizers by were doubtless part of the homelands of Amerindians. The bandeirantes, who at the time were mostly of mixed Portuguese and native ancestry, knew all the old indigenous pathways (the peabirus) through the Brazilian inland and were acclimated to the harsh conditions of these journeys.Richard M. Morse, ed. The Bandereintes: The Historical Role of the Brazilian Pathfinders. New York 1965.
At the end of the 17th century, the bandeirantes' expeditions discovered gold in central Brazil, in the region of Minas Gerais, which started a gold rush that led to a dramatic urban development of inland Brazil during the 18th century. Additionally, inland expeditions led to westward expansion of the frontiers of colonial Brazil, beyond the limits established by the Treaty of Tordesillas.
Some tribes like the Caiapo managed to fend off the Europeans for years, while adopting Old World agricultural practices. However, the expansion of the mining frontier pushed many indigenous tribes off their land. An increasing number of them went to the aldeias to evade the threat of enslavement by colonists or conflicts with other indigenous groups. In 1755, in an attempt to transform this wandering population into a more productive, assimilated peasantry modeled on Europe's own peasants, the marquis of Pombal abolished the enslavement of natives and legal discrimination against the Europeans who married them, banning the use of the term caboclo, a pejorative used to refer to a mestizo or a detribalized indigenous person.
Along the frontier, racial mixing between people of indigenous, European, and African ancestry resulted in various physical spaces for cultural interchange that historian Warren Dean has called the "caboclo frontier". Portuguese colonial authorities were characterized by their refusal to cooperate or negotiate with quilombos, seeing them as a threat to the social order, but caboclo settlements integrated the indigenous into what Darren describes as "neo-European customs or". Runaway slaves, forming quilombos or finding refuge in the backlands of the forest, came into contact with indigenous people and introduced them to the Portuguese language. Frontier army agent Guido Thomaz Marlière noted: "a fugitive black can accomplish more among the Indians than all the missionaries together..." One quilombo in specific, Piolho, was "officially tolerated" for its ability to pacify indigenous tribes. At the same time, colonial officials disapproved of unions between runaway black slaves and indigenous people. In 1771, when an indigenous captain-major of an aldeia married an African woman, he was dismissed from his position.
The inhabitants of the caboclo frontier exchanged belief systems, musical traditions, remedies, fishing and hunting techniques, and other customs with each other. The Tupi language enriched Portuguese with new words for native flora and fauna, as well as for places. Africanisms, such as the Kimbundu word fubá (maize meal) also became part of Brazilian Portuguese.
In the hilly landscape of Minas Gerais, gold was present in Alluvium around streams and was extracted using pans and other similar instruments that required little technology. Gold extraction was mostly done by slaves. The gold industry brought hundreds of thousands of Africans to Brazil as slaves. The Portuguese Crown allowed particulars to extract the gold, requiring a fifth (20%) of the gold (the quinto) to be sent to the colonial government as tax. To prevent smuggling and extract the quinto, the government ordered all gold to be cast into bars in the Casas de Fundição (Casting Houses) in 1725, and sent armies to the region to prevent disturbances and oversee the mining process. The Royal tax was very unpopular in Minas Gerais, and gold was frequently hidden from colonial authorities. Eventually, the quinto contributed to rebellious movements like the Vila Rica revolt, in 1720, and the Minas Gerais conspiracy, in 1789. Several historians have noted that the trade deficit of Portugal in relation to the British while the Methuen Treaty was in force served to redirect much of the gold mined in Brazil during the 18th century to Britain. The Methuen Treaty was a trade treaty signed between the British and Portuguese, by which all woolen cloth imported from Britain would be tax-free in Portugal, whereas Portuguese wine exported to Britain would be taxed at one-third of the previous import tax on wines. Port wine had become increasingly popular in Britain at that time, but cloth amounted to a larger share of the trade value than wines, hence Portugal eventually incurred a trade deficit with the British.Frey, Linda and Frey, Martha The Treaties of the War of the Spanish Succession: an Historical and Critical Dictionary Greenwood Press 1995 p. 290
The large number of adventurers coming to Minas Gerais led to the foundation of several settlements, the first of which was created in 1711: Ouro Preto, Sabará and Mariana, followed by São João del-Rei (1713), Serro, Caeté (1714), Pitangui (1715) and São José do Rio das Mortes (1717, now Tiradentes). In contrast to other regions of colonial Brazil, people coming to Minas Gerais settled mostly in villages instead of the countryside.
In 1763, the capital of colonial Brazil was transferred from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro, which was located closer to the mining region and provided a harbor to ship the gold to Europe.
According to historian Maria MarcÃlio, "In 1700 Portugal had a population of about two million people. During the eighteenth century, approximately 400,000 left for the Brazil, despite efforts by the crown to place severe restrictions on emigration."MarcÃlio, Maria Luiza. "The Population of Colonial Brazil." The Cambridge History of Latin America. Edited by Leslie Bethell. Cambridge University Press, 1984. p. 47. (in English). .
Gold production declined towards the end of the 18th century, beginning a period of relative stagnation of the Brazilian hinterland.
In addition to Colónia do Sacramento, several settlements were established in Southern Brazil in the late 17th and 18th century, some with peasants from the Azores Islands. The towns founded in this period include Curitiba (1668), Florianópolis (1675), Rio Grande (1736), Porto Alegre (1742) and others, and helped keep southern Brazil firmly under Portuguese control.
The conflicts over the Southern colonial frontiers led to the signing of the Treaty of Madrid (1750), in which Spain and Portugal agreed to a considerable Southwestward expansion of colonial Brazil. According to the treaty, Colónia do Sacramento was to be given to Spain in exchange for the territories of São Miguel das Missões, a region occupied by Jesuit reduction dedicated to evangelizing the Guaranà natives. Resistance by the Jesuits and the Guaranà led to the Guaranà War (1756), in which Portuguese and Spanish troops destroyed the missions. Colónia do Sacramento kept changing hands until 1777, when it was definitively conquered by the colonial governor of Buenos Aires.
The conspiracy was discovered by the Portuguese colonial government in 1789, before the planned military rebellion could take place. Eleven of the conspirators were exiled to Portuguese colonial possessions in Angola, but Tiradentes, nicknamed Tiradentes, was sentenced to death. Tiradentes was hanged in Rio de Janeiro in 1792, drawn and quartered, and his body parts displayed in several towns. He later became a symbol of the struggle for Brazilian independence and liberty from Portuguese rule.
The Inconfidência Mineira was not the only rebellious movement in colonial Brazil against the Portuguese. Later, in 1798, there was the Inconfidência Baiana in Salvador. In this episode, which had more participation of common people, four people were hanged, and 41 were jailed. Members included slaves, middle-class people and even some landowners.
Mining practices significantly harmed the land. To facilitate the extraction of gold, large swaths of forest along hillsides were burned in some regions. 4,000 square kilometers of the Atlantic Forest region were denuded for mining, leaving the terrain "bald and deserted". This massive destruction of the natural environment was a consequence of the colonial culture of extraction and unsustainability.
As the gold rush subsided, many Portuguese colonists abandoned mining for farming and animal husbandry. Farming practices extended inland expansion farther into the Brazilian forest. The colonists began to set in motion what became a nearly unstoppable trend with profound cumulative effects. The Portuguese colonists' decisions to pursue the economic strategy of agriculture and to adopt particular agricultural practices significantly transformed the Brazilian environment. The Portuguese colonists viewed farming as a beneficial taming of the frontier, urging mestizos, mulattoes, and indigenous peoples to abandon life in the wild forest and adopt agriculture. Colonial farming practices in the forest were unsustainable, greatly exploiting the land. Slash-and-burn practices were used liberally, and colonial responses to the presence of the ant genus Atta encouraged both large-scale abandonment of fields and extensive clearing of additional lands. Atta effectively resisted agriculture. In only a few years, the ants constructed elaborate and complex colonies that colonists found nearly impossible to destroy and that made hoeing and plowing extremely difficult. Instead of fighting the ants, colonists ceded their fields to the ants, created new fields through burning, then a few years later ceded their new fields to the ants.
This environmental transformation contrasted sharply with Brazilian Amerindian land-management concepts and practices. Unlike in many areas of Central and South America, in Brazil Amerindians did not significantly disrupt and damage biotic communities. Amerindians maintained very small communities, and their total numbers were small. In addition, they prioritized the long-term agricultural productivity of the land, utilizing cultivation, hunting, and gathering practices that were sustainable.
The introduction of European livestock—cattle, horses, and pigs—also radically transformed the land. Indigenous flora in the interior of Brazil withered and died in the face of repeated trampling by cattle; the flora were replaced by grasses able to adapt to such abuse. Cattle also overgrazed fertile fields, killing vegetation that was able to survive extensive trampling. Scrubby noxious plants, some of which were poisonous, replaced this vegetation. Colonists responded to these unwanted plants by burning innumerable large pastures, a practice that killed countless small animals and greatly damaged soil nutrients.
In 1765, LuÃs António de Sousa Botelho became the governor of the captaincy of São Paulo. He attempted to stop slash-and-burn agriculture through the imposition of a village social order. Botelho encouraged mestizos, mulattos, assimilated indigenous people, and Paulista farmers to take up the plow and use the manure of draft animals as fertilizer, but his reforms did not work for several reasons. Botelho's propositions did not appeal to farmers because farmers would have to work more hours without any guarantee or probability of actually increasing their harvest. The colonial land policy favored the elite, who could afford purchasing expensive land titles. Because these small-scale farmers were unable to attain land titles to make their fields their property, they were uninvested in sustainable farming practices. Botelho also saw slavery as a hindrance to the agricultural development of the region. Although his reforms were unsuccessful and he was not able to implement all of his ideas, Botelho did recognize that mercantilism and militarism impeded the growth of agriculture.
Other impediments to the growth of agriculture, included the criminalization and vilification of the poor. Heavy taxes were expected in cash from poor farmers. While reimbursements could be delayed for years, when taxes were not paid, the family's young men were forced into military service. One governor in Minas Gerais noted with dismay that white settlers seemed to reject all forms of intensive manual labor in the hopes of increasing their chances at upward social mobility. Botelho, himself, "conscripted almost 5,000 men from an adult population that could not have numbered more than 35,000." Unemployed men were designated as Vagrancy or Vagrancy and enlisted in the military or sent to the frontier along convicts. Some of the men managed to escape the authorities and found refuge in the Atlantic forest, where they became subsistence farmers or prospectors; these men would later come to form part of the "caboclo frontier."
The pests and plagues that invaded farmers' crops were a significant barrier to the growth of agriculture. Rodents, insects, and birds ate many crops, but the most pervasive pests were the Leafcutter ant, or Leafcutter ant (in Tupi language). These ants are difficult to eliminate as, even today, they are difficult to study because they work at night and live below the ground. Farmers at that time, were unsure on how to deal with saúva, and unfortunately, resorted to countermeasures, like slash-and-burn, that only exacerbated the problem.
Cattle were not particularly cared for. No fodder was provided, and even castrating and branding were often neglected. As a result, there was a severe mortality rate during the dry season, and it took several years for cattle to reach a sellable weight. Salt served as a poor dietary supplement for cattle, and this inadequate use, simply made salt-preserved meats and dairy products "unnecessarily expensive." Catte suffered from intestinal parasites and ticks. In their attempts to escape pests and threats, they often moved into forest margins, disrupting their ecosystems. As mentioned, cattle raising changed the native landscape from palatable grasses to "scrubby, noxious" plants, but trying to eliminate them by burning only worked temporarily. In the long term, burning these grasses caused erosion, reduced soil permeability, and produced degraded, innutritious pasture prone to becoming hosting ticks and poisonous plant species. Cattle took longer to reach their weight, and by choosing the largest animals, herders only worsened the breed through "negative selective pressure." Although they were edible and fire-resistant, the African grasses that eventually replaced native ones were not as nutritious because they were not planted in variety to provide a more balanced diet.
Because of degraded grasslands, high mortality rate, slow growth, and low population, like agriculture, the cattle raising industry in Colonial Brazil was not very productive. In fact, hunter-gatherers in this area could have attained more meat than the cattle breeders, who annually produced a maximum of "five kilograms of meat per hectare." Thus, wasteful agricultural practices and irresponsible cattle raising methods not only led to the degradation of the native landscape; they also did little for the long-term economic development of the region. Historian Warren Dean acknowledges the effects that colonialism and capitalism had on the seemingly "useless" and "wasteful" exploitation of the Atlantic Forest, yet he also warns the reader against ascribing the whole blame on colonialism and capitalism. According to Dean, there is evidence to suggest colonists accepted "regal authority" only when it supported their interests and that "colonies were not necessarily condemned to lower levels of capital formation." "Resistance to the demands of imperialism," says Dean, can have as "forceful and determinant of the formation of states and nations as imperialism itself."
In March 1808, the court arrived in Rio de Janeiro. In 1815, during the Congress of Vienna, Prince John created the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves by elevating Brazil to the rank of kingdom and increasing its administrative autonomy.
In 1816, with the death of queen Maria, prince John succeeded as monarch, and the ceremony of his acclamation was held in Rio de Janeiro in February 1818.
Among the important measures taken by prince John in his years in Brazil were incentives to commerce and industry, the permission to print newspapers and books, the creation of two medicine schools, military academies, and the first bank of Brazil. In Rio de Janeiro he also created a powder factory, a Botanical Garden, an art academy ( Escola Nacional de Belas Artes) and an opera house ( Teatro São João). All these measures greatly advanced the independence of Brazil in relation to Portugal and made the later political separation between the two countries inevitable. , an 18th-century colonial palace located in Rio de Janeiro, used as a dispatch house by King João VI of Portugal and later by his son, Emperor Pedro I of Brazil.]] Due to the absence of the king and the economic independence of Brazil, Portugal entered a severe crisis that obliged John VI and the royal family to return to Portugal in 1821: a Liberal Revolution had broken out in Portugal in 1820, and the royal governors who ruled Portugal in the king's name had been replaced by a revolutionary Council of Regency formed to govern the European portion of the united kingdom until the king's return. Indeed, the king's immediate return to Lisbon was one of the main demands of the revolutionaries. Under the revolutionary Council of Regency, a constituent assembly, known as the Portuguese Constitutional Courts ( Cortes Constitucionais Portuguesas), was elected to abolish the absolute monarchy and replace it with a constitutional one. King John VI, then, yielding to pressure, returned to Europe. Brazilian representatives were elected to join the deliberations of the Constitutional Cortes of the kingdom.
The heir of John VI, prince Pedro, remained in Brazil. The Portuguese Cortes demanded that Brazil return to its former condition of colony and that the heir return to Portugal. Prince Pedro, influenced by the Rio de Janeiro Municipal Senate ( Senado da Câmara), refused to return to Portugal in the famous Dia do Fico (January 9, 1822). Political independence came on 7 September 1822, and the prince was crowned emperor in Rio de Janeiro as Dom Pedro I, ending 322 years of dominance of Portugal over Brazil.
The detailed history of the administrative changes in the administration of colonial Brazil is as follows:
From 1534 (immediately after the start the Portuguese attempts to effectively colonize Brazil) until 1549, Brazil was divided by the Portuguese Crown in private and autonomous colonies known as hereditary captaincies ( capitanias hereditárias), or captaincy colonies ( colónias capitanias).
In 1549, Portuguese King John III abolished the system of private colonies, and the fifteen existing hereditary captaincies were incorporated into a single Crown colony, the Governorate General of Brazil.
The individual captaincies, now under the administration of the Portuguese Crown (and no longer called colonies or hereditary captaincies, but simply captaincies of Brazil), continued to exist as provinces or districts within the colony until the end of the colonial era in 1815.
The unified Governorate General of Brazil, with its capital city in Salvador, existed during three periods: from 1549 to 1572, from 1578 to 1607 and from 1613 to 1621. Between 1572 and 1578 and again between 1607 and 1613, the colony was split in two, and during those periods the Governorate General of Brazil did not exist, being replaced by two separate Governorates: the Governorate General of Bahia, in the North, with its seat in the city of Salvador, and the Governorate General of Rio de Janeiro, in the South, with its seat in the city of Rio de Janeiro.
In 1621, an administrative reorganization took place, and the Governorate General of Brazil became known as the State of Brazil ( Estado do Brasil), keeping Salvador as its capital city. With this administrative remodeling, the unity of the colony was once again interrupted, as a portion of territory in the northern part of modern Brazil became an autonomous colony, separate from the State of Brazil: the State of Maranhão, with its capital city in São Luiz.
In 1652, the State of Maranhão was extinguished, and its territory was briefly added to the State of Brazil, reunifying the colonial administration once more.
However, in 1654, the territories of the former State of Maranhão were again separated from the State of Brazil, and the Captaincy of Grão-Pará was also split from Brazil. In this restructuring, the territories of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, severed from Brazil, were united in a single State, initially named as State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará, having São Luiz as its capital city. This newly created State incorporated territories recently acquired by the Portuguese west of the Tordesillas line.
In 1751, the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará was renamed as the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão, and its capital city as transferred from São Luiz (in Maranhão) to Belém (in the part of the State that was then known as Grão-Pará).
In 1763, the capital city of the State of Brazil was transferred from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, the title of the King's representative heading the government of the State of Brazil was officially changed from Governor General to Viceroy (Governors coming from the high nobility had been using the title of Viceroy since about 1640). However, the name of Brazil was never changed to Viceroyalty of Brazil. That title, although sometimes used by modern writers, is not proper, as the colony continued to be titled State of Brazil.
In 1772, in a short-lived territorial reorganization, the State of Grão-Pará and Maranhão was split in two: the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro (better known simply as the State of Grão-Pará), with the city of Belém as its capital, and the State of Maranhão and Piauà (better known simply as the State of Maranhão), with its seat in the city of São Luiz.
Thus from 1772 until another territorial reorganization in 1775 there were three distinct Portuguese States in South America: the State of Brazil, the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro, and the State of Maranhão and PiauÃ.
In 1775, in a final territorial reorganization, the colony was once again reunified: the State of Maranhão and Piauà and the State of Grão-Pará and Rio Negro were both abolished, and their territories were incorporated into the territory of the State of Brazil. The State of Brazil was thus expanded; it became the sole Portuguese State in South America; and it now included in its territory the whole of the Portuguese possessions in the American Continent. Indeed, with the reorganization of 1775, for the first time since 1654, all the Portuguese territories in the New World were once again united under a single colonial government. Rio de Janeiro, that had become the capital of the State of Brazil in 1763, continued to be the capital, now of the unified colony.
In 1808, the Portuguese Court was transferred to Brazil as direct consequence of the invasion of Portugal during the Napoleonic Wars. The office of Viceroy of Brazil ceased to exist upon the arrival of the royal family in Rio de Janeiro, since the Prince Regent, the future King John VI, assumed personal control of the government of the colony, that became the provisional seat of the whole Portuguese Empire.
In 1815, Brazil ceased to be a colony, upon the elevation of the State of Brazil to the rank of a kingdom, the Kingdom of Brazil, and the simultaneous political union of that kingdom with the Kingdoms of Portugal and the Algarves, forming a single sovereign State, the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves. That political union would last until 1822 when Brazil declared its independence from the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves and became the Empire of Brazil, a sovereign nation in the territory of the former Kingdom of Brazil. The separation was recognized by Portugal with the signing of the 1825 Treaty of Rio de Janeiro.
With the creation of the Kingdom of Brazil in 1815, the former captaincies of the State of Brazil became provinces within the new Kingdom, and after independence, they became the provinces of the Empire of Brazil.
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