EXPANSION
In 1581 Philip II. of Spain succeeded in establishing himself on the
throne of Portugal as the successor of the rash Sebastian, dead fighting
the Moors at Alcacer-Kebir. The decadent and demoralised Portuguese
nation made hardly the semblance of a struggle for its independence. The
very ease with which Philip obtained the kingdom left him no pretext for
depriving it of administrative independence. Native Portuguese continued
to hold office in the colonies and to enjoy a monopoly of Brazilian
commerce. Internally, therefore, the change did not much affect Brazil.
But in foreign relations the effect was profound. Brazil became a part
of a well-nigh universal monarchy, and one of the battle-fields of the
struggle which had begun between Spain and the Protestant powers.
All South America was now under the same monarch; boundary questions
between Portuguese and Spanish America apparently ceased to have any
importance. The enormous extension of Brazil toward the interior over
territory formerly conceded to be Spanish occurred during the sixty
years of Spanish domination. The Spanish monarch did not have time to
spend on Brazilian matters, and the colonists were less interfered with
from Lisbon and Madrid than might have been expected. Portuguese
historians have much exaggerated the evil effects of the English, Dutch,
and French half filibustering, half-trading descents on the coast, which
occurred during this period. The pillage of a few towns was more than
compensated by the commerce that sprang up; much Brazilian sugar escaped
paying the heavy export duties; settlement extended rapidly over new
territory, and the importation of negroes continued.
As early as 1575 a settlement had been made in Sergipe, but the great
expansion over northern Brazil began under the rule of Philip's first
governor-general. In 1583 he sent troops to take possession of the
important port of Parahyba, where some French traders had obtained a
foothold that prevented the inhabitants of Pernambuco from spreading
north beyond Itamarica. The Spanish mercenaries were at first
successful, but they could not stifle the serious Indian war which broke
out. The Pernambucanos had better success, because they knew how to take
advantage of the dissensions among the savages. Fortifying a town at
Parahyba, they permanently established their sugar plantations in its
neighbourhood, and then these indefatigable and land-hungry Creoles
pushed on farther to the north. In 1597 Jeronymo de Albuquerque, the
greatest of Brazilian colonial generals, attacked and defeated the
powerful Pitagoares Indians, and established the colony of Natal, the
nucleus of the present state of Rio Grande do Norte. This brought the
Pernambucanos to Cape St. Roque. To the south they had spread as far as
the San Francisco River, there meeting the Bahianos who, by 1589, had
taken possession of the present state of Sergipe.
North of St. Roque the Portuguese so far had done nothing except make
some desultory voyages of observation, though they claimed the coast to
and beyond the mouth of the Amazon. The donatories of the captaincies in
that region had not succeeded in establishing any settlements. In 1541,
Orellana, one of those recklessly heroic Spaniards who had helped
Pizarro conquer the empire of the Incas, was a member of an expedition
which crossed the Andes near Quito and descended into the forested
plains, looking for another Peru--the fabled El Dorado. They finally
found themselves on a great river flowing to the east, and, since their
provisions were exhausted, boats were built and Orellana was sent on
ahead to try to find supplies. He could not find enough to feed the main
body and decided to float on down the river, well knowing it must
finally bring him to the ocean. After a voyage of more than three
thousand miles he came to the great estuary of the Amazon and thence
made his way to Spain. No important results followed this wonderful
discovery. Orellana himself shortly returned to the mouth of the river,
but he could not find his way up the labyrinth of waters.
To reach the plains from the Pacific or Caribbean settlements is nearly
impracticable, and the Amazon valley remained unsettled. Meanwhile the
seed planted by old Duarte Coelho germinated and grew into a vigorous
tree whose branches were spreading out over all North Brazil. The
seventeenth century had hardly begun when the hardy Pernambucanos
invaded the country lying north and west of St. Roque, hunting Indian
slaves, and good places for cattle- and sugar-raising. In 1603 Pero
Coelho, an adventurous Brazilian then living at Parahyba, made a
settlement far to the north-west of Natal, on the coast of Ceara, and
penetrated eight hundred miles from Pernambuco. Unreasonable aggressions
against the Indians brought on temporary reverses, but the Pernambucanos
persevered, and the Jesuits also established missions. By 1610 the
region was pretty well under white control, the Indians being
incorporated to a greater extent than was usual in the settlements
farther south.
The next forward movement was precipitated by a formidable French
attempt to colonise Maranhao. Daniel de la Rivardiere, a Huguenot
nobleman, conceived the idea of carrying out on the north coast
Coligny's plan of a French Protestant colony. In 1612 he landed on the
island of Maranhao with a large and well-appointed expedition.
Jeronymo de Albuquerque fortunately happened to be on the north coast
when news came of this alarming intrusion. Sending his ships on to
ascertain the truth of the report, he hastened overland to Pernambuco to
get a force together. With three hundred whites and two hundred Indians
he started to expel the French. An assault on a fort defended with
artillery was out of the question, so in his turn he fortified himself,
cut off the French from access to the sea, and ambushed their foraging
expeditions. In such a game, his men, inured to the climate, had an
immense advantage. Forced to assault Albuquerque's position, the French
were repulsed. They begged for a truce, and went home at the end of a
year. Albuquerque took possession of the French town, and in 1616
secured all the rest of the northern coast to Portugal by founding Para,
just to the south of the mouth of the Amazon. Several settlements were
made along the coast east of Para and also west in the estuary itself.
The Indians proved docile and were easily incorporated to so great an
extent that the Indian element is more predominant in Para than in any
other state on the Brazilian littoral.
On the island and around the bay of Maranhao a prosperous colony grew
up. Certain enterprising business men made a contract with the
government and started a regular propaganda for immigrants, and induced
a large number to come from the Azores. The state thus founded was one
of the most prosperous in Brazil, and was especially celebrated for the
politeness and cultivation of its inhabitants. Some of the greatest
names in Portuguese literature are those of Maranhenses. It is commonly
said that the best Portuguese is spoken in Maranhao, and not in Lisbon,
Rio, or Porto--just as the English of Dublin, Aberdeen, or Boston is
considered better than that of London or New York, and the Spanish of
Lima and Bogota better than that of Madrid, Barcelona, or Buenos Aires.
Meanwhile population and wealth had been increasing satisfactorily in
the older provinces south of Cape St. Roque. By 1626 Pernambuco and
Bahia had grown to be towns of something like ten thousand inhabitants,
and the people of the respective provinces numbered about a hundred
thousand. Ilheos, Porto Seguro, and Espirito Santo had made no progress,
but Rio had become a city of six thousand, while the shores of her bay
and the adjacent coast were now fairly settled. Rio and Santos really
performed the function of ports for the foreign commerce of Paraguay and
the Argentine because the Spanish laws did not permit these colonies to
have ports of their own. Campos was now settled and its sugar industry
was prospering. On the Sao Paulo plains the Paulistas had spread to the
north-east to the headwaters of the Parahyba and borders of the present
state of Rio, and north-west down the navigable Tiete, along which they
found an easy track for their expeditions in search of slaves. The
Jesuits had long since been unable to control or check the Paulistas,
and had abandoned the missions near the coast. In the remote interior,
along the Parana and its great tributaries, the defeated priests thought
that they would be safe, and about the end of the sixteenth century they
entered that region by way of Paraguay. The Paulistas recked little of
the government, especially now that the king was Spanish, and, advancing
the claim that Spanish Jesuits had established missions on Portuguese
territory, they proceeded to wipe out the new missions.
It seems incredible that their little bands could have penetrated such
distances and accomplished such results, but it is on record that they
tracked nearly to the Andes, and practically exterminated, the
aboriginal population of half Brazil. The Jesuits tell us that between
1614 and 1639 four hundred Paulistas with two thousand Indian allies
captured and killed three hundred thousand natives. In 1632 they utterly
destroyed the great Jesuit settlements on the Upper Parana, though this
involved an expedition of fifteen hundred miles, much of which is to
this day rarely penetrable. One of their expeditions was like an
ambulating village--women, children, and domestic animals accompanying
it. They sometimes were obliged to stop, sow a crop, and wait for it to
mature before they could proceed. For the time being, these predatory
Paulistas almost reverted to the nomadic stage.
Naturally, no complete record of these expeditions survives. Their
members were not literate men, and it is only when they fought the
Jesuits, or when they discovered minerals, that a record of their routes
has been preserved. We know that before 1632 they had traversed all of
southern Brazil, and Paraguay, and even eastern Argentina and Uruguay.
Incursions to the north and west followed shortly. There is an authentic
record of an expedition reaching Goyaz as early as 1647, and it is
probable that by that time they had penetrated the central plateau which
stretches across to the Andes, had seen the headwaters of the southern
tributaries of the Amazon, and had followed the eastern mountain chain
almost to the northern ocean. The Paulistas secured to their country and
their race more than a million square miles of fertile and salubrious
territory.