FRENCH OCCUPATION OF RIO
During Duarte's administration troubles with the Indians broke out along
the whole coast. In Bahia itself the new governor had disobeyed the
orders of the home government to protect the Indians. He joined with the
colonists in exploiting them. A formidable Indian conspiracy was formed
and the settlements on both sides of the city were simultaneously
attacked. Many farms and villages were sacked, but soon the Indians were
finally and crushingly defeated. The coast towns of Sao Paulo were
menaced by a great confederation of tribes who used war canoes and had
learned to overcome their terror of firearms. At Espirito Santo the
Indian slaves rose _en masse_, killed most of the Portuguese, and
destroyed the sugar plantations.
A more serious danger was the settlement of the French at Rio de
Janeiro. They had formed friendly relations with the Indians, and the
name of Frenchman was sufficient to insure good treatment from most of
the tribes, while that of Portuguese was a signal for its bearer to be
killed and devoured. This was the epoch of the religious wars in
France, and the traders to Brazil came mostly from Huguenot ports.
Admiral Coligny conceived the idea of establishing a Huguenot settlement
in South America, and Rio was chosen as the most available site. In 1555
a considerable expedition was sent under the command of Nicolas
Villegagnon, a celebrated adventurer, who had distinguished himself in
escorting Mary Queen of Scots from France to Scotland. He fortified the
island in Rio harbour that still bears his name--a barren rock which
commanded the entrance and was safe from attacks by land. The French
kept on good terms with the neighbouring Indians, and remained
unmolested by the Portuguese for four years. But Villegagnon was not
faithful to his employers, though most of his party were Protestants,
and Huguenot leaders had furnished the money for the expedition. He
quarrelled with the Huguenots and finally gave up the command and
returned to France in the Guise interest. Coligny's project of
establishing a new and Protestant France in South America lost its very
good chance of success. It is interesting to conjecture what would have
been the history of Brazil if Villegagnon had stuck to the Huguenot
side. In all probability re-enforcements would have been sent, and St.
Bartholomew's Day--fourteen years later--might have been followed by a
great emigration like that which went to New England during the Laud
persecution. Rio and perhaps the whole of South Brazil would have become
a French possession or a French-speaking state.
Not until 1558 was a strong and able Portuguese governor selected, and
vigorous measures taken to expel the French. The new governor was Mem da
Sa, a nobleman of the highest birth, a soldier, a scholar, and an
experienced administrator. His name will always be associated with the
establishment of the Portuguese power in Brazil on a footing firm and
broad enough to enable it to withstand the Dutch attacks and the lean
years of Spanish domination.
Upon his arrival he took measures to quiet the Indian slavery question
by reducing the import duties on black slaves and by aiding each planter
to acquire as many negroes as he needed to work his plantation. When his
ships and armament arrived he proceeded to the south. He found that the
French, though weak in numbers, could count on Indian allies. As he
himself writes to the Court: "The French do not treat the natives as we
do. They are very liberal to them, observing strict justice, so that the
commander is feared by his countrymen and beloved by the Indians.
Measures have been taken to instruct the latter in the use of arms, and
as the aborigines are very numerous the French may soon make themselves
very strong." He harassed the French and destroyed their fortifications
but could not completely dislodge them, and returned to Bahia with his
work only half accomplished. Porto Seguro and Ilheos were attacked by
the ferocious Aymores and with difficulty saved from total destruction.
In the South another great Tamoyo confederation had been formed with
the deliberate purpose of rooting the Paulistas out of the country and
putting a stop once for all to their slave-hunting. When all seemed
lost, Anchieta intervened, and succeeded in fixing up a peace. The
Tamoyos were cajoled into becoming allies of the Portuguese in a final
attempt to expel the French from Rio. Mem da Sa's nephew appeared with a
considerable fleet, and after a desultory campaign of a year the French
were obliged to retire. France did nothing to prevent or recover this
inestimable loss, and Mem da Sa immediately laid out and fortified a
city on a site which to-day is the business centre of the capital of
Brazil. From the time of its founding Rio was the most important place
in southern Brazil and the key to the whole region, but its great
prosperity dates from a hundred and fifty years later, when gold was
discovered in Minas Geraes.
Mem da Sa continued to rule Brazil until his death in 1572. The work of
centralisation went on apace, fiscal and administrative officers were
multiplied, and taxes and restrictions imposed at will. The Lisbon
government laid the foundations of that restrictive system which finally
confined Brazil to communication with the mother country. Nevertheless
most of the settlements grew rapidly. Sugar-planting, cattle-raising,
and general agriculture flourished. The Indians were expelled or reduced
to impotence within striking distance of the centres of population.
[Illustration: PLANTERS GOING TO CHURCH.
[From an old print.]]
At Mem da Sa's death the civilised population numbered about sixty
thousand, of whom twenty thousand were white. The provinces of
Pernambuco and Bahia had each twenty-five thousand inhabitants. Rio had
some two thousand and Sao Paulo perhaps five, the remainder being
divided between the smaller settlements--Parahyba, Rio Real, Ilheos,
Porto Seguro, and Espirito Santo. Except in Sao Paulo most of the
inhabitants were engaged in sugar-raising. The hundred and twenty
plantations produced annually forty-five thousand tons of sugar, while
Portuguese goods to the value of a million dollars a year were imported.
A sugar _fazenda_, or plantation, constituted a little independent
village, where the owner lived surrounded by his slaves in their cabins,
his shops and stables, mills and mandioc fields. The grantees had paid
no purchase price for the land, and held it on condition of paying a
tenth of the product and a tenth of that tenth, a tax which survives to
the present time, only it is now called an export duty of eleven per
cent. Land was not otherwise taxed, and to this day direct taxes on farm
property are almost unknown, though imposts of every other conceivable
kind have been multiplied. The tracts granted were large; the owner
could hold them unused without expense; the most powerful incentive to
sale and division of land did not, therefore, exist. Brazil became and
remains a country of large rural proprietorship. Landowners are
reluctant to sell or divide their estates, taxes on transfers are
excessive, and land is not freely bought and sold. Consequently the
rural population is widely scattered, grants extend far beyond the
limits of actual settlement, there are few small farmers and very
little careful culture. Brazil is a country of staple crops and
non-diversified agriculture. A fall in sugar or coffee produces a
disproportionate disturbance in financial conditions, and land not
suitable to the staple crop of a region is left to lie idle. Immigration
has been retarded because land has been hard to obtain except by special
government concession, and because private owners do not care to sell
their land to settlers. Except in restricted cases, the rural
immigration--negro and South European--has been for the purpose of
furnishing labour for the large proprietors, and not to form a
landowning and permanently established population.
The Jesuit travellers describe the Brazilian people in 1584 as
pleasure-loving and extravagant. In the sugar provinces fortunes were
very unequal. In Pernambuco alone more than a hundred planters had
incomes of ten thousand dollars a year. Their capital, Olinda--now the
northern suburb of the city of Pernambuco--was the largest town in
Brazil and the one where there was most luxurious living and the most
polite society. In general the people were spendthrifts, and
notwithstanding large incomes were heavily in debt. Great sums were
spent on fetes, religious processions, fairs, and dinners. The simple
Jesuit Fathers were shocked to see such velvets and silks, such
luxurious beds of crimson damask, such extravagance in the trappings of
the saddle-horses. Carriages were unknown, and instead litters and sedan
chairs were used, and these remained in common use in Bahia until very
recent times.
[Illustration: A CADEIRA.]
From Pernambuco and Bahia communication with the mother country was
constant and easy. Sao Paulo, however, differed radically from the sugar
districts. Wheat, barley, and European fruits grew on the Sao Paulo
plateau, but there was little export to Portugal, and imported clothes
were scarce and dear. The Paulistas were constantly on horseback and
wore the old Portuguese costume of cloak and close-fitting doublet long
after it had been disused at home.
Bahia and Pernambuco were fairly well built towns, though unfortunately
in the Portuguese style of architecture, whose solid walls, few
windows, and contiguous houses make it ill adapted to a tropical
climate. In spite of its unsuitability it was universally adopted, and
even yet largely prevails in Brazil.