Brazil today and tomorrow

by L. E. Elliott Joyce

The group of capitanias extending from Espirito Santo northwards to Ceará were when Brazil came under Spanish rule the most productive of all; it was but eighty years from the date of Cabral’s discovery, and only fifty from the time of colonization, but flourishing populations were settled along the seaboard, growing sugar, tobacco and cotton and cutting stacks of dyewoods to fill the fifty ships a year that called at the main ports. Bahia, seat of the Captain-General’s administration, was also a bishopric, and the chief religious orders had settled in each considerable town and founded churches, schools and convents. In 1570 a Royal Decree forbade the compulsory use of Indians as labourers, and to fill the ranks of field workers Africans were brought in: to this idea the Portuguese were inured, for the West Coast of Africa had been a source of labour supply for them since 1440; it was the discovery that negroes could be transplanted to the Americas and would there work with docility, thrive and multiply, that made possible the cultivation of thousands of square miles of land, both in North and South America, and warmly as we may reject the principle of slave labour now, it was the only one which could have opened American lands to the extent which they attained in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The white man could not have performed this physical labour.

Indian labour was abolished at the instance of the priests; it was remarkable that to the enslavement of Africans under circumstances equally brutal no objection was made. Negroes were brought to Brazil from 1574 onwards until the abolition of the slave trade, though not of slavery, in 1854. The debt of Brazil to the African negro is a very heavy one.

Soon after the junction of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns there began the series of purely plundering attacks delivered by European enemies of Spain which lasted until the establishment of the Dutch at Pernambuco, but which were of so little political importance that in the meantime the Portuguese authorities were able to destroy entirely the French settlements at Maranhão and Pará which lasted from 1594 to 1615. The work of replacing French with Brazilian settlements was carried out by Jeronymo Albuquerque, son of a dominating Pernambuco family, and not only were well-started French colonies ruined but the exploration of the Amazon, commenced by the famous Daniel de la Touche (Seigneur de la Ravardière) was abruptly ended.

In 1621 the Dutch Company of the West Indies was founded, companion organization to the rich East Indies Company; with the approval of the Dutch Government the Company was equipped for settlement and conquest, and could call upon the home authorities for the help of ships and armed men if war occurred in the course of operations. A fleet of thirty-six vessels under Admiral Jacob Willekens sailed for Brazil early in 1624, made directly for Bahia, and took the city without much trouble. Holding it was a different matter, the population taking to arms, and a year later a combined Spanish and Portuguese fleet arrived and forced the Dutch to capitulate. Another impermanent attack was made in 1627, and in 1630 a different point of aggression was chosen by a great fleet of seventy vessels: the Pernambucan city of Olinda was besieged and taken, the Dutch secured themselves in power and remained masters of this and three other capitanias afterwards seized; they were governed by the West India Company for nearly twenty-five years.

Evidences of the occupation of Olinda and its sister settlement, Recife, now the capital and a very flourishing city, are to be seen in the many houses surviving with curved gables, high unbroken fronts, the exterior walls shining with blue and white glazed tiles; the Dutch brought with them their love of order and cleanliness, good methods in plantation management and excellent organizing power, and the only genuine objection to the rule of the Hollander in Brazil was that the country did not belong to him. All Brazilian historians bear witness to the merit of Dutch methods.

Old and New Brazil.

A Remnant of Colonial days; street in Olinda, old capital of Pernambuco.

Modern residences near the Gloria Gardens, facing the bay, Rio de Janeiro.

The West India Company was able to induce an admirable Governor to take charge of the new possession, Prince John Maurice of Nassau; he reached Recife in 1637, and inaugurated a conciliatory policy towards such Pernambucanos as would accept Dutch rule: those who would not were pursued into the interior forests where they retreated under one of the Albuquerques, and were forced to flee from Alagôas into Bahia. When such resisters were caught they were shipped to Dutch settlements in the East Indies.

Religious freedom was promulgated by the Protestant rulers, more systematic administration of settlements and estates inaugurated, better sugar milling methods introduced as well as farming implements, and the scientific exploration of the interior was made. Prince Maurice brought with him map-makers, geologists, botanists and expert mineralogists, and sent them to the valleys and hills of the Bahian hinterlands. Elias Herkmann took an expedition of one hundred men from Recife in 1641, to make scientific investigations, and although he did not find mines of importance he studied native relics and language, subsequently publishing a book on the Tapuyo race.