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 Maranhão, 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.
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 The people were ready to make a desperate resistance, but their king was in two minds each day, and the army had been withdrawn from the frontier to bid the British fleet a hypocritical defiance.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 Paraná from São 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 Pará 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 Maranhão and Pará 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 Pará 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.