Two Views of São Paulo City.
São Paulo, premier city of the leader State of the Brazilian Union, stands on the breezy uplands of the southern plateau; it is a busy, prosperous centre with the first modern civic equipment. Population 550,000.
Quarrels at the mines led to the “Guerra dos Emboabas,” a factional disturbance between the Paulista discoverers and stranger gold-diggers; in the end the Paulistas were driven back, retired to their own uplands, and Minas Geraes was politically separated. Indomitably energetic, the men of S. Paulo turned their attention southward, where the Spaniards had entered and settled, drove the intruders out of Rio Grande do Sul and thus secured another, and one of the finest, regions for Brazil.
In 1750 King John V of Portugal died. The death of Portuguese monarchs did not as a rule make more than a perfunctory difference to the Colonies, but in this case the succession of José I was important because, with infinite faith in his brilliant Minister Sebastião José de Carvalho e Mello, afterwards Marquis de Pombal, he left the chief affairs of the kingdom to these able hands. Pombal has been bitterly attacked: he was without doubt a man of iron; but he was a man of unusual foresight and intelligence who thoroughly realized the great value of Brazil, and did much to improve economic conditions in that huge possession. He seems to have had what Brazilians call a palpite concerning the destiny of Brazil and Portugal.
Almost the first act of this statesman was the curtailing of the powers of the Inquisition: he abolished autos da fé, which must have given relief to Brazil if the historian Porto Seguro is correct in saying that no less than 500 Brazilians had been burnt alive in Lisbon by the Holy Office. With a special eye to Portuguese America he reduced taxes on tobacco and sugar, had the diamond traffic strictly supervised, created commercial companies to trade with Pará, Maranhão, Pernambuco and Parahyba; specially encouraged the plantation of rice and cotton in the North; legislated most of the commerce which was in the hands of the enterprising English into Portuguese channels; inaugurated good ship-building yards in Brazilian ports; settled boundary disputes with the Spanish on Brazilian borders; brought all capitanias still in private control under the Portuguese Crown—Cametá, Caeté, Ilha de Joannes, Itamaracá, Reconcavo de Bahia, Ilhéos, Porto Seguro, São Vicente and Campos dos Goytacazes; and as his most powerful and bitterly assailed effort he laid hands on the Jesuits. The Society, overwhelmed in the South, was strongly entrenched in the North since the opening of Pará and Maranhão; they had done wonderful and self-sacrificing work there; but they hostilized the colonists and made the mistake of arming their protégés the Indians against the settlers. They constituted themselves in Brazil as Bartolomé de las Casas did in Mexico and Guatemala, the Defenders of the Indians; they were extraordinarily successful with them, and it is not impossible that if some working arrangement could have been found between the colonists and Jesuits a great problem might have been solved—that of obtaining some control over the natives and teaching them industries without undermining their peculiar physical constitution. With the best intentions in the world, more modern efforts made to hold the Indian tribes in civic life have ended in their speedy dwindling and extinction; no one except Colonel Rondon seems able to teach the Indian and keep him alive.
To break up the Jesuit missions, Pombal in 1755 decreed the “emancipation of the Indians of Pará and Maranhão,” a curious corollary to the laws that the Society had themselves obtained earlier forbidding the Portuguese settlers to enslave Indians. A little later occurred in Portugal an attempt against the life of the King: the Jesuits were, quite unjustly, accused of being concerned in it, and on this pretext they were ordered expelled in a body from Portugal and from all Portuguese possessions. This was in 1759, expulsion from Brazil taking place during 1760; not content with this, the abolition of the Society of Jesus was obtained from Pope Clement XIV in 1773. This severe measure was rescinded in 1814, and the Jesuits came back to Brazil as to other world dominions, doing excellent educational work at the present time; their colleges are magnificent institutions, and it is commonly said in Brazil that the very best education for men is obtained in the Jesuit college at Itú, in the interior of São Paulo State.
José I died in 1777, and Pombal promptly descended from power; but his work in the stimulation of Brazilian industries, the creation of a genuine Brazilian entity through strong centralization, and the erection of Rio into a viceroyalty, paved the way for the next great change.
Early in the nineteenth century, when the North American colonies of Great Britain had successfully revolted, and the French Revolution was an accomplished fact, ideas of republican independence began to agitate many heads in South America. Brazil had only one uprising, the famous Conspiracy of Minas, which got no farther than plans; it was headed by one of the influential Freire de Andrade family, and all the plotters were eventually pardoned except one scapegoat, who was executed publicly in Rio in 1792, and thus achieved immortality: his nickname of Tiradentes is preserved in the name of a square in Rio and a public holiday on the anniversary of his death.
A few years later Napoleon was overrunning Europe. Portugal, friendly to his enemy England, incurred the Napoleonic wrath, tried to make terms too late, and was being actually invaded by the French when an English naval squadron appeared in the Tagus commanded by Sir Sidney Smith; the Portuguese royal family and a host of courtiers went aboard Portuguese vessels and were convoyed across the Atlantic, out of Napoleon’s reach, to Brazil. It would not at all have suited England for the Braganzas to fall into hands which already held too many royal prisoners. It was one of the most remarkable transferences of a crown in history, this emigration of Dom João to his American colonies; it was a useful and a dignified refuge for him and at the same time was of great value to Brazil, probably saving her from years of disorder and bloodshed.
Two Views of the Avenida Rio Branco, Rio de Janeiro.
The beautiful Avenida, over a mile long, was driven through the city from the docks to the Avenida Beira Mar as part of the extensive city improvements costing over £20,000,000 begun in March, 1904; the avenue was completed in November, 1905. Rio has 1,250,000 population.