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Home | 18-19th Centuries Index
AFRICANS and EUROPEANS in the 1500s
The wealth that Spain was taking out of their areas in the Americas inspired more interest in Brazil by opportunistic Portuguese, and in 1531 five vessels and four hundred colonists arrived on Brazil's coast, and that year they established a colony they called São Vicente (Saint Vincent), on the coast about 500 kilometers (300 miles) southward from what today is Rio de Janeiro.
Those who emigrated to Brazil were looking for land and an easy life. They had no intention of doing manual work, expecting that they could have the Tupi do their work for them. When the Indians refused to work for the colonists, the colonists made slaves of them, by taking those captured in the frequent wars between Indian tribes or by taking people in raids on Indian villages.
The Portuguese were slower in conquering the Indians of Brazil than Cortez was in conquering the Aztecs, or Pizarro the Incas. The Aztecs and Incas had been more unified by organization and culture than the Indians that the Portuguese faced, and they had a wilderness in which to hide.
Failing to enslave enough Tupi, the Portuguese in 1532 began shipping African slaves to Brazil. Africans had an immunity to tropical diseases that served them well in Brazil and they were believed to be able workers in mining and tropical agriculture. A circular trade was established, the Portuguese taking metal manufactured goods to Africa, trading these goods for slaves, shipping slaves to America and transporting from Brazil whatever they thought they could sell in Portugal.
In the 1530s the Portuguese established another colony, Olinda, far to the north, on the shore near the eastern most point of the continent. In 1549 the Portuguese founded their colonial capital city in Brazil: São Salvador da Bahia ( Salvador). By now their original colony at São Vicente had a population of around 5,000. In 1554 the Portuguese founded São Paulo. Meanwhile, French Huguenots running from persecution had settled at Rio de Janeiro, and in 1560 the Portuguese drove them out and began building their own settlement there.
The attempt to exploit the Tupi continued. Fighting the Indians was described by a Portuguese Jesuit, Father José de Anchieta, in his poem De Gestis Meni de Saa, written around 1560. Anchieta, who would be called the "Apostle of Brazil" and made a saint, wrote of the "heroic deeds" of soldiers "in the immense wilderness." He wrote of the Portuguese destroying Indian villages and fields. These wars had been proposed by another Jesuit, Father Nóbrega, in 1558. as putting an end to cannibalism and the "hellish mouth that has eaten so many Christians." For the Portuguese soldiers it was a war to exterminate and subjugate. The Portuguese had begun building plantations. The churchmen and others saw this as a legitimate war, and the taking of slaves from warfare as right. They argued for the taking of slaves in legitimate war rather than waiting for the illegal taking of slaves. Jesuit correspondence with the King of Portugal supported subjugating and enslaving Indians in order to convert them, and, the letter went on, "Your Highness will draw much profit because there will be many stock farms and many plantations, even if there be not much gold and silver." [note]
The Jesuit program was to settle the Indians into villages (aldeias) that they ran, similar to Spanish missions and forced Indian villages. Here the Indians were denied the nomadic hunting and gathering ways, and here they could absorb Christian doctrine and morality, learn a trade, pursue their native crafts, learn to read and write and were protected from illegal enslavement. Father José de Anchieta was the major architect of this program. He wrote catechisms and religious songs and verses in the Tupi language.
The Jesuits in Brazil came into conflict with Brazil's colonists much as Jesuits in Spanish America came into conflict with Spanish colonists. The colonists wanted a supply of labor and the Jesuits wanted to protect their Indians, which led to appeals by both sides to the king of Portugal. The crown's decree of 1574 reflected a partial victory for the Jesuits, granting them full control over the Indians in their villages while permitting the colonists to enslave Indians captured in "legitimate" warfare.
The dearth of Indian slaves led the colonists to purchase more slaves from Africa. By 1600, the colony had around 120 sugar plantations, with sugar and dyewood being its main exports, sugar exports around 50 million tons a year. In the colony were around 30,000 black slaves and about 50,000 Portuguese and mixed Portuguese and Indian (the product mainly of Portuguese fathers and Indian mothers). The subdued Indians and other Indians in contact with the Portuguese numbered around 120,000. And there were around 680 head of cattle. By 1700, there were around 1.5 million head of cattle. Tobacco exports had increased. The white and mixed race population was around 150,000. There was a new mining industry, including gold in central Brazil, and black slaves had increased to around 150,000. [note]
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Copyright © 2000 by Frank E. Smitha. All rights reserved.