History 1123, Lecture Outline and Terms for:
 
 

Settlement and Colonization of Brazil

I. Early Period
 

A Early Settlement & Foundation History
 
1. Age of Private Settlement, 1494-1548
a. 1494-1530: The Early Phase







b. 1530-1548: The Age of the Captaincies
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 


 
 
 


B. Settlement History Proper, 1548-1700
 

1. The Role of Royal Officials
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

2. The Church
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

3. The Settlers
 
 
 
 
 

4. Development of the Sugar Plantation System
 
 
 
 

5. Exploring the Interior
 
 
 


C. Administration


Text Version of the Above Lecture:

The Portuguese relationship with Brazil begins with the Treaty of Tordesillas, finalized in 1494, by whose terms the Portuguese gained control of the coveted East Indies (Indonesia and Southeast Asia in general) as well as India, Africa, and, it turns out, part of South America.  The Portuguese, initially more oriented towards a lower cost strategy for expansion abroad known as the trading-post empire,  focused their Atlantic attentions on Africa, both West and East Africa.  In West Africa the Portuguese were especially interested in slaves and gold during the 15th and early 16th century.  Portuguese presence in India and the East Indies began with the voyage of Vasco da Gama, who reached the Malabar Coast port of Calicut in 1498.  Subsequent efforts to expand overseas remained focused on Africa and the Indian Ocean basin. 

Soon, though, the Portuguese and the French took an interest in a particular commodity available in Brazil: dyewood, a wood that could be used to generate a red dye for the production of textiles.  By 1504 the Portuguese and the French were competing over the dyewood available on the Brazilian coast.  In 1516, the Portuguese set up a trading post on the eastern coastline in Pernambuco and began sending coastguard ships.  The French responded by sending privateers in the 1520s who attacked Portuguese shipping.   This competition finally provoked the Portuguese to engage in more direct colonization of Brazil in the 1530s. 

John III of the Aviz dynasty (r. 1521-1557) sent out the first official Portuguese voyage to Brazil for purposes of permanent settlement, which took place between 1530 and 1533.  Martim Afonso de Sousa led this expedition and, accompanied by some 400 settlers, founded the settlement of São Vicente, near the cities of Santos and present-day São Paulo.  But the Portuguese monarch persisted in the Portuguese penchant not wishing to expend significant crown assets on imperial ventures.  Thus, John III divided Brazil into 15 territories, assigning them to 12 Captains Donatary.  These territories were assigned to the Captains Donatary and their heirs as heritable in perpetuity.  In addition the Captains Donatary acquired certain rights to manage, control, and profit from their new holdings: the right to set up and administer a legal system, the right to found towns and allocate lands; and the right to receive a portion of the tax monies collected in the Captaincy. 

But if the crown could not expend the money, the Captains Donatary had even less and the strategy of relying on them to develop Portugal's American colony failed as a result.  In 1548, therefore, John III and his ministers changed their approach to Brazil, finally opting for more direct colonization led by crown officials and financed by the Portuguese state, albeit leaving the successful Captaincies in place.  Tomé de Sousa, cousin to Martim de Sousa, embodied that change in policy, serving as Brazil's first Governor General, from 1549-1553.  De Sousa received a regrant of the Captaincy of Bahia.  He established Salvador as Brazil's capital, which it remained until 1763.  Brazil's first Governor General also successfully transferred to the young colony the Portuguese social order, bringing with him soldiers, lawyers, officials, craftsmen, peasants, and degredados and promoted a plantation-based economy rooted in sugar cultivation that had thrived in the two Captaincies that had been successful.

Mem de Sá, who served as the third Governor General of Brazil from 1557-1572, firmly established Brazil's economic foundation as well as some of the most distinctive qualities of its social order.  Under De Sá Amerindians were definitively consigned to a subordinate relationship to the Portuguese.  In 1562 he declared war on the Caeté, a tribe of the Tupi people, as they had captured and cooked the first Bishop of Brazil in 1556 immediately prior to the Governor General's term in office.  Mem de Sá also oversaw the definitive emergence of sugar-based plantation economy. 

The Church arrived at the same time as direct rule in the form of six Jesuits who came over to Brazil with Tomé de Sousa.  As in the Spanish empire in the Americas, a regular order would spearhead missionary efforts, although in Brazil the Jesuits, not the Franciscans or the Dominicans, would take the lead.  Amerindians sought protection from the Jesuits, although they proved to be uninterested in Christianity.  Nevertheless, the Jesuits argued that Amerindians should be properly treated, and in 1570 King Sebastião (r. 1557-1578) declared that Amerindians were not to be enslaved unless they were cannibals or openly resisted Portuguese colonization, the same loophole that settlers exploited in New Spain and Peru.

Not surprisingly, settlers had a very different set of interests in Brazil than the Jesuits.  From early on they were interested in a plantation economy, realizing that no gold or other wealth was available.  Thus, they began bringing in African slaves as early as 1535 and enslaved Amerindians whenever they were able to.  By 1570 a plantation economy based in sugar and relying on Amerindian and especially African slave labor was firmly in place, and sugar plantations owners, especially those who owned sugar mills, ruled the roost throughout much of Brazil. 

In the seventeenth century, the Portuguese took further steps to establish their hold on Brazil.  By 1615 they had driven the French from Brazil and by 1654 they had defeated the Dutch.  The seventeenth century also saw more intensive efforts to push into the interior of Brazil.  This was the age of the bendeirentes, who explored the interior in search of Amerindians they could take as slaves, in the process introducing cattle-ranching, and in the 1690s inaugurated a vibrant gold rush.

Over time Brazil also acquired a more intensive administrative presence as well as a more thorough settlement network and missionary presence.  Under the Captains Donatary Brazilians had had to make do with a provincial structure consisting of territorial magistrates (ouvidores) and municipal magistrates.  With the arrival of the first Governor General and through 1606 the ouvidor geral Judge Administrator General acted as the head judge to supervise the ouvidores.  He was both an administrator and a treasury official.  After 1606, the ouvidor geral merged with the High Court of Appeal or relação, which remained a central judicial institution in  Brazil apart from the period 1626-1652.

Key Terms:
John III (1521-1557)
Tupi people
Martim Afonso de Sousa (1500-1571)
São Vicente
São Paulo
Captaincies
Captains Donatary
 King Sebastião (1557-1578)
Tomé de Sousa (cousin to Marim Afonso de Sousa)Governor General, 1549-1553, d. 1579
Captaincy of Bahia
Salvador
Governor General Mem de Sá (1557-1572)
Caeté
Jesuits
bendeirentes
ouvidores = territorial magistrates
ouvidor geral = Judge Administrator General
relação=High Court of Appeal

 

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