Novais argues that commercial capitalism and colonialism were inextricably linked. Prado, Caio, Jr. The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil. Translated by Suzette Macedo.
Berkeley: University of California Press, Sweeping in its coverage and marked by a pessimism about the colonial past, it still provides a solid introduction. Varnhagen, Francisco Adolfo de.
Originally published — The great 19th-century positivist general history of colonial Brazil. The author was responsible for the discovery of many original documents and his edition is greatly enriched by the extensive notes of J. Capistrano de Abreu and Rodolfo Garcia, excellent historians of the next generation. Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page.
Please subscribe or login. Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Not a member? Sign up for My OBO. Already a member? Publications Pages Publications Pages. Subscriber sign in You could not be signed in, please check and try again. Username Please enter your Username. Lisbon's early goals were simple: monopolize the lucrative trade of pau-brasil, the red wood valued for making dye that gave the colony its name, and establish permanent settlements.
There's evidence that the Indians and Portuguese initially worked together to harvest trees. Later, the need to head farther inland to find forested areas made the pau-brasil trade less desirable.
The interest in establishing plantations on cleared lands increased and so did the need for laborers. The Portuguese tried to enslave Indians, but, unaccustomed to toiling long hours in fields and overcome by European diseases, many natives either fled far inland or died. When Cabral arrived, the indigenous population was believed to have been more than 3 million; today the number is scarcely more than , The Portuguese then turned to the African slave trade for their workforce.
Although most settlers preferred the coastal areas a preference that continues to this day , a few ventured into the hinterlands. Among them were Jesuit missionaries, determined men who marched inland in search of Indian souls to "save," and the infamous bandeirantes flag bearers , tough men who marched inland in search of Indians to enslave.
Later they hunted escaped Indian and African slaves. For two centuries after Cabral's discovery, the Portuguese had to periodically deal with foreign powers with designs on Brazil's resources. Although Portugal and Spain had the Treaty of Tordesillas -- which set boundaries for each country in their newly discovered lands -- the guidelines were vague, causing the occasional territory dispute.
Further, England, France, and Holland didn't fully recognize the treaty, which was made by Papal decree, and were aggressively seeking new lands in pirate-ridden seas. Such competition made the Lusitanian foothold in the New World tenuous at times.
The new territory faced internal as well as external challenges. Initially, the Portuguese Crown couldn't establish a strong central government in the subcontinent. For much of the colonial period, it relied on "captains," low ranking nobles and merchants who were granted authority over captaincies, slices of land often as big as their motherland.
By it was evident that most of the captaincies were failing. Portugal's monarch dispatched a governor-general who arrived with soldiers, priests, and craftspeople to oversee them and to establish a capital today's Salvador in the central captaincy of Bahia. At the end of the 17th century, the news that fabulous veins of emeralds, diamonds, and gold had been found in Minas Gerais exploded in Lisbon. The region began to export 30, pounds of gold a year to Portugal.
Bandeirantes and other fortune hunters rushed in from all over, and boat loads of carpenters, stonemasons, sculptors, and painters came from Europe to build cities in the Brazilian wilderness.
In , the capital was moved to Rio de Janeiro for a variety of political and administrative reasons. The rich commerce that soon followed stimulated other nations to try to harvest and smuggle brazilwood contraband out of Brazil and corsairs to attack loaded Portuguese ships in order to steal their cargo. For example, the unsuccessful attempt in of a French expedition led by Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, vice-admiral of Brittany and corsair under the King, to establish a colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro France Antarctique was motivated in part by the bounty generated by economic exploitation of brazilwood.
Since the initial attempts to find gold and silver failed, the Portuguese colonists adopted an economy based on the production of agricultural goods to be exported to Europe.
Tobacco, cotton and other crops were produced, but sugar became by far the most important Brazilian colonial product until the early 18th century. Initially, the Portuguese attempted to utilize Indian slaves for sugar cultivation, but shifted to the use of black African slave labor. The period of sugar-based economy — c. The development of the sugar complex occurred over time with a variety of models. 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.
Portugal owned several commercial facilities in Western Africa, where slaves were bought from African merchants.
These slaves were then sent by ship to Brazil, chained and in crowded conditions. The idea of using African slaves in colonial farms was also adopted by other European colonial powers in tropical regions of America Spain in Cuba, France in Haiti, the Netherlands in the Dutch Antilles, and England in Jamaica. 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, textiles, and luxury goods — the latter imported by Portugal from other European countries.
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 as the link between the sugar production areas, coastal Portuguese cities, and Europe. Merchants initially came from many nations, including Germany, Italy, and modern-day Belgium, but Portuguese merchants came to dominate the trade in Brazil.
Even though Brazilian sugar had a reputation for 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.
The discovery of gold was met with great enthusiasm by Portugal, which had an economy in disarray following years of wars against Spain and the Netherlands. The large portion of the Brazilian inland where gold was extracted became known as the Minas Gerais General Mines. Gold mining in this area became the main economic activity of colonial Brazil during the 18th century.
In Portugal, the gold was mainly used to pay for industrialized goods textiles, weapons obtained from countries like England and especially during the reign of King John V, to build magnificent Baroque monuments like the Convent of Mafra. Apart from gold, diamond deposits were also found in around the village of Tijuco, now Diamantina. A famous figure in Brazilian history of this era was Xica da Silva, a slave woman who had a long term relationship in Diamantina with a Portuguese official; the couple had 13 children and she died a rich woman.
Minas Gerais was the gold mining center of Brazil during the 18th century. Slave labor was generally used for the workforce. The discovery of gold in the area caused a huge influx of European immigrants and the government decided to bring in bureaucrats from Portugal to control operations.
They set up numerous bureaucracies, often with conflicting duties and jurisdictions. The officials generally proved unequal to the task of controlling this highly lucrative industry. The British brought in modern management techniques and engineering expertise. Located in Nova Lima, the mine produced ore for years.
Gold production declined towards the end of the 18th century, beginning a period of relative stagnation of the Brazilian hinterland. Diamond Mining: Slaves mine for diamonds in Minas Gerais ca. Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in , which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market. From to , Napoleonic French forces invaded Portugal three times. During the invasion of Portugal , the Portuguese royal family fled to Brazil, establishing Rio de Janeiro as the de facto capital of Portugal.
The influence of liberal ideals was strengthened by the aftermath of the war, the continuing impact of the American and French revolutions, discontent under absolutist government, and the general indifference shown by the Portuguese regency for the plight of its people. This also had the side effect of creating within Brazil many of the institutions required to exist as an independent state; most importantly, it freed the country to trade with other nations at will.
It enjoyed this status for the next seven years. Following the defeat of the French forces, Portugal experienced a prolonged period of political turmoil in which many sought greater self-rule for the Portuguese people. Even though the Portuguese participated in the defeat of the French, the country found itself virtually a British protectorate.
The officers of the Portuguese Army resented British control of the Portuguese armed forces. In the Constitutionalist Revolution erupted in Portugal. The revolution began with a military insurrection in the city of Porto, in northern Portugal, that quickly and peacefully spread to the rest of the country.
The Revolution resulted in the return in of the Portuguese Court to Portugal from Brazil, where it had fled during the Peninsular War, and initiated a constitutional period in which the Constitution was ratified and implemented. The revolutionaries also sought to restore Portuguese exclusivity in the trade with Brazil, reverting Brazil to the status of a colony.
This constitutional assembly was composed of diplomatic functionaries, merchants, agrarian burghers, and university-educated representatives who were usually lawyers. The Portuguese government immediately moved to revoke the political autonomy that Brazil had been granted since The threat of losing their limited control over local affairs ignited widespread opposition among Brazilians.
On October 12, the prince was acclaimed Pedro I, first Emperor of the newly created Empire of Brazil, a constitutional monarchy. The declaration of independence was opposed throughout Brazil by armed military units loyal to Portugal.
The ensuing Brazilian war of independence was fought across the country, with battles in the northern, northeastern, and southern regions. The war lasted from February , when the first skirmishes took place, to March , when the last Portuguese garrison of Montevideo surrendered to Commander Sinian Kersey. It was fought on land and sea and involved both regular forces and civilian militia. Independence was recognized by Portugal in August The Empire of Brazil, founded in when the prince regent of Portugal, Pedro I, declared its independence from Portugal, was a relatively stable and democratic constitutional monarchy that saw several wars and the abolition of slavery in The Empire of Brazil was a 19th-century state that broadly comprised the territories of modern Brazil and Uruguay.
The new country was huge but sparsely populated and ethnically diverse. Unlike most of the neighboring Hispanic American republics, Brazil had political stability, vibrant economic growth, constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech, and respect for civil rights of its subjects, albeit with legal restrictions on women and slaves, the latter regarded as property and not citizens.
0コメント