AP World 19.4

The first official Portuguese landfall on the South American coast took place in 1500 when Pedro Alvares Cabral, leader of an expedition to India, made a brief and perhaps accidental landfall on the tropical Brazilian shore. There was little at first to attract European interest except for the dyewood trees that grew in the forests, and thus the Portuguese crown paid little attention to Brazil for 30 years, preferring instead to grant licenses to merchants who agreed to exploit the dyewood. Pressure from French competitors finally moved the Portuguese crown to military action. The coast was cleared of rivals and a new system of settlement was established in 1532. Minor Portuguese nobles were given strips of land along the coast to colonize and develop. The nobles who held these captaincies com- bined broad, seemingly feudal powers with a strong desire for commercial development. Most of them lacked the capital needed to carry out the colonization, and some had problems with the indigenous population. In a few places, towns were established, colonists were brought over, relations with the Native Americans were peaceful, and, most importantly, sugar plantations were established using first Native American, then African slaves. 

In 1549 the Portuguese king sent a governor general and other officials to create a royal capi- `tal at Salvador. The first Jesuit missionaries also arrived. By 1600, indigenous resistance had been 

broken in many places by military action, mis- sionary activity, or epidemic disease. A string of settlements extended along the coast, centered on port cities such as Salvador and Rio de Janeiro. These served roughly 150 sugar plantations, a number that doubled by 1630. The plantations were increasingly worked by African slaves. By 1600, the Brazilian colony had about 100,000 inhabitants: 30,000 Europeans, 15,000 black slaves, and the rest Native Americans and people of mixed origin. 

Sugar and Slavery 

During most of the next century, Brazil held its position as the world's leading sugar producer. Sugar cane had to be processed in the field. It was cut and pressed in large mills, and the juice was then heated to crystallize into sugar. This com- bination of agriculture and industry in the field demanded large amounts of capital for machinery and large quantities of labor for the backbreaking work (Figure 19.8). Although there were always some free workers who had skilled occupations, slaves did most of the work. During the 17th cen- tury, about 7000 slaves a year were imported from Africa. By the end of the century, Brazil had about 150,000 slaves—about half its total population. 

On the basis of a single crop produced by slave labor, Brazil became the first great planta- tion colony and a model that later was followed by other European nations in their own Carib- bean colonies. Even after the Brazilian economy became more diverse, Brazil's social hierarchy still reflected its plantation and slave origins. The white planter families became an aristocracy linked by marriage to resident merchants and to the few Portuguese bureaucrats and officials, and they dominated local institutions. At the bottom of society were the slaves, distinguished by their color and their status as property. However, a growing segment of the population was composed of people of mixed origins, the result of miscegenation between whites, Indians, and Africans who-alongside poorer whites, freed blacks, and free Indians-served as artisans, small farmers, herders, and free laborers. In many ways, society as a whole reflected the hierarchy of the plantation. 

Like Spain, Portugal created a bureaucratic structure that integrated this colony within an impe- rial system. Two colonies were created: the State of Maranhão, the very large but sparsely populated Amazonian region in the north, and the State of Brazil comprising the rest of the territory. A gov- ernor general ruled from Salvador, but the governors in each capitaincy often acted independently and reported directly to the overseas council in Lisbon. The missionary orders were particularly important in Brazil, especially the Jesuits. Their extensive cattle ranches and sugar mills supported the construction of churches and schools as well as a network of missions with thousands of Native American residents. 

As in Spanish America, royal officials trained in the law formed the core of the bureaucracy. Unlike the Spanish empire, which except for the Philippines was almost exclusively American, the Portuguese empire included colonies and outposts in Asia, Africa, and Brazil. Only gradually, in the 17th century, did Brazil become the predominant Portuguese colony. Even then, Brazil's ties to Portu- gal were in some ways stronger and more dependent than those between Spanish America and Spain. Unlike Spanish America, Brazil had neither universities nor printing presses. Thus, intellectual life was always an extension of Portugal, and Brazilians seeking higher education and government offices or hoping to publish their works always had to turn to the mother country. The general economic dependency of Latin America was matched by an intellectual subordination more intense in Brazil than in Spanish America. 

Brazil's Age of Gold 

As overseas extensions of Europe, the American colonies were particularly susceptible to changes in European politics. For 60 years (1580-1640), the Habsburg kings of Spain also ruled Portugal, a situ- ation that promoted their cooperation and gave these rulers a truly worldwide empire. From 1630 to 1654, as part of a global struggle against Spain, the Dutch seized a portion of northeastern Brazil and controlled its sugar production. Although the Dutch were expelled from Brazil in 1654, by the 1680s the Dutch, English, and French had established their own plantation colonies in the Caribbean and were producing sugar with slave laborers. This competition, which led to a rising price for slaves and a falling world price for sugar, undercut the Brazilian sugar industry, and the colony entered into hard times. Eventually, each European nation tried to establish an integrated set of colonies that included plantations (the Caribbean, Brazil), slaving ports (Africa), and food-producing areas (New England, southern Brazil). 

Although Brazil's domination of the world sugar market was lost, throughout the 17th cen- tury Paulistas, hardy backwoodsmen from São Paulo (an area with few sugar plantations), had been exploring the interior, capturing Indians, and searching for precious metals. These expeditions not only established Portuguese claims to much of the interior of the continent but eventually were suc- cessful in their quest for wealth. In 1695, gold strikes were made in the mountainous interior in a region that came to be called Minas Gerais (General Mines), and the Brazilian colony experienced a new boom. 

A great gold rush began. People deserted coastal towns and plantations to head for the gold wash- ings, and they were soon joined by waves of about 5000 immigrants a year who came directly from Portugal. Slaves provided labor in the mines, as in the plantations. By 1775, there were over 150,000 slaves (out of a total population of 300,000 for the region) in Minas Gerais. Wild mining camps and a wide-open society eventually coalesced into a network of towns such as the administrative center of Ouro Prêto, and the government, anxious to control the newfound wealth, imposed a heavy hand to collect taxes and rein in the unruly population. Gold production reached its height between 1735 and 1760 and averaged about 3 tons a year in that period, making Brazil the greatest source of gold in the western world. 

The discovery of gold—and later of diamonds—was a mixed blessing in the long run. It opened the interior to settlement, once again with disastrous effects on the indigenous population and with the expansion of slavery. The early disruption of coastal agriculture caused by the gold strikes was overcome by government control of the slave trade, and exports of sugar and tobacco continued to be important to the colony. Mining did stimulate the opening of new areas to ranching and farming, to supply the new markets in the mining zone. Rio de Janeiro, the port closest to the mines, grew in size and importance. It became capital of the colony in 1763. In Minas Gerais, a distinctive society developed. The local wealth was used to sponsor the building of churches, which in turn stimulated the work of artists, architects, and composers. Like the rest of Brazil, however, the hierarchy of color and the legal distinctions of slavery marked life in the mining zones, which were populated by large numbers of slaves and free persons of color. 

Finally, gold allowed Portugal to continue economic policies that were detrimental in the long run. With access to gold, Portugal could buy the manufactured goods it needed for itself and its colonies, as few industries were developed in the mother country. Much of the Brazilian gold flowed from Portugal to England to pay for manufactured goods and to compensate for a trade imbalance. After 1760, as the supply of gold began to dwindle, Portugal was again in a difficult position-it had become in some ways an economic dependency of England.