THE PORTUGUESE COURT IN RIO
The political development of colonial Brazil may be divided into three
epochs. First, there was the confusion of early colonisation, the
unsuccessful attempt to establish a system of feudal captaincies, the
struggles against the Indians, French, and Jesuits, and the search for a
solid economic foundation for the new commonwealth. On the whole, this
era contained the promise of the ultimate development of a freer
governmental system than that of Portugal.
Next followed the Spanish dynasty and the wars against the Dutch.
Control of Brazil by the home government was weakened, and the colonists
learned their own military power. The years following the expulsion of
the Dutch--1655 to 1700--were the brightest politically in Brazil's
colonial history. The municipalities, governed by local oligarchies of
landowners, exercised functions not contemplated by the Portuguese code.
Though the military governors were continually encroaching, and the
system was imperfect, it was in essence thoroughly local. Its
fundamental defect was the want of co-operation between the towns.
The third period began with the consolidation of Portugal's
international position in the closing years of the seventeenth century.
Once secure from foreign attacks, she renewed the exploitation of Brazil
with redoubled eagerness. The discovery of the mines made the plunder
enormous. At first there were resistance and even formidable rebellions
like Beckman's in Maranhao, of the mascates in Pernambuco, or of the
emboabas in Minas. But the civic vitality of the people was not great
enough to sustain any continuous and effective opposition. Early in the
eighteenth century the municipalities were already at the mercy of the
military governors, and Brazil was governed partly by petty despots and
partly by numerous feeble local bodies who were without cohesion or
power to resist interference. Brazil would have remained a dependency of
Portugal during an indefinite period had it not been for a series of
events which arose in Europe out of the French Revolution.
[Illustration: DOM JOHN VI.
[From an old woodcut.]]
By 1807 England was the only power which still defied Napoleon. Portugal
had been Great Britain's ally for a century, but Napoleon found it
necessary to have command of Lisbon and Porto in order to enforce his
Berlin and Milan decrees. He peremptorily commanded Portugal to give up
her English alliance. The pusillanimous John, who had been prince regent
since the insanity of his mother in 1792, hesitated and shuffled,
seeking to put off the emperor with negotiations and evasions and a show
of hostility to England. A single despatch indicating his double
dealing was enough for Napoleon, who promptly made an agreement with
Spain for the division of Portugal and ordered Junot to march on Lisbon.
The people were ready to make a desperate resistance, but their king was
in two minds each day, and the army had been withdrawn from the frontier
to bid the British fleet a hypocritical defiance. John shed tears over
his unhappy country, but prepared to save his own person by a flight to
Rio. Junot had passed the frontier and was advancing on Lisbon by forced
marches. The Prince Regent and his Court huddled their movable property
on board the men-of-war lying in the Tagus. Fifteen thousand persons,
including most of the nobility, and fifty millions of property and
treasure were embarked. Junot's advance guard arrived at the mouth of
the river on the 27th of November, 1807, in time to see the fleet just
outside and bearing south under British convoy.
Six weeks later the exiles caught sight of the coast of Brazil, destined
thereafter to be the principal seat of the Portuguese race. The Prince
Regent disembarked at Bahia, where the people received him with
enthusiastic demonstrations of loyalty and tried desperately hard to
induce him to make their city his capital. He adhered to the original
plan, and on the 7th of March, 1808, arrived at Rio, where he was
received with equal cordiality. No conditions were imposed on the
helpless fugitives. The first acts of the prince regent proved that the
removal would be of inestimable advantage to Brazil. He promulgated a
decree opening the five great ports to the commerce of all friendly
nations. The system of seclusion and monopolies fell to the ground at a
single blow. Other decrees removed the prohibitions on manufacturing and
on trades. Foreigners were allowed to come to Brazil either for travel
or residence, and were guaranteed personal and property rights; a
national bank was established; commercial corporations were given
franchises; a printing-press was set up; military and naval schools and
a medical college were founded. Foreigners were encouraged to immigrate
and that improvement in art, industries, civilisation, and manners began
which can only result from the daily contact of different types of
humanity. For the first time Brazil was opened to scientific
investigation, and scholars, engineers, and artists were imported to aid
in making its resources known. The commercial nations lost no time in
trying to get a foothold in this virgin market; they sent their consuls
and salesmen, and within a few months importations, principally from
Great Britain, far exceeded any possible demand.
The prince regent found his South American empire divided into eighteen
provinces. These constitute the present states of the Brazilian
union--the only changes having been the separation of Alagoas from
Pernambuco and of Parana from Sao Paulo, besides the erection of the
city of Rio into a neutral district. Of the three millions of people
one-third were negro slaves, and the free negroes and mulattos numbered
as many more. The proportion of whites in the whole country was not more
than a fourth, and in the larger coast cities, in the sugar districts,
and the mining regions, it descended to a seventh and even a tenth.
Civilised Indians were most numerous in Para and Amazonas, and whites
predominated most in the extreme South and in the stock-raising
interior. In the century since, the whites have increased to forty per
cent. and the negroes have fallen to less than twenty-five, in spite of
the large slave importation in the first half of the nineteenth century.
Sugar was still the great staple. Exports of gold and precious stones
had fallen with the exhaustion of the best placers late in the preceding
century. Tobacco was largely produced, especially in Bahia, and Maranhao
and Para were centres of a flourishing cotton trade. Rice, indigo, and
pepper were exported on a considerable scale, and the production of
coffee had been carried from Para to Rio, and was rapidly increasing.
The people of the interior were mostly clothed in coarse cottons
manufactured at home; probably nine-tenths went barefoot and lived in
rude houses without ornamentation and conveniences. The slave system,
the large landed estates, the want of diversification of industry, the
general apathy, the ease of maintaining one's self in the mild
climate--all these causes co-operated to lessen consuming power and to
diminish Brazil's value as a market for imported merchandise.
Great estates, many of them owned by religious corporations, were the
rule. Only the best parts of these estates were cultivated. Enclosures
were almost unknown, and the farm buildings were dilapidated. Though
next to sugar the chief wealth, cattle were neglected, breeds were not
kept up, and the making of butter was so little understood that it was
worth a dollar a pound. The proprietors of the sugar ranches left
everything to their slaves. Ploughs were unknown; lumber was sawed by
hand; water power was rarely used for any purpose, though so abundant.
The only schools were a few in the towns; artificial light was
practically unused; the cities were dilapidated, and their filthy
streets were full of stagnant water. Horsemen rode on the sidewalks in
the centre of Rio itself.
Freight was brought from the interior on muleback over narrow trails,
and hardly any roads for wheeled vehicles existed. The mountains and
heavily forested coast regions were extremely difficult to penetrate,
but in the sparsely forested interior the old Indian trails furnished
facilities for constant communication, which was astonishingly rapid
considering the circumstances.
The people were very hospitable; to receive a guest was an honour; each
ranch had special quarters for travellers, and the only pay the stranger
could offer was to tell the news. Outside the ports no foreigner had
ever been seen, and the first Englishman who visited Sao Paulo in 1809
was as much of a curiosity as an Esquimau would be to-day.
During John's stay in Rio, Brazil was little involved in foreign
difficulties. In 1808 an expedition was sent from Para, which took
possession of Cayenne, but the place was restored to the French in 1815.
In the south the breaking out of the Argentine revolution in 1810 was a
temptation for the Prince Regent to increase Brazil's territory. After
the expulsion of the Spaniards by the populace of Buenos Aires, the
Spanish forces in Montevideo held that place against the patriots for
four years. John sent an army into Uruguay in 1811 nominally to help the
Spaniards, but he had to withdraw it because of British pressure. After
the surrender of Montevideo by the Spaniards a civil war broke out
amongst the patriots of Uruguay and the adjacent Argentine provinces.
The warring factions trespassed on the territory of their Brazilian
neighbours. John determined to seize the coveted north bank of the Plate
for himself. In 1815 the celebrated guerrilla chief, Artigas, invaded
the Seven Missions, which had been seized in 1801, and throughout that
year and the next the Rio Grandenses fought desperately to expel him.
Finally Artigas was decisively defeated, and the Portuguese army marched
down the coast and entered Montevideo without opposition. They were
welcomed by the factions opposed to Artigas, but the Buenos Aires
government protested and Artigas kept up a resistance in the interior
until he was overthrown by rival Argentine chieftains. From 1817 to 1821
Uruguay remained in the military occupation of Brazilian troops, and in
the latter year it was formally annexed under the title of the
Cisplatine Province.
Brazil had had to assume the burdens as well as reap the advantages of
being an independent nation. The whole extravagant government with its
swarm of hangers-on, who had bankrupted both nations together, was now
saddled on Brazil alone. John's advisers regarded liberal principles as
dangerous to civil order, and considered all French and North Americans
as firebrands whose presence in Brazil might start the flame of
revolution. The United States minister was treated as if he were a
Jacobin agent, and American ships were searched for Napoleon's spies.
However, the removal of the Court to Rio had set forces in motion which
ultimately transformed Brazil. Free ports were open doors for ideas and
education as well as merchandise. Free manufacturing and immigration
diversified industry and spread energetic habits. The influx of so many
educated Portuguese and the introduction of the printing-press
stimulated a desire for instruction among the Brazilians. Ambition for
employment in the public service, the road to which, under the
Portuguese system, has always lain through the gates of a university,
co-operated. A considerable educated class began to be formed, though
the intellectual movement never extended into the body of the people.
Through the former class the nation found a means of expression. A
spirit of inquiry and unrest was roused, but the movement was
intellectual rather than instinctive; theoretical rather than practical;
from the top down, and directed more toward revolutionising the central
government than developing local administration.
The first outbreak on Brazilian soil against absolutism was the
Pernambuco revolution of 1817. Five lodges of Free Masons existed in the
city; the priests themselves were most earnest preachers of political
freedom; merchants and sugar-planters wanted lower taxes; the prosperity
of the sugar trade had made the people self-confident. A conspiracy was
formed which had the sympathy of many of the clergy and influential
citizens. An attempt to arrest the principal agitators resulted in a
riot; the troops were mostly Brazilian, and rose in favour of their
compatriots, and the populace joined them. The governor fled, leaving
the public departments, and the treasury containing a million dollars in
the hands of the revolutionists. The movement became at once frankly
separatist and republican. A Committee of Public Safety was named; the
Portuguese flags were torn down; a temporary constitution proclaimed; a
printing-press set up to publish a liberal newspaper. Messengers were
despatched to the interior and to the neighbouring provinces to announce
the overthrow of despotism and to invite co-operation, but they met with
no enthusiastic reception. Fear of the aggressive Jacobinism of the city
of Pernambuco cooled the slave-owners and conservatives, and the
dignitaries on the revolutionary committee were shocked by the
impetuosity of their radical colleagues. The insurgents had not had time
to provide themselves with arms, and a Portuguese fleet from Bahia
quickly blockaded the port. When the royal troops came up they found the
interior of the province in civil war, and the radicals were soon backed
into the city, where a short siege compelled them to capitulate. The
more aggressive leaders were shot by court-martial and a military
government was set up. Hundreds of prisoners were carried off to Bahia,
where they remained until the great reaction of 1821.