Streams IV-BrzHis&Cul

The platform or stage for the development of Brazilian history and culture has occurred over the eastern half of South America. However, while geographically Brazil is part of Latin America, focusing on this regional association results in an inadequate understanding of the nature of Brazilian development. The cultural and behavioral patterns of Brazil originate along the eastern rim of the Atlantic Ocean, in Europe and Africa. More specifically, they are rooted in Latin Mediterranean and in Bantu and Yoruba cultures. Native cultures of eastern South America ultimately had the least weight in the hybrid of cultures that came to define Brazil. They were defenseless and decimated by the disease onslaught of the incoming cultures. Moreover, the skills of the survivors were honed to their immediate natural environment; and these people came to be concentrated mainly in remote regions of the interior. Native refinements were parochial and alien to the larger, global enterprises in which exporting coastal Portuguese landowners and forced African laborers would engage.

10. Early Colony, Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Map of Brazil in 1516, 1519, and 1600)
Focus: Baroque art and culture (1500s to early 1800s) had a profound influence on Brazil in terms of religion, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. The motivation for Baroque art was part of the driving mission of the Jesuits of the Counter-Reformation to solidify support for Catholicism through total emotional commitment. To this day the national religious patroness of Brazil, Nossa Senhora da Aparecida, is represented as a figurine in rich Baroque dress. Lying within the Portuguese cultural development of Brazil throbbed an echoing under-rhythm of African culture. The interlocked founding and enduring hierarchies of Brazil were based on: land=latifundia, labor=slavery, religion-culture=Baroque, family=paterfamilias-patriarchy, society=clientela-compadresco. Family relations were the paradigm for an individual's place and stability in society so that an elaborate system of "fictive" kin developed, primarily through the godparent bonds from baptism and marriage. This system reinforced patriarchal authority and the structure of patron-client relations, yet it could also somewhat assuage imbalances in the roles for slaves, minors, women, and tenants or smallholders.
         Portugal confronted European competition for eastern South America from France, Spain, and the Netherlands. Over several decades during the mid-sixteenth century Portugal made or witnessed a number of developments regarding the settling, surveying, and governing of Brazil that would have centuries-long consequences. Spain absorbed Portugal from 1580 to 1640, when the Portuguese royal dynasty (Aviz) died out; and Philip II of Spain claimed the Portuguese throne. Brazil continued under Portuguese administration, but Portugal became part of a dual monarchy under a Spanish king. The Dutch, a bitter European enemy seeking independence from Spain, occupied the Northeast of Brazil during the early 1600s. Throughout the mid-1500s the French were trying to establish a settlement in South America at the Bay of Guanabara and to penetrate North America through the mouth of the St. Lawrence River. Ultimately the Portuguese were able to drive the French, Dutch, and English to west of the mouth of the Amazon River along the coast of the Guyana Highlands.
        Portugal re-solidified its hold on Brazil when the Bragança dynasty gained control of the Portuguese crown in 1640, restoring independence from Spain. The renewed Portuguese monarchy now viewed Brazil as the sustaining vein of both the Portuguese empire and the Bragança dynasty. This new relationship was formally recognized when, in 1645, the heir apparent or crown prince of the Portuguese throne bore thereafter the title of "Prince of Brazil." The first bearer of this title was Dom Teodósio (1634-1653), the ninth Duke of Bragança and the eldest son of King João IV, the founding monarch of the Bragança dynasty. Dom João considered Brazil the economic sustenance of his realm, describing it as a "milking cow" ("vaca de leite"). The restoration of Portuguese control of Brazil heightened differences in Brazil's development as a colony from practices of Spain in Spanish America. Not only was Brazil represented within the Portuguese dynastic succession, but Brazil influenced governance of the Portuguese African colonies, the source of its labor supply. After the discovery of gold in Brazil in the 1690s, Brazil came to be of more economic importance in the Portuguese empire than Portugal itself. In mid-seventeenth century Salvador Correia de Sá Benevides governed both in Rio de Janeiro and then in Luanda, capital of Angola. The commemorations he ordered in 1641 to celebrate the restoration of the Portuguese throne under Dom João IV became the precedent for "carnaval" in Rio. (Note: The current Duke of Bragança [the 24th], » Dom Duarte Pio [1945- ], is the pretendant to the Portuguese throne; his mother was Maria Francisca de Orleans e Bragança, a princess in the pretendant dynasty to the Brazilian throne.)
        There is a sense in which the history of Brazil from 1645 to 1889 may be understood as the period of the "Principate of Brazil." The Bragança dynasty developed as the cohesive core of the patriarchal slavocracy that comprised half of Brazilian history. Much of that history is essentially a narrative of how Brazil, at first exclusively the property of the Portuguese king, came to be distributed and recognized as the property of others (barons) allied with and supported by the monarchy, whether that was the founding Bragança dynasty of 1640 or the cadet branch of the family that asserted itself in Brazil (as Brazil) after 1822. The economic and political forces that undermined the Empire (last phase of the "principate") would dissolve by 1889 the centuries-old hold of the Braganças on Brazil. One may, from such a perspective, say that Brazil evolved in three periods. The first, from 1500 to 1640, was one of a disputed and then a lost colony. The second, from 1640 to 1889, was the Bragança patriarchal principate in which major segments of the land and people were the property of a minority. Since then Brazil has been a nation engaged in overcoming the limitations of this heritage (not only pre-liberal but non-liberal). It has developed as an effort for economic, political, and social participation through wage labor that navigates market dynamics of consumption and production determined by increasingly negotiated representational constitutional norms.

This seal (from about 1520, now in the Vatican Archives) is that of Charles V, of the Hapsburg dynasty and Holy Roman Emperor (1519-1558). He was king of Spain (1516-1556) as Charles I. During his long reign the New World came under his surviving remnant of the Roman empire and was firmly contained within the Roman Catholic religion against the advances of the Protestant Reformation. It was this emperor's son, Philip II, who became king of both Spain and Portugal (reigning in the latter as Philip I). The Inquisition, a tribunal that judged cases of heresy, operated in Brazil on at least three occasions, functioning as an extension of the Lisbon agency.
        In 1582 Spain and Portugal were among the first countries in Europe to adopt the reformed Gregorian calendar, replacing the Julian calendar of Roman times, which had come to lag by ten days the sequence of the seasons. On 4 October 1582 the next day was advanced to 15 October in Spain, Portugal, and their colonies. Thereby Catholic European countries began to restore synchrony between the calendar, the seasonal sequences, and the cycles of the sun and moon. Protestant Britain only made this adjustment in 1752, advancing from 2 to 14 September.
Further Readings: For this and all following class sections, use the history chapters from the online textbook, » Brazil: A Country Study, Online: Library of Congress Research Division, 1997; | » Memória da justiça brasileira (Carlos Alberto Carillo), 3 volumes, online (supporting documents can be downloaded)
Transparencies: Colonial fazendas
Video: Section from the film, Quilombo, on slave rebellion and flight to Palmares
Internet:   » Sugar Cane Cultivation and Production » Slave Shipping » Images Cape Coast Castle in Ghana (Gold Coast), holding pen for slaves shipped to the Americas   » Successive Portuguese royal legal codes: the Ordenações Afonsinas (1456-1521), Manuelinas (1521-1603) and Filipinas (1603-1830), governing Brazil and Portuguese empire   » Battle of Alcácer-Quibir, 1578, determining end of Aviz dynasty in Portugal   » Cardinal-King Henry, last Aviz monarch of Portugal   » Philip II, king of Spain and in Portugal after 1580 as Philip I   » Formation of the Duchy of Bragança and the Family Seat of the House of Bragança   » Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos, first capital of Brazil » Evolution of Quinta da Boa Vista, a neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, from a remote Indian settlement in the sixteenth century, to a distant Jesuit mission and plantation in the following two centuries, to a new suburb in the nineteenth, and to a colorful but aged part of the inner city in the twentieth   » Early Justice and Court Systems (click "memória" then volume 1")   » Colonial Policing by Quadrilheiros (block watchmen)   » Casebres, common housing of poor from colonial period to present, made customarily of mud and sticks ( » Wattle and Daub) with a thatched roof   » Beginnings of Local (Town) Government   » History of Brazilian Population, 1550 to 2000, (first decennial census in Brazil was 1872)   Internal dispersions: 1) » Quilombo republics of fugitive slaves with Zumbi, leader of Palmares quilombo, and a Capitão do Mato, hunter of fugitive slaves; 2) » Bandeirantes (paulista frontiersmen bands) following Maps of Entrada (Trekking) Routes: 1   2 3 and Bandeirante Ranch Houses 1   2 (renovation)
» Layout of a Catholic Church, with Vestments and Ritual Utensils used by priests » Jesuits in Brazil:  Father Manoel de Nobrega and Father José de Anchieta 1   2 » Jesuit Missions (aldeias/reducciones) among Guarani in Brazil and Argentina and in Paraguay   » Jesuit Colonial Education (six years, primary; three years, secondary) and the Tradition of Jesuit Education » Jesuit Theater   » Image of N. S. da Aparecida, Catholic patroness of Brazil   » Dutch in Brazil 1   2   » Views of Colonial Brazil by Dutch Painters: 1   2 (paintings at end of document) and the Historia Naturalis Brasiliae (1648), Dutch publication on the flora and fauna of Brazil » French in Brazil » Francisco de Orellana, a conquistador of the Incas, was first European to explore (1541-1542) course of river (by Treaty of Tordesillas, Amazon River lay in Spanish American territory)   » Chronicle of voyage by Friar Gaspar de Carvajal   » Map of Brazil and the World in seventeenth century (with detail of Guinea coast in Africa)

11. Late Colony and High Baroque, Eighteenth Century
Focus: The eighteenth century definitively consolidated the hold of Portugal on the eastern half of South America from the basin of the Amazon to the eastern (or left) bank of the Paraná-Plata complex. Brazil produced over two million pounds of gold (legally and officially documented) during the eighteenth century, with the peak years occurring between 1740 and 1760. (Note: Gold is currently sold at over $400 per ounce so that the official value of gold discovered in Brazil during the eighteenth century would be nearly $15 billion.) Over three fourths of all the gold produced in the world during the century originated in Brazil. The discovery of such unprecedented wealth not only of gold but also diamonds attracted a wave of settlers into the trans-sierra interior and along the Atlantic coast. The accelerated pace of commerce in the colony resulted in a transportation (and communication) system of mule teams and muleteer traders, known as tropeiros. They moved foodstuffs and dry goods through a corridor of territory centered in São Paulo, taking provisions from Paraná and Rio Grande do Sul to the mining towns of Minas and even settlements in the Northeast. The population of Brazil grew from a few hundred thousand in 1700 to several million by 1800, a ten-fold increase. The increase was so great that by mid-century it forced replacement of the Treaty of Tordesillas with the Treaty of Madrid (1750).   Portuguese territory in South America would henceforth be determined by the the principal of "uti possidetis," that is, the nationality effectively using or occupying a territory owned it. The economic, political, and cultural centers of Brazil shifted from the Northeast to the Southeast, Rio de Janeiro becoming the capital. Brazil and Lusophone West Africa became an interdependent socio-economic entity of the South Atlantic. This development of the Atlantic rim as the perimeter of the Portuguese empire could somewhat recall the Aegean rim of the classical Greek empire or resemble the trade communities of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean rims. The Portuguese empire became "Brazilianised." The South American colony was the main focus of wealth and trade. Moreover, Brazilians, especially those who graduated from the University of Coimbra in Portugal, became government administrators in Lisbon and the colonies, particularly Africa. Brazil and Portuguese Africa had numerous aspects in common from the appointment of government officials to street marketing practices. The bishop of Luanda, Angola was subject to the archbishop of Salvador, Bahia.
        Mineral wealth not only consolidated the Baroque character of Brazilian culture but supported such an enlargement and refinement of the arts that it produced a High Baroque period. Ouro Preto, the capital of the gold-mining province of Minas Gerais, and numerous other cities and towns of the region became jewels of artistic accomplishments in architecture, sculpture, painting, and music. The wealth of Minas nurtured an exceptional generation of artists and craftsmen.
        Despite myriad changes, however, the fundamental patterns of labor (slavery) and wealth-holding (among a very small elite) did not change. The pattern of "change/no-change" in Brazilian history manifested its first major cycle. Diminished gold returns from Brazil in the latter half of the century and continued demands from Portugal to maintain levels of wealth exported to it resulted in reforms and rebellion. The Portuguese principal royal minister, the Marquês de Pombal, attempted to maintain Portuguese wealth by rationalizing the administration of the realm.   He consolidated state trading companies in Brazil, particularly control of African slavery; suppressed the Jesuit religious congregation; emancipated Indians encouraging their intermarriage with the European population; transferred (1763) the capital from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro, to place the vice regal government closer to the gold mines in the central part of the colony; and reformed the judicial system and organization of local government units. Portugal's efforts to make Brazil more productive and secure for Portugal increased demands on the colony's wealth, yet its precious mineral resources were depleting. The demands underlying the reforms ultimately provoked a failed independence movement in Minas Gerais in 1789, the Inconfidênica Mineira.
        The southern Atlantic was many things to many peoples and nations, but to the Portuguese dynasty over the course of the Brazilian principate it was a “Bragança Sea.” (The southern Atlantic, like the Mediterranean, has been a “mare nostrum” in many varying ways.) On the Bragança Sea the fortunes of the dynasty waxed and waned with tides of sugar, slaves, gold, and diamonds. As the waves subsided, the dynasty would dissolve: in Brazil in 1889, and in Portugal in 1910.

Gold was shipped in bars from Brazil to Portugal.
Transparencies: Items similar to previous and sculptures of Aleijadinho
Recordings: Compositions by Father José Maurício
Videos: Emancipation section from the film, Xica
Realia: Model of a Brazilian village street; plates and drinking cups of colonial pewter
Internet: » Historic Cities of Minas Gerais and Ouro Preto: 1 2 » Diamantina (also Arraial do Tijuco), the Diamond District of Minas » São João Del Rei (tour historic buildings of city by scrolling to bottom of page and clicking "pontos...") » Export of Gold over Original Indian Foothpaths » Labor from the African Diaspora 1 2 and Types of Slave Labor » Slave Entrepreneurship » Images of Colonial Rural Life » Furniture and Furnishings (click "Union Jack" flag for site in English) » Elite Fashion from European models » Tropeiro Routes and Images 1 2 » Colonial Postal Deliveries were during the colonial period a royally contracted service conferred on a "Correio-Mor," ("Courier Major" as in Capitão-Mor=Captain Major) and the development of Postal Delivery in Eighteenth-Century Minas » Whaling and the Lighting of colonial streets » Late Colonial Justice and Court Systems (click "memória" then "volume 2") » Development of Police ( click "conheça" and then "histórico") and of Firefighting Services in Rio de Janeiro » Marquês de Pombal, absolutist Portuguese reformer » Inconfidência Mineira, independence uprising, 1789, with Album of Images of Tiradentes, uprising leader » University and Town of Coimbra, Portugal » Map of Brazil and the World in eighteenth century

12.    Seat of Portuguese Monarchy, 1808-1821; First Empire, 1822-1831 (Constitution of 1824); and Regency, 1831-1840
Focus: The nineteenth century confirmed the exceptionality of Portuguese America in relation to Latin America. Brazil preserved European forms of government as a kingdom and empire. Its independence followed a sequence of events that comprised political, legal, and nativist stages that developed over a period from 1808 to 1831. The politico-administrative sovereignty of Brazil as the seat of the Portuguese monarchy after 1808 became legal independence in 1822. Brazil was a rare historical anomaly insofar as it legally exercised sovereignty more than a decade before it was legally recognized as sovereign. This condition, among several other factors, considerably moderated the degree of violence accompanying Brazilian independence. Rather than a war of independence Brazil witnessed in 1822 an event more akin to a dynastic putsch. Effective control of the country by native-born elites, as opposed to Portuguese-born ones, emerged during the Regency from 1831 to 1840. Intra-elite regional tensions and warfare surged during the period due to a weakened central government. This weakness strengthened local government but provoked national destabilization. The national elite (imperial) re-asserted stable central government with the enthronement of a second emperor. The founding at the beginning of the century of the Law School of Olinda (later Recife) and toward the end of the century of the Law School of São Paulo represented crucial developments in the formation of secular regional and national elites.
        Portuguese influence declined replaced on the one hand by French social, cultural, intellectual, and artistic directions and on the other by British commercial, trade, and financial practices. In 1816 a French Artistic Mission officially visited Brazil, decisively influencing its transition from the intense religiosity of the Baroque to a secularizing neo-classicism. Of singular aesthetic and historical visual value were the paintings and drawings of Jean-Baptiste Debret, a leading member of the Mission. From the late eighteenth century onward major scientific expeditions were mounted to discover and classify the abundant natural phenomena of the interior of Brazil. The expeditions consisted of European specialists or enthusiasts in what was then termed "natural philosophy." Among them was Charles Darwin, who briefly touched in Brazil on his ship, the HMS Beagle, during 1832.
        The exercise of central authority oscillated during the independence process as Pedro I wrested power from Portugal in 1822. Brazil declared itself an empire because it considered that, together with independence, the Portuguese colonies of western Africa should be ceded to it. These colonies were socio-economically more integrated with Brazil than Portugal. Retaliating against attempts by the Brazilian national assembly to obtain amplified lawmaking authority, Pedro I decreed a constitution in 1824, concentrating a major portion of government power in himself. He was compromised by his dynastic forays in Portugal during 1826 when he briefly succeeded to the throne of that country as Pedro IV, then installed his daughter (Maria II da Glóra) as queen, and blocked his brother from becoming king. His reign in Brazil approached its finale when in 1828 he had to surrender Uruguay as a province of Brazil. Culminating scandals due to extra-marital affairs forced him to abdicate in 1831. He left the country and his five-year old son, Pedro, under a Regency government until his heir reached the age of majority.
        The Regency witnessed a decade of fractured national authority, with a decentralized government somewhat resembling a republican federation. To secure authority in the interior of the country, a National Guard was established with the military authority of "coronel" granted to major landowners. The system of coronelismo bestowed armed authority on rural patriarchy. To quell increasing and sustained regional uprisings, the Regency accelerated the declaration of the heir's majority to 1840, and he was crowned emperor as Pedro II . From 1840 to 1853 Brazil and Portugal were still associated by dynastic family ties since Pedro II was monarch of the former and his sister, Maria II, of the latter. She died in 1853.
Further Reading: | » "Federalism in Brazil" (Percy Alvin Martin), The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 18, No. 2. (May, 1938), pp. 143-163
Transparencies: Drawings, paintings, and photographs of scenes of Brazilian life during late colony: Rural and urban, patriarchal society, slavery, street markets, port activity
Paintings and Drawings:   Art books representing the work of the French cultural mission to Brazil in the early nineteenth century, emphasis on works of Jean-Baptiste Debret; neo-classicism, the secularization of the Baroque
Illustrations: Folio of facsimile drawings from the Rodrigues Ferreira expedition in the Amazon.
Internet:   » Napoleonic attempts to occupy Portugal 1807, 1808, 1809 and (Map) and the Peninsular War in Portugal   » Texts of Decrees of 1808 transferring royal and national institutions from Portugal to Brazil   » Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, 1808, first newspaper published in Brazil   » Digitized, full-text retrieval of Reports and Documents of Provincial Presidents (Governors) and Imperial Ministries (1821-1889) » Earliest Newspapers 1   2   3   » Emperor Dom Pedro I and Letter regarding the "Fico" (declaration to remain in Brazil) with The Cry of Ipiranga ("Indepedência ou Morte!") » Gallery of Brazilian Monarchs   » Paço Imperial (Imperial Palace), seat of government in Rio de Janeiro from 1743 to 1889 of the Colony, Kingdom, and Empire of Brazil   » Coronelismo   » Founding of Law School of Olinda (later Recife) » Map of Brazil and the World in early nineteenth century
» French Artistic Mission: Drawings and Paintings of Jean-Baptiste Debret: 1 (paintings at end of document) 2  » Drawings and Paintings of Nicolas-Antoine Taunay 1   2   3 and Félix-Émile Taunay (son of Nicolas) » Architecture of Auguste-Henri-Victor Grandjean de Montigny » Explorations of the Naturalist Alexandre Rodrigues Ferreira (1783-1792) » The Baron Georg Heinrich von Langsdorff Expedition (1825-1829) through Amazon, with the Drawings of Johan Moritz Rugendas and the Influence of Johan Elias Riedinger 1   2   3 (also Ridinger) on eighteenth century naturalist drawing » Carl von Martius 1   2 and Johann von Spix 1   2 accompanying 1817 the Archduchess Leopoldina of Austria (Hapsburg) to wed future Dom Pedro I

13.    Second Empire, 1840-1889
Focus: Over the course of the nineteenth century the cultivation of coffee initially in the state of Rio de Janeiro (valley of the Paraíba do Sul River) and then overwhelmingly in São Paulo came to dominate the export economy of the country. The coffee barons of São Paulo progressively concentrated both exceptional economic and political power. Profits from the export of coffee were very high; but its cultivation confronted a number of risks in terms of soil exhaustion, long term capital investment, fluctuating global markets, and unstable sources of labor.
        The movement to abolish slavery steadily grew from 1850 onward, with the institution ending in stages from that year until 1888. A victorious War with Paraguay, from 1864 to 1870, nevertheless revealed devastating weaknesses in the structure of Brazilian society. These prompted reforms in the Army emphasizing technology and republican government as essential to modernize and strengthen the country. An influential segment of the military followed the tenets of the French philosophy of Positivism, which emphasized management of society through technical expertise. São Paulo became a magnet attracting free immigrant labor from southern Europe, "re-Latinizing" the country. The immigrant population was the nucleus for the growth of wage labor, the most profound factor henceforth influencing the economic, social, and political future of the country. By 1889 convergence of military elites, coffee barons, and abolitionists in favor a republican form of government brought about the collapse of the Empire. Military officers, headed by Field Marshal Deodora da Fonseca, overthrew the emperor and established on 15 November 1889 a republican government. This was designated the "United States of Brazil" and was constituted as of 1891 with a four-year presidency and a bi-cameral Congress based on tightly limited suffrage.
        The Regency witnessed the emergence of native-born Brazilians to the administration of the country. During the succeeding Second Empire, in cultural matters, native Brazilian themes increasingly emerged. French neo-classicism and beaux-arts continued as dominant influences. Nevertheless, in painting, literature, and music, native Brazilian themes, particularly related to history, indigenous legends, and folk songs, steadily developed. European scientists continued, as from the late eighteenth century, to mount major expeditions through the country.

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