THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
Montevideo was founded in 1726 and became the nucleus of the Spanish
settlements which have grown into the modern country of Uruguay. Except
Colonia, the only Portuguese settlements south of the 25th degree were
the town of Santa Catharina Island, the unimportant village of Laguna on
the coast-plain, and the scattered ranches of a few adventurous
Paulistas on the plateau.
The founding of Montevideo drew the serious attention of the Rio
government to the valuable country between the Plate and Santa
Catharina. The Paulistas had thoroughly explored the plains and found
them swarming with cattle. The chief obstacle to the foundation of a
military post as a nucleus for the settlement of Rio Grande and eastern
Uruguay was the lack of a harbour on that sandy coast. When the next
European war broke out, in 1735, the Spaniards again besieged Colonia,
and established forts and settlements along the Uruguayan coast, from
Montevideo to the present Brazilian border. In 1737, the Portuguese
authorities sent an expedition to take Montevideo, which failed. On the
way back the Portuguese built a little fort at the only entrance which
gives access to the great series of lagoons which run parallel to the
coast for two hundred and fifty miles north of the southern Brazilian
frontier. This is the site of the present city of Rio Grande do Sul. A
few years later, a considerable number of settlers from the Azores
Islands were introduced, who engaged in agriculture along the fertile
borders of the great Duck Lagoon.
[Illustration: RIO GRANDE DO SUL.]
In 1750, Spain and Portugal made an attempt to reach an amicable and
rational agreement about their South American boundaries. Up to that
time, Spain had stubbornly claimed the territory as far north and east
as Santos, and Portugal was even more unreasonable in asserting her
exclusive right to the coast as far south and west as the mouth of the
Uruguay. The treaty of 1750 virtually recognised the _uti possidetis_.
Portugal agreed to give up Colonia, and the boundary to her possessions
and those of Spain was drawn between the Spanish settlements in Uruguay
and the Portuguese settlements in Rio Grande. The seven Jesuit missions
in the interior, two hundred miles to the north, were abandoned by the
Spanish government. Spain deliberately ceded these tens of thousands of
peaceful and prosperous civilised Indians, and even agreed that her
troops should assist the Portuguese in the cruel dispossession. The
Indians fought desperately and unavailingly. But this iniquitous
provision of the treaty was the only part of it which was ever carried
into effect. Spanish public opinion protested, the boundary commissions
could not agree, Portugal put off the surrender of Colonia on one
pretext or another, and in 1761 the treaty fell to the ground and all
the questions were left open.
That year Spain and Portugal became embroiled on opposite sides in the
Seven Years' War, and the Spaniards from Buenos Aires invaded the
disputed territory in overwhelming force. Colonia was taken and in 1763
the Spanish governor led his army against the Portuguese settlements in
Rio Grande. The fortified town of Rio Grande fell, the superior
Argentine cavalry drove the Rio Grandenses back to the coast, and the
Portuguese territory was reduced to the north-east quarter of the state.
The flourishing farms of the Azorean settlers were laid waste, and from
this invasion dates the adoption by the Rio Grandenses of pastoral
habits. The Treaty of Paris put an end to the war in Europe. The
Spaniards ceased their advance, they restored Colonia once more, but
retained their conquests in southern Rio Grande.
The Rio Grandenses made good use of the breathing-spell. They cared
little whether there was peace or war in Europe, and four years later
made a desperate effort to recapture their old capital and regain their
farms in the south. Disavowed by their government, they still kept on
fighting; soon they made a regular business of raiding the territory
occupied by the Spaniards; the beef they found on the plains was their
food; they were always in the saddle and soon became the finest of
irregular cavalry and partisan fighters.
The Spaniards retaliated by invading northern Rio Grande, but never
succeeded in routing the Rio Grandenses from their last strongholds. In
1775 the Brazilians were re-enforced from Sao Paulo and Rio and took the
aggressive, and the following year recaptured the city of Rio Grande.
The Spanish government took prompt steps to avenge this loss. A great
fleet was sent out, Santa Catharina was captured, an army of four
thousand men was on the march up from Montevideo to sweep the Portuguese
out of all southern Brazil once and for all. But in this crisis European
politics again saved Brazil from dismemberment. France and Spain were
forming a coalition against England in the War of American Independence.
Spain wished to have her hands free and to isolate England. The Spanish
fleet and army were at the gates of Rio Grande when the Treaty of San
Ildefonso was signed in 1777. The Portuguese definitely relinquished
Colonia; Uruguay and the Seven Missions remained Spanish, but most of
southern Rio Grande which the Portuguese had lost in 1763, as well as
Santa Catharina, was restored to them.
[Illustration: OLD RANCH IN RIO GRANDE.]
The thirty-four years of peace which followed in Rio Grande were
employed in steady growth. A craze for cattle-raising set in, and the
plains were divided up into great _estancias_ which were distributed
among the governor's favourites or those who had distinguished
themselves during the war. Substantially the entire population engaged
in the cattle business. The Rio Grandenses and their cattle multiplied
so rapidly that they spread out over the western part of the state,
which was still Spanish, and to the south. In 1780 the curing of beef by
drying and salting was introduced, which permitted its shipment, and
afforded a stable market.
[Illustration: WASHING DIAMONDS.]
After the great gold discoveries in Minas during the late years of the
seventeenth and early years of the eighteenth centuries, the prospectors
ranged north from Sabara along the great Backbone Mountains, finding
washings at many places in North Minas and Bahia. By 1740 the fields in
Bahia were producing fifty to a hundred thousand ounces a year. As early
as 1718 an expedition had penetrated fifteen hundred miles to the west
and discovered good placers on the plateau where the headwaters of the
Madeira and the Paraguay intertwine. This was the beginning of Cuyaba
and the state of Matto Grosso. In ten years a million five hundred
thousand ounces were taken out from these diggings. A little later
still other fields were discovered farther west on the Madeira
watershed.
The miners at the gold camp of Tijuca in North Minas had noticed some
curious little shining stones in the bottom of their pans and thought
them so pretty that they used them for counters in games. Soon a
wandering friar who had been in India recognised them as diamonds. This
occurred in 1729, and the field thus opened up supplied the world with
diamonds until the discovery of Kimberley. In the years from 1730 to
1770 five million carats were taken from the original Diamantina
district, and the deposits are still second in productiveness only to
those of South Africa. The diamond region was at once declared Crown
property and a deadline drawn around it which none except officials were
allowed to cross.
In 1716 an exploring expedition ascended the Madeira, and in the years
following the Tocantins, the Araguaya, the Rio Negro, and the principal
tributaries of the Upper Amazon were navigated. The Jesuit settlements
in the Amazon valley continued to flourish. While the interior and the
South were expanding rapidly, the coast provinces were relatively
declining. The growing competition of the West Indies reduced the price
of sugar. During the seventeenth century Brazil had furnished the bulk
of European sugar consumption, selling her product at non-competitive
prices. But the growth of the English and Dutch colonial empires brought
into the field competitors who possessed as good a climate and soil and
enjoyed the inestimable advantage of better government. Portugal's
vicious and narrow-minded colonial system was not changed until Brazil's
competitors had so far passed her that she has never since been able to
make up lost ground.
The wealth from mines and taxes that Brazil poured into the Portuguese
treasury was squandered by the dissipated bigot, John V. When he died in
1750 he left Portugal in a bad way, and though Brazil had managed to
grow in spite of mismanagement, the outlook was discouraging. The
Spaniards were threatening the new settlements in the South; Sao Paulo
had been depopulated by the migration to the mines; Bahia's and
Pernambuco's sugar and tobacco industries were decadent; in Ceara and
Piauhy the golden days of the cattle business had passed; Maranhao and
Para had stopped short in their development, and their spread into the
interior had been cut off by the Jesuits.
Contemporary documents prove the horrible corruption. From ministers of
State down to the humblest subordinate every official had his share in
the pickings. The farmers of the revenues openly paid bribes and might
exact what they pleased from the taxpayers. All trade except that with
Portugal was forbidden, and this was hampered in a hundred ways. Salt,
wine, soap, rum, tobacco, olive oil, and hides were monopolies. All
legal transactions were burdened with heavy fees; slaves paid so much a
head; every river on a road was the occasion for a new toll; the
exercise of professions and trades was forbidden except on the payment
of heavy fees; anything that could compete with Portugal was prohibited
altogether. Taxation shut off industrial enterprise at its very sources,
and many of the worst features of the system then put in vogue have
never been discontinued.
The governors and military commanders interfered constantly with the
administration of justice in favour of their friends and favourites;
they accepted bribes for allowing contraband trade and permitting the
immigration of foreigners; they misappropriated the funds of widows and
orphans; they ignored the franchises of the municipalities; they imposed
unauthorised taxes; they forced loans from suitors having claims before
them; they obliged free men to work without pay; they forcibly took
wives away from their husbands; they impressed the young men for the
wars on the Spanish border, required every able bodied man to serve in
the militia, and commonly practised arbitrary imprisonment. How even one
of the best of them interfered to regulate private affairs can best be
shown by his own words:
"I promoted the good of the people by forcibly compelling them to
plant maize and pulse, and threatening to take away their lands
altogether if they did not cultivate them diligently; I required
the militia colonels to make exact reports about this matter and
thus brought about a great increase in the production of food crops
and sugar. I called the militia together for exercise on Sundays
and holidays, days which otherwise the people would have spent in
idleness and pleasure. Many have complained, but I have never
given their complaints the slightest attention, having always
followed the system of taking no notice whatever of the people's
murmurs."
He describes the Brazilians as vain, but indolent and easily subdued;
robust and supporting labour well, but inclined to an inaction from
which only extreme poverty or the command of their superiors could rouse
them. They had no education, for the only schools were a few Jesuit
seminaries, and no printing-press existed. They were licentious, had no
aristocracy, were unaccustomed to social subordination, and would obey
no authority except the military.
[Illustration: BOATS ON THE RIO GRANDE.
[From a steel print.]]
Underneath the surface fermented a deep disgust. Even in the seaports
the very name of government was hated, and in the interior the people
withdrew themselves as much as possible from contact or participation
with it. A dull hatred of Portugal and Portuguese spread among all
classes of natives. In much of the country the only law was the
patriarchal influence of the heads of the landed families, who often
exercised powers of life and death. Instances are on record where
fathers ordered their sons to kill their own sisters when the latter had
dishonoured the family name.
With the death of John V. in 1750 the great Marquis of Pombal became
prime minister. The enormous energy and activity of this remarkable man
revolutionised the administration of Portugal and Brazil. Official
corruption was severely punished; order replaced confusion; agriculture,
industry, and commerce were protected and encouraged. In spite of the
threatened exhaustion of the placers mining flourished. Maranhao and
Para took a new start; the worst monopolies were abolished; the price of
sugar rose with the great colonial wars and the adoption of reasonable
regulations. Wealth and revenues increased apace and peace and security
were self-guarded. When Pombal fell, after twenty-seven years in power,
Brazil's population had risen to two millions; Rio was a city of fifty
thousand and the capital had been transferred there; Bahia had forty
thousand; Minas contained four hundred thousand people; the yield of
gold was four hundred thousand carats yearly, and the diamond production
one hundred and fifty thousand carats, and, finally, Santa Catharina and
Rio Grande had been saved from the Spaniards and settled. Pombal had
made short work of the Jesuits. In 1755 he took away their rights over
their Indians, and four years later issued an order for their immediate
and unconditional expulsion and the confiscation of their property.
Pombal had no favourites; he spared no individuals and no classes in his
work of ruthlessly concentrating all power in the Crown. But he built a
Frankenstein of which he himself was the helpless victim the moment his
old master died. Unwittingly he prepared the way for the triumph of the
ideas of the French Revolution both in Portugal and Brazil, and his most
beneficent measures were the most fatal to the permanence of his
despotic system. Commercial prosperity gave the Brazilian people
resources; the impartial administration of law gave them some
conceptions of civic pride and independence; the encouragement of
education, small as it was, helped start an intellectual movement which
spread over the wilds of Brazil the liberal principle then fermenting in
Europe.
Immediately upon his fall in 1777 the Portuguese government reverted to
most of the old abuses, but the economic impulse did not at once die
out.
Pombal had not only expelled the Jesuits, but had taken effective
measures against enslaving the Indians. The latter separated themselves
from the whites, and miscegenation largely decreased. On the other hand,
the importation of negro slaves had been continued on a large scale
throughout the eighteenth century and the proportion of blacks in the
mining and sugar districts had increased. Intermixture with negroes was
stimulated by the seclusion of the white women. The young men often took
mistresses from among the slaves, and these unions sometimes subsisted
after legitimate marriage. The system of double _menages_, however,
decreased as manners became more liberal, and opportunities for social
intercourse between the sexes increased.
The more energetic Brazilians acquired the rudiments of learning in the
Jesuit schools, and a few fortunate youths were sent to the University
at Coimbra in Portugal. In the early decades of the eighteenth century
societies for the discussion of literary and scientific questions were
established in Rio and Bahia. In the centres of population little groups
of scholars began to gather who surreptitiously obtained the writings
of French and English political philosophers. Suddenly, in the latter
half of the century, a dazzling literary outburst occurred. Its seat was
not in Rio, the political, nor Bahia, the ecclesiastical capital, nor
yet in Pernambuco, the cradle of the nationality, but in Ouro Preto, the
chief place of the mining province of Minas, twenty days' journey on
muleback from the coast, and among a rude and unlettered population.
Within a few years appeared six of the foremost poets of the Portuguese
language: the lyrics, Gonzaga, Claudio, Silva Alvarengo, and Alvarengo
Peixoto, and the epics, Basilio da Gama and Santa Rita Durao. He who
writes the songs of a people rather records their history than
influences it. The writings of the Minas lyric poets are the best
documents extant on the character of the Brazilians of the colonial
period. They clearly reveal that culture was only at its beginnings;
that patriotism and national pride were indefinite and shadowy; that
religion was neither dogmatic nor absorbing; that polite society had not
come into being, and that the intellectual element entered little into
the relations of the sexes.
The independence of the United States suggested to a few Brazilians the
possibility of freeing their country from Portugal. In 1785 a dozen
Brazilian students at Coimbra formed a club for this purpose, and one of
them wrote to Thomas Jefferson, then Minister to France, asking American
aid. Jefferson was interested, but answered that nothing could be done
until the Brazilians themselves had risen in arms. A like impulse was
working in the minds of the poets and their friends at Ouro Preto. A
child-like conspiracy was formed whose object was to found a republic
with San John d'El Rei as capital and Ouro Preto as the seat of a
university. A few practical men listened to the plans of the
conspirators probably with a view of turning a disturbance to account in
preventing the government from putting into effect an obnoxious gold tax
then being threatened. Among those let into the inner circle was a young
sergeant nicknamed "Tiradentes." He undertook the task of fomenting an
uprising among the troops, but before anything practical had been done
the whole thing had been given away to the authorities. The conspirators
were arrested and taken to Rio, where the frightened governor instituted
a formal and elaborate trial and took a fearful vengeance upon the
helpless boys and poets. Poor Tiradentes, being without powerful
connections, was hanged and quartered. His memory is now revered in
Brazil as that of the first martyr to independence and the precursor of
the republic. The gentle Claudio hanged himself in prison after having
been tortured into a confession implicating his friends. Gonzaga and
Alvarengo, with several others, were banished to Africa.
Republican and separatist ideas had, however, made no headway among the
Brazilian masses. Brazil's independence was to come by the force of
circumstances and not by any deliberate national effort, and for a
republic she was destined to wait a century more.