REGIONAL CLEAVAGES AND POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN BRAZIL

CHAPTER 3
HISTORICAL ORIGINS: CENTER AND PERIPHERY UNDER PORTUGUESE RULE


1. The public and private realms

Brazilian historiography on the colonial and imperial periods is extensive, and a detailed reconstruction of the territorial occupation of the country and its political implications would simply restate what can easily be read in several authoritative textbooks(1). Instead, this chapter will deal with this period only insofar as it bears consequences on the system of regional cleavages which was to dominate the country's history thereafter. There is a clear link between the way one looks at the past and the perceptions one has about the present, as I will try to make explicit.

Nestor Duarte, a noted Brazilian publicist, represents one of the extreme interpretations of the country's system of political organization during colonial times. For him, the concept of power decentralization, embodied in a rural aristocracy scattered throughout Brazilian territory, is nothing but a first approximation of the essence of things. He quotes Oliveira Viana on the power of the rural aristocracy:
They are the ones who govern, legislate, judge, wage wars against the barbarous in the interior, defending the population which inhabits the surroundings of their houses, which are like feudal castles and their lord's courts.
Nestor Duarte not only accepts this description of the rural aristocracy as feudal landlords, but goes further, saying that:
Under closer inspection, however, we can see that the phenomenon to be stressed is not this decentralization, but a change in the very nature of power which ceases to be a political function and becomes a private function.(2)
This privatization of political life is, of course, nothing but the establishment of the patrimonial variety of political domination, which Weber calls feudalism. For Nestor Duarte, as for a sizable number of Brazilian experts on the subject, this was the unchanging basis of the Brazilian political system until the end of the nineteenth century:
The great peace of the Empire, its equilibrium and its support lie in this territorial lordship which is the economic strength and the material power of the state... this lordship is also the only "political" section of the Brazilian population.(3)
This vision does not go without its opposite, of course. The best representative of the alternate view is Raymundo Faoro(4), who goes back to the history of the Portuguese state to trace the origins of a centralized and patrimonialist state; in 1808 it was transplanted in Brazil under British protection, after the occupation of Lisbon by Junot, but it had already been in the country for several centuries, during the colonial administration.(5)

For him, there was a basic difference between the British and the Portuguese colonizing enterprises in the New World. This difference derived from the state's varying structure in each country; Portugal, in the seventh century, had already been consolidated into an absolute state, governed by a bureaucratized and centralizing stände. England, on the contrary, arrived at a compromise between industrial capitalism and feudalism, thus avoiding bureaucratic centralization, the continental historical trend.

After a long discussion on the control mechanisms of the economy and the limits of the political autonomy of the local aristocracy, he concludes that "our feudalism was just a figure of speech"(6) He is aware of the centrifugal tendencies towards decentralization which always existed, and goes into a detailed study of the colonial administration's progressive centralization, a process which increased up to the end of the nineteenth century.

Faoro's analysis is compelling since, in the eighteenth century, Brazil witnessed both the shift of the colonial economy from the sugar plantations in the Northeast to gold and diamond mining in the center, and an increasingly tight control of the colonial administration over this booming, but short-lived, mining economy. The initial colonization policy in Brazil was indeed, as it was said before, the creation of hereditary "capitanias" given away for private exploitation; but this system never developed fully, and was followed almost immediately by a process of growing administrative centralization. As Faoro accurately notes, there was never a political pact through which the higher echelons of the political system represented and governed in behalf of some sectors of society, as is typical in the feudal model. This situation was not without obvious tensions, and much of Brazil's history is a history of conflicts centered around the centralization - decentralization issue.

The first of these conflicts evolved around the issues of colonization, territorial occupation, and control, and a survey of the historiography on the subject shows how interpretations of the nature of Portuguese colonization are at the heart of the way these issues are approached. It is certainly inadequate to think of sixteenth and seventeenth century Brazil as an integrated unit. It was a string of outposts along the coast with a very fragile system of communications; they often had much more direct contact with Lisbon than with each other. No wonder they developed independently, and very often in contradiction to each other. A closer look at some of these developments is necessary.

2. The Pattern of Colonization: "Bandeirantes" and Pioneers

In a book which became famous two decades ago, Vianna Moog tried to explain the different outcomes of Brazilian and North American colonization in terms of the differences between the English pioneer, who came to the New World to settle down with his family, and the Portuguese bandeirante, who crossed the Brazilian hinterland in search of Indian slaves and gold. The bandeirante was an adventurer and a predator whose only concern, supposedly, was to make a quick and fabulous profit and retire to Europe. Starting out from São Paulo, the bandeirantes covered about half of the South American continent, in what Bradford Burns describes as the "first Brazilian epic":
The land challenged the bandeirantes. They traversed inhospitable mountains and forded turbulent rivers. Swamps and dense forest mocked their effort. Arid stretches taught them to bless those numerous, troublesome streams they had so recently cursed. And everywhere they encountered hunger, their only certain traveling companion.(7)
Viana Moog, however, was not willing to accept this idealized image of the Paulista explorer. For him,
Because of the bandeiras, and as long as it remained bandeirante, the great state [of São Paulo] was one of the poorest and most backward of the country's areas. São Paulo comes to the fore in the Federation only much after the period of the bandeiras is effectively closed, when the coffee cycle begins, bringing in a pioneer type of immigration which, at the end of the nineteenth century, disembarked more than 100,000 immigrants per year in the port of Santos.(8)
According to Viana Moog, the ambition and restlessness of the bandeirante led him away from his original settlement on the coast, leaving the captaincy of São Vicente (SP) unattended and backward, while the sugar settlements in the Northeast prospered. He certainly has a point in that the colony which began most of the discovery and original occupation of the country's territory was also one of the most backward at a given point in time, to become much later - from about the end of the nineteenth century - the economic pole of the country. The geographical pattern is disturbing in itself. Why, during the seventeenth century, was the political center of the country in Bahia, the center of economic activity - the sugar industry - further north in Pernambuco, while the center of territorial expansion into the hinterland was further south, in São Paulo?

3. The expansion of São Paulo

What is most puzzling about the expansion of São Paulo(9) is exactly the relatively small size and insignificance of the original settlement, as compared with the entire Portuguese colonizing enterprise in America. The administrative center of the colony was Salvador, in Bahia, and its main economic pole was the sugar plantations in the Northeast. Roberto Simonsen estimates that, in 1690, Brazil had a total free population of about 100,000, of which 15,000 were located in São Paulo, 20,000 in Rio, and the remaining 70 per cent in the Northeastern areas.(10) Estimations provided by Simonsen show a total population of as little as 3,000 inhabitants in the whole province as late as 1653, and only in 1777 does the figure go above 100,000. Data for the city of São Paulo show a population of about 20,000 in 1836, and of about 30,000 at the time of Brazil's first general census in 1872. At that time, other Brazilian cities were well above 100,000, as Table 4, below, shows.

TABLE 4
THE GROWTH OF BRAZILIAN CITIES, 1872 - 1970
  1872 1920 1970
São Paulo 31395 579033 5978977
Rio de Janeiro 274972 1157873 4315746
Belo Horizonte . . 55463 1255415
Recife 116671 238843 1084459
Salvador 129109 283422 1027142
Porto Alegre 43998 176263 903175
Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística, Anuário Estatístico de 1971, p. 42.

The explanation for the entrepreneurial push of the Paulista settlers towards the hinterland tends very often to be geopolitical. Caio Prado Jr., in spite of being a noted Marxist historian, tends to explain away the entrepreneurial role of São Paulo in terms of its geographical position at the cross-roads of the country:
As a zone of passage, São Paulo never achieved a life of its own in the colonial period. The main sources of Paulista life were the traffic in native slaves, captured in the heat of the Sertão, and sold in the agricultural centers of the litoral; the trade of cattle passing through on their way from the southern grasslands to the coastal centers, especially Rio de Janeiro; and, finally, when gold was discovered in Minas Gerais, São Paulo was for a long time the sole or the principal route of travel to the mining towns.(11)
Although dominant,(12) this interpretation tends to attribute a passive role to the settlement, leaving aside its dominant function. The fact is that São Paulo became a commercial post after the Paulistas opened the roads to the hinterland, and it is difficult to imagine that its role as an entrance to the gold area was merely a result of geographical contingencies. During the search for gold and slaves, several dozen towns appeared in the vast area of the hinterland which is today Minas Gerais; the South and Center were conquered, and, because of its continuous movement towards the hinterland, the population of São Paulo often shrank in size.(13)

One wonders about the reasons which could drive someone from Europe to such a remote place in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. A few facts seem to be clear: this kind of settler was not very willing to stay too close to the surveillance of colonial administration, and was interested in getting the highest possible profit for his effort. A few factors seem to have determined the choice of the different locations: first, the existence of a suitable harbor, and second, the presence of Indian populations which could be used and exploited. São Vicente and later Santos seem to have fulfilled these conditions, and later became the "natural" pathway towards the countryside.

São Paulo's economy benefited from the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco and the African Portuguese colonies (Luanda and Angola) during the period of the unification of the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns. Other areas for sugar plantation had to be created outside Pernambuco, and the trade of African slaves had to slow down, because of Dutch domination of the seas. The value of the Indian slave increased accordingly, and the Paulistas became for a while the major suppliers of slave manpower for the plantations in Bahia, Rio and São Paulo itself.

Afonso Taunay wrote a fascinating summary of the accounts of several travelers who had visited São Paulo since 1565: what they reveal is a picture of the town' s independence, autonomy and insubordination with regard to the Portuguese Crown - a picture which did not change as time passed. At the end of the seventeenth century one of these travelers, a French engineer named Froger, wrote,
The city of São Paulo does not pays taxes; it is not a subject of the King of Portugal. It is located ten leagues from the coast, and began as a bunch of bandits from all nations which, bit by bit, created there a large city and a kind of Republic whose main law is, above all, not to recognize any Governor whatsoever.(14)
This image of a republic of bandits seems to have been widespread and appears in several other contemporary writers' works. For some, it is difficult to reconcile this image with the fact that an important component of the Paulista settlement was a Jesuit mission established in the area as early as 1554. Actually, both Jesuits and Paulistas seemed to have been after the same thing, the Indian population, even though for different purposes. The Jesuits' efforts to establish the Missions, autonomous colonies of natives, conflicted with their enslavement by the Paulistas. The conflict between the two groups came to a climax in São Paulo when the Jesuits were expelled in 1640. Much further south, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, bloody clashes between Jesuit missions and bandeirantes had long been under way.(15)

The history of the Paulista expansion can be roughly divided into two parts with the year 1695, when gold was first discovered in the Minas Gerais area. The previous period was one of isolation and relative independence: it was characterized by long marches into the hinterland, and by an Indian slave trade with agricultural settlements on the coast and in the Northeast. During the second period - that of the frantic gold rush - the administrative jurisdiction of São Paulo reaches, at a given moment, more than half of the present Brazilian territory, only to begin diminishing shortly thereafter.(16)

4. Bare feet in the South: The Emboabas War

A look at the map may be useful in understanding the rise and fall of Paulista supremacy during the gold rush. At first, the only known routes to the mines were from São Paulo or from Paraty, a harbor a little farther north. Only in 1699 was a more direct route discovered which linked Rio de Janeiro with the mines. Trade routes from Bahia through the São Francisco River were also used, and conflicts between the original settlers and newcomers started to build up.

The newcomers were known as "Emboabas," a word of Indian origin which referred to the boots the newcomers wore, which distinguished them from the barefoot Paulista. The differences between boots and bare feet corresponded to other differences in resources and skills. The Paulistas were Brazilians of several generations, often of mixed blood, while the newcomers tended to be Portuguese and according to Diogo de Vasconcellos,
they had an advantage over the Paulistas in being known and supported by their rich compatriots from the maritime centers, who gave them credit to buy instruments and African slaves, who were the only workers that could endure the terrible exhaustion of working in the mines.(17)
This identification of the Emboabas, who rebelled against the original settlers, with the Portuguese became clearer as time passed. The leader of the rebels, Nunes Viana, elected by his followers as Governor of the Province (and considered because of that, as the first Latin American dictator), soon became an ally of the Portuguese Crown. Several years after the war, he was to declare that the rebels forced him to accept the government [of Minas] and the command of the army created for the fight against those [Paulista] people; and compelled them with the strength of his weapons to obey his Majesty's laws and Royal Orders.(18)

One of the main issues of the conflict was related to the monopoly of the meat market in the mining area, which the Portuguese administration gave to two outsiders. One of the Paulista leaders was accused of not being loyal to his king, because he was one of those who resisted and vetoed the meat contract in these Mines.(19)

It would be too simplistic to suggest a close identification of outlook and intent between the merchants and the Portuguese patrimonial bureaucracy. Historical evidence shows a series of continuous conflicts between the local merchants and the administration on the issues related to the Portuguese administration's preference for seventeenth century foreign and aristocracy -owned trade companies instead of small tradesmen(20). The prohibition to trade in gold powder was also a blow to the small tradesmen in Rio, but it is also evidence of the fact that, in the conflict, the will of the government prevailed. Trade had to be carried on through the urban administrative centers, and had to go out in ships controlled and protected, or at least chosen, by the Portuguese government. Thus, in fact, the penetration of trade in a given area ultimately meant an increase in governmental centralization.

The obvious social differences between the Emboabas and the Paulistas gave rise to interpretations of the conflict in terms of class differences, according to which the Paulistas were the traditional feudal, peasant (and shoeless) aristocracy, and the Emboabas were the rising bourgeoisie fighting for freedom of trade.(21) This kind of interpretation is not very convincing, however, if the issues of territorial occupation and the relations between social groups and the Portuguese Crown are to be taken into account: when the Paulistas organize themselves for the final assault against the Emboabas, in 1709, this was decided and planned by the local chamber of the city of São Paulo, in a demonstration of local autonomy and popular participation, which many would consider unlikely to occur in the Brazilian plateau so early in the eighteenth century.(22) The picture of a war planned in São Paulo to be fought in Minas, in conflict with the administration in Bahia, provides the proper scenario for this chapter of the establishment of Brazil's territorial integration.

5. The Integration of the Northeast

As Paulistas and newcomers clashed in the center's mining area, a parallel conflict developed between Olinda, an aristocratic, traditional city, and Recife, a rising trade center. The two cities face each other in the Northeastern state of Pernambuco. This was the Mascates war ("mascates", the derogatory name for peddlers, was given by the local residents to incoming Portuguese tradesmen.)

The parallel between the Emboabas and the Mascates wars is not usually found in the literature, mostly because the former was one of the first chapters in the rising gold economy, whereas the latter was one of the later episodes of the decaying sugar economy. But both were, unmistakably, important events in the establishment of patrimonialist control over the Brazilian territory, although with quite different outcomes.

The history of the sugar industry in Brazil is inextricably related to the history of the economic and political relation- ships among European commercial powers of the time. Probably the best overview of the sugar economy during the colonial period was written by Celso Furtado, who stresses the Dutch role in refining and commercializing the product throughout Europe.(23) According to Furtado, the sugar industry in Brazil was from the beginning a joint venture of Dutch and Portuguese interests, which nevertheless had quite different objectives. For the Dutch, the sugar industry was essentially a commercial enterprise. They not only took charge of refining and distributing the product in Europe, but also financed Brazilian installations and the importation of African slaves, and controlled transportation of the product. Furtado quotes Noel Deer in saying that, if one takes all this into account, it becomes clear that the sugar industry in Brazil was more of a Dutch than a Portuguese business at that time.(24)

The main concern of the Portuguese seems to have been the political and military control of the new territories. Lacking the entrepreneurial capabilities of the Dutch, as well as the good luck of the Spaniards, the Portuguese clung to the hope of finding gold and to the relatively small benefits which could be derived from their relatively minor role in the sugar industry. The political control of the territories was their basic end, some military outposts and the sugar plantations - their means, and the prospect of finding gold - their incentive.

The arrangement between the Portuguese and the Dutch functioned well until the union Portugal and Spain in 1580, under Felipe of Spain; thereafter, the Dutch were formally prohibited from participating in the sugar trade and the Spanish started seizing Dutch vessels in Portuguese ports. In 1621, the Dutch West India Company was created to promote colonization and commerce through conquest. The Dutch made several attempts to effect a military control of the sugar areas. After failing to control Salvador in 1624-25, they established a firm hold in the Pernambuco area from 1630 to 1654, fourteen years after the Portuguese restoration and independence from Spain in 1640(25)

6. Bare feet in the North: The Mascates War

The conflict in Pernambuco emerged as a fight over the administrative status of the town of Recife. This town started to develop under Dutch administration, which used it instead of Olinda - the traditional seat of the sugar aristocracy - as its administrative capital.(26) The war against the Dutch occupants was carried on independently, and often against the will of the Portuguese authorities and, in 1654, it seemed that Olinda could be restored to its ancient dominance and independence. Recife, however, became the pole of attraction for a population of newcomers who started as peddlers and ended up responsible for the financing and commercialization of the sugar production. As an observer remarked:
These foreigners or Mascates held in their power all trade; they were therefore the ones who supplied the sugar mills, and were also the only ones who received the boxes of sugar. At the end of the harvest, each Senhor de Engenho owed a considerable sum to the Mascate who had sent him supplies, and this inflexible creditor would then pressure him immediately... Thus, in a few years, the Mascates became big capitalists and, instead of following the steps of the first ones to arrive in Pernambuco (who restricted themselves to trade), they infiltrated public business, penetrated the Palace of Governors, and finally prepared themselves to accomplish their goal, which was to annihilate the nobility of the country.(27)
The local aristocrats were known by the newcomers as "Pés Rapados," meaning barefooted - a resemblance to the Paulistas in Minas Gerais, which was not mere coincidence. The increasing economic role of Recife's newcomers, from peddlers to money- lenders, was related to the progressive deterioration of the sugar economy since the second half of the sixteenth century.(28) Recife eventually won the conflict and acquired the administrative status of a city but, at that time, the contacts its elite had in the "Palace of the Governors" were certainly more important than its exploitation of a hopeless industry.

Little is known of the process through which the old sugar aristocracy and the businessmen intermingled and lived during the period of decadence, but it can be taken for granted that the value of access to the sources of bureaucratic power became dominant, as the market economy shrank in size and perspectives. Possibly the local aristocracy in the Northeast underwent a process similar to what later happened to the Minas Gerais elite at the end of the eighteenth century with the decadence of the gold economy.

The difference in outcome of the two conflicts between Portuguese newcomers and barefooted locals is that, although in both cases the locals lost their autonomy, the Paulistas were cut off from the rest of the country, and therefore did not develop in their own state a structure of patrimonialist dependence on the central administration as the sugar elite did. The pattern of isolation was thus preserved, and this was certainly important in the developments which were to occur a century and a half later.

7. Political consolidation and economic decadence

São Paulo and Pernambuco seem to have been the only major attempts of essentially economic, non governmental, territorial occupation of the country. A third economic activity, which was responsible for the exploration of the Brazilian hinterland, was the cattle economy; it was, however, usually secondary and dependent on some dynamic center.(29)

This picture of the occupation of Brazilian territory can be completed with the history of the establishment of military outposts at the borders. The most important of these outposts was certainly the Colony of Sacramento, on the Rio de La Plata, created in 1680. It was the beginning of a protracted war with the Spaniards in Buenos Aires, which gave the population of the state of Rio Grande do Sul the unique experience of continuous bloodshed and military mobilization.(30) A look at the map shows that Rio Grande is the only truly frontier region in the country; this becomes more evident as we go back into the country's history. The northern and western frontiers were determined, by and large, by the bandeirante's capacity to explore the hinterland; however, they were also determined by the Andes and the continental jungle, which functioned as barriers to the expansion of the Spanish settlers on the Pacific coast. The Portuguese settlements tended to remain on the Atlantic coast, and it was only in the area which is now Uruguay that the two colonial enterprises continually clashed.

The social and economic fabric of Brazilian society along the Southern border was strongly dependent on this situation. Fernando Henrique Cardoso makes a thorough survey of Gaúcho society historiography; he points out two basic elements which recur and characterize it most properly. The first is the pervasive influence of military experience on the psychology, economic structure, and social organization of the South. According to him, the psychological pressures of a state of continuous warfare, combined with the specific battle conditions on the frontier, led to the need for a kind of strong personal leadership, endowed with qualities of personal courage and audacity. The consequence was a military order which was not necessarily too rigid, since it was not prone to abide to standard procedures and routine; but it was certainly centralized around strong, personalistic leaders.(31) Economic life was for a long time based on predatory activities against the Spaniards, the capture of cattle which ran freely in the Pampa, attacks against Jesuit missions, and the smuggling between Spanish and Portuguese domains. Gradually, the land was distributed among the military chieftains and caudillos, and an industry of dried beef (charque), which soon exported in great quantity to the North of Brazil, began to develop.

The second basic element, besides the militarization of all aspects of life, was the privatization of the military and other administrative forms of authority. Military caudillos had their private armies, which were used in private raids against Jesuits, Spaniards or other settlers in times of peace, but which could be mobilized by the Portuguese Crown in times of formal warfare. Land grants were distributed according to military power and influence, as were the privileges of tax collection and the administration of justice.(32)

This "privatization" of military activities meant that economic and social power was derived from military status, but this status was in turn based on independent sources of wealth and power. As in a typical Weberian situation, the tension between the privatization of political and military status and the making public of private power was constant; this helps to explain why the tradition of warfare remained as a means of settling internal conflicts even after the wars with Spain - and later with Argentina - were settled. In other words, what became decisive was how much the local caudillo's power depended on governmental sanction or support. In 1801, after the twenty four years of peace which followed the San Ildefonso treaty between Spain and Portugal, the governmental expenses of the captaincy were more than three times its revenue and, according to a historian,
This bad economic outcome was mostly due to the low quality of governmental administration, the centralization of the metropolis, and the excessive expenditures made on the maintenance of the army.(33)
Rio Grande's political relevance to the Portuguese, and later to the Brazilian Crown, made it inadvisable to allow the state to be ruled by its own bosses. Most of the military manpower used in the frontier wars was locally recruited, and Love notes that, as late as 1852, in the conflict against the Argentine dictator Rosas, three quarters of the Brazilian troops were composed of gaúchos. Several decades later, Rio Grande supplied between one fourth and one third of Brazilian land forces, and its share of high ranking officials was out of proportion with the size of its population.(34) The net outcome of this situation was that the patrimonial and "private" politics in Rio Grande was always politically oriented, and related to the national center of power. This relationship was not always amicable and, as a matter of fact, Rio Grande made the only serious attempt of political secession in Brazil during the nineteenth century (the Farroupilha Revolution, 1835-45).

Life in Rio Grande was not limited to the adventures of its men on horseback. Love distinguishes three different regions of colonization and settlement in the area, the Coast, the Mountains, and the ranch country - the Campanha, "which gives the state its image elsewhere in Brazil." An important group of settlers in the coastal area came from the Portuguese island of Açores, and were responsible for a blooming economy of wheat. The fact is, nevertheless, that the ranching country not only provided Rio Grande with an external image, but also gave it a political leadership and style, which was strongly imprinted in the state's other colonization areas. Cardoso, for instance, shows how the Azorian settlers gradually changed from the old peasant habits of their land of origin to a very hierarchical and military oriented form of patriarchal patrimonialism, which pervaded the whole area.

The second, or rather first, area of military settlement in the country was Rio de Janeiro, where the French attempted to establish their "France Antartique" in the first half of the sixteenth century. The area was rich in brazil wood; contacts with the local Indians were possible, and the French were able to control the area for a while. In 1560, their settlement was destroyed by a fleet commanded by Mem de Sá, and three years later the first Portuguese military outpost was created by Estácio de Sá.(35)

It is remarkable to notice that the adventure of the Colônia de Sacramento in the south was financed and supported, not directly by Portugal, but by the city of Rio de Janeiro.(36) For a while the City Council of Rio was interested in the possible trade opportunities of the new frontier but, after a while, complaints started to arise about the burden created by the military adventure in the south. Gradually, it seems that the burden in terms of manpower was shifted to the local population, which was mostly of Paulista origin, that is, bandeirantes who had arrived for the campaign against the Jesuit missions.

8. Political life in the nineteenth century

Nineteenth century Brazil is known for its economic stagnation(37), but also for the establishment of a stable and smoothly running monarchy which lasted from 1840 to 1889. The preceding period, from 1808 to 1840, was a time of internal consolidation, during which Brazil gained its independence from Portugal (formally declared in 1822).

This first period was characterized by a conflict between "Brazilian" and "Portuguese" factions, soon translated into a struggle between the "liberal" and the "conservative" parties. The dissolution of the Assembly of 1823 was a victory for the Portuguese, and the abdication of Dom Pedro I, a victory for the Brazilians.(38) After the abdication, the country went through a period of regional rebellions, which took it to the brink of fragmentation. The central government had to consolidate its military capability, which was relatively independent of the regions where they were quartered, and a Brazilian regular army began to develop.

Both the navy and the army in the early days of independent Brazil were composed of Portuguese and mercenaries, but the nationalization of the army seems to have occurred most rapidly. A decree reorganizing the army in 1831 put its strength at about 10,000 men, and the actual number of men in arms remained between 15,000 to 20,000 for the whole century, with the exception of the period of the Paraguayan War. There were 35,000 men in arms in 1865 and 83,000 in 1869, a figure which dropped again to 15,000 in 1873. These figures hide what was in fact the development of a professional and organized army, following the instability of the regency period.(39) As Table 5 shows, only Rio Grande do Sul was not completely pacified by 1845, and it is not by chance that the man in charge of subduing the rebellions would also be considered the founder of the Brazilian army.

TABLE 5
ARMED REVOLUTIONS IN BRAZIL FROM 1831 TO 1845
  Pernambuco Pará Bahia Maranhão Rio Grandedo Sul Total
1831 2   3     5
1832 1         1
1833     1     1
1834           0
1835   1     1 2
1836   1     1 2
1837   1 1   1 3
1838   1 1 1 1 4
1839   1   1 1 3
1840   1   1 1 3
1841       1 1 2
1842         1 1
1843         1 1
1844         1 1
1845         1 1
Total: 3 6 6 4 11 30
Source: Lucia Maria Gomes Klein and Olavo Brasil de Lima Jr., "Atores Políticos do Império," Dados, 7 1970, pp. 62-88.

Military expenses were not reduced immediately after the rebellions ceased but much later, in spite of the growing complexity and weight of the governmental apparatus:

TABLE 6
BRAZIL: AVERAGE PERCENTAGE OF MILITARY EXPENDITURES OVER TOTAL GOVERNMENTAL EXPENDITURES, 1823-1845
Period Percentage of military expenditures Total expenditures (1840 = 100)
1823-29 48.12% 42
1831-35 37.50% 59
1836-40 453.00% 86
1841-45 43.70% 116
Source: Lúcia Maria Gomes Klein and Olavo Brasil de Lima Jr., op. cit., pp. 62-88.


The end of the regional rebellions and the creation of organized armed forces were just some of the governmental achievements during this period. The federal budget tripled in the first ten years after the independence, and rose steadily throughout the century as Table 7, below, shows.

TABLE 7
GOVERNMENTAL EXPENDITURES AND EXPORTS IN BRAZIL DURING THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Year Government Expenditures
(1,000 contos) 		Exports (1,000 contos) GEX/EXP
1823 4,702 20,623 22,8%
1831/2 12,836 32,431 39,79%
1840/1 19073 41,672 45,76%
1852/3 29,368 73,645 39,87%
1860/1 45,950 123,171 37.30%
1870/1 83,435 168,000 49.66%
1889 138,108 259,095 53.30%
Source: Data collected by Sérgio da Rocha Souza and José Luis Werneck da Silva.

This was not just a nominal increase, since the value of Brazilian money was in stable relation with the British pound during most of the nineteenth century(40). The increase of governmental expenditures closely followed the recuperation of the Brazilian economy in the second half of the century, which was due mainly to coffee; this increase also reflected greater governmental skill in allocating resources to itself. Governmental expenditures held a stable but increasing relation with foreign trade, and Table 8 below is an indication of the increasing relevance of this source of income for the central government:

TABLE 8
SOURCES OF PUBLIC REVENUE
  1831/2 - Total income: 11.1 million contos 1888 - Total income: 145.2 million contos
Imports 25.50% 61.00%
Interior 42.70% 10.00%
Exports 6.00% 28.00%
Source: Vera Maria Cândido Pereira, "A Sociedade no Período Colonial," (IUPERJ), unpublished paper, 1969.

Who participated in this huge and ever growing governmental structure? Income and property conditioned the exercise of political franchise throughout the Imperial period, and Faoro gives a detailed analysis of how the Charter of 1823 intentionally reduced the relevance of land ownership as the main criterion for voter eligibility(41). The total number of voters in 1872 was about 1,000,000, 9 per cent of the country's population.(42) This figure is only a very general indication of the limits reached by the political system, and Brazilian political folklore is full of stories about all kinds of irregularities and electoral frauds (the party in power always won the elections it called for and organized).

The first Assembly of 1823 is supposed to represent the more liberal) centrifugal tendencies in the country, as opposed to the centralizing tendency of the Imperial government. If this is so, one could expect that the Brazilian Congress would never become a fully institutionalized body; this is reflected, although indirectly, by data on the budgetary allocations to the legislature.
TABLE 9
COMPARATIVE GROWTH OF THE SIZE AND THE BUDGET OF THE BRAZILIAN CHAMBER OF REPRESENTATIVES - (1826-1858)
Period Deputies Budget (contos) contos per capita
1826-29 76 . . . .
1830-33 97 338 35
1834-37 106 . . . .
1838-41 98 271 28
1842 96 216 22
1845-47 98 280 29
1848 129 285 22
1853-58 123 228 18
Source: Olavo Brasil de Lima Jr., and Lucia Maria Gomes Klein, "Atores Politicos do Império," Dados, 7, 1970, p. 80.

The legislature's budget was part of the total budget of the Ministry of the Empire, being always much smaller than the expenses of the royal family, the main expense item. Governmental expenditures on the legislature never went above 1.6 per cent of the total budget, and tended to increase slightly from the first to the second half of the Empire: the average for 1837 to 1864 is 0.75 per cent and the average from 1864 to 1889 is 1.10 per cent. This slight relative increase did mean a real improvement, in terms of the general growth of the state, but it was not enough to compensate for the gradual absorption of the liberal opposition by the political establishment. If the party affiliation of the holders of executive and legislative power does not tell us who they represent, their regional origins may be a better indicator:
TABLE 10
PROVINCES OF ORIGIN OF THE CABINET MEMBERS DURING THE SECOND EMPIRE (PERCENTAGES)
  1840 to 1853 1857 to 1871 1873 to 1889
Prov. Region Prov. Region Prov. Region
Pará 1.75   1.59   .  
NORTH   1.75   1.59    
Maranhão . .   1.59   7.50  
Piauí     6.35   5.00  
Ceará . .   . .   2.50  
Paraíba . .   . .   2.50  
Pernambuco 12.28   14.28   10.00  
Alagoas . .   3.17   2.50  
NORTHEAST   12.28   25.39   30.00
Sergipe   . .   . .    
Bahia 26.32   34.92      
M. Gerais 19.30   7.94      
R. Janeiro 31.58   19.05      
EAST   77.20   61.91   6500
São Paulo 7.02   7.94   2.50  
Sta. Catarina 1.75   1.59      
São Pedro (Rio Grande)     1.59   2.5  
SOUTH   8.77   11.12   5
BRAZIL   100.%   100.%   100.%
( N )   57   63   40
Source: Data collected by Lucia Maria Gaspar Gomes, in O. Brasil de Lima Jr., and L. M. Gomes Klein, "Atores Políticos do Império", Dados 7, 1970, p. 81

The picture could hardly be more striking. While the center of economic and demographic gravity shifted to the South, the political basis of the government moved to the North. São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul were clearly under represented, and it is not by chance that these two states became the main Republican strongholds. The decline of Rio de Janeiro's participation probably reflects the progressive "Brazilianization" of the political elite, which tended to be recruited from the more traditional northern aristocracy. The political alienation of the emerging sources of wealth paralleled the resistance met by the army in striving for a more active political role. The end of the Empire occurred by means of a bloodless military coup, which opened the way for political decentralization and a closer correspondence between political power and socioeconomic development.


Notes

1. One standard textbook in English is E. Bradford Burns (1970). This book includes, in the appendices, a list of Brazilian chiefs of State since 1549 and a useful chronology of significant dates in Brazilian history, as well as a concise bibliographical essay.

2. Nestor Duarte (1939), p. 169: "São eles que governam, que legislam, são eles que justiçam, são eles que guerreiam contra as tribos bárbaras no interior, em defesa das populações que habitam as co-vizinhanças de suas casas fazendeiras, que são como os seus castelos feudais e as cortes dos seus senhorios." And afterwards: "Se atentarmos melhor, porém, veremos que o fenômeno a salientar aqui não é o desta descentralização, mas o da modificação da índole do próprio poder, que deixa de ser o da função política para ser o da função privada."

3. Nestor Duarte (1939), p. 118-19: "A grande paz do Império, o seu equilíbrio e o seu esteio estão neste senhoriato territorial que é a força econômica e o poder material do Estado ... É ele também a única parcela 'política' da população Brasileira."

4. Raymundo Faoro (1958).

5. The subject of Portuguese patrimonialism was briefly referred to in chapter ii. Celso Lafer has made an interesting content analysis of Os Lusíadas, a Portuguese epic about the period of the discoveries, shoving how it implied a value system which was much more related to the Renaissance spirit of experimentation and inner truth than to an imagery of medieval order, stability, and a hierarchy of well defined values. He has also called my attention to the importance of the Portuguese Inquisition as a mechanism of centralized and patrimonialist appropriation of resources, derived from a system which decentralized the creation of wealth. This role of the Portuguese Inquisition appears in Antonio José Saraiva (1909). Cf. Celso Lafer (1965).

6. Raymundo Faoro (1958), p. 53 to 65: "Decorria da diversa constituição do Estado, em uma e em outra nação. Portugal, na era seiscentista, já se havia consolidado em estado absoluto, governado por um estamento burocrático, centralizador. A Inglaterra, ao contrário, discrepando da orientação histórica continental, definiu-se numa transação capitalista industrial e feudal, repelindo a centralização burocrática". And afterwards: "nosso feudalismo era apenas uma figura de retórica" .

7. Burns (1970), p. 51. According to Burns, bandeirante is a term derived from the Portuguese word for flag, bandeira. In medieval Portugal, a bandeira signified a group of soldiers equal in size to a company and designated by a distinctive banner. The militia of São Paulo adopted the term and by extension it came to mean an expedition departing for the interior. Participants in such expeditions were called bandeirantes. [Burns (1970), p. 50]

8. Viana Moog (1954), p. 235: "Enquanto bandeirante e por causa das bandeiras, era o grande Estado de São Paulo um dos mais pobres e atrasados do Brasil. Somente depois e muito depois de efetivamente encerrado o ciclo das bandeiras é que São Paulo, com o advento do ciclo do café e de imigração de tipo pioneiro que em fins do século dezenove desembarcava anualmente no porto de Santos para mais de 100.000 imigrantes, passa para a vanguarda da Federação."

9. The words "São Paulo" refer to the whole province, and are used as shorthand when referring to earlier periods. The first settlement, São Vicente, was located on the coast in an area subject to periodic floods. After some time its population moved to Santos, which is today Brazil's most important port. In 1554, the Jesuits created their "Colégio de São Paulo" up in the hinterland, in an area known as Piratininga. The village and afterwards city of São Paulo developed in its vicinity. The expansion of São Paulo is an important item of Brazilian historiography, especially among historians of Paulista origin. The most important, even if old fashioned, of these is Afonso E. Taunay. Roberto Simonsen gives an excellent summary of the expansion of São Paulo in his classic História Econômica do Brasil [Simonsen (1962)]. An extensive account of the development of the city of São Paulo is Richard M. Morse (1970).

10. Simonsen (1962), p. 203 ff. The population estimates for the province in the text are from Brigadeiro J. J. Machado de Oliveira, Revista do Instituto Histórico de São Paulo, 1913, as quoted by Roberto Simonsen. Figures for the city itself are from Paul Singer (1968), pp. 19-20.

11. Caio Prado Jr. (1967), p. 68.

12. This interpretation is accepted as definitive by Paul Singer (1968), as well as in the chapter on "As Bandeiras na Expansão Geográfica do Brasil," in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1960), pp. 273-306.

13. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1966). For the creation of Paulista towns in Minas Gerais and the reflex to São Paulo after the decline of gold, see Mário Leite (1961), which lists about sixty towns in Minas Gerais, which were founded by Paulistas.

14. Afonso E. de Taunay (1924): "A cidade de São Paulo é tributária, não súdita do Rei de Portugal. Situada a dez léguas da costa, teve como origem uma corja de bandidos de todas as nações que pouco a pouco ali formou uma grande cidade e uma espécie de República cuja lei é, sobretudo, não reconhecer Governador nenhum." It is important to notice that, during and after the period of unification between the Spanish and Portuguese Crowns, the autonomy of São Paulo was established within a context of great autonomy of the local city councils regarding the Iberian powers. C. R. Boxer describes in detail the Rio Revolt of 1660 against its Captain General, Salvador de Sá, during a period in which the authority of the Bragança crown was still unstable, that is, after the restoration in 1640. The Brazilian revolt against the Dutch occupants in the Northeast, which will be discussed below, was also mostly a local enterprise, without any support or encouragement from the Braganças. Only in 1661, after a peace treaty was signed between Holland and Portugal, did the authority of the Portuguese Crown begin to impose itself. Cf. C. R. Boxer (1952). (I am indebted to Eulália Maria Lahmeyer Lobo for calling my attention to this point.)

15. For a comprehensive study of Jesuit activities in southern South America and their conflicts with the Paulistas, cf. Magnus Mörner (1953). A detailed account of the Company of Jesus in Brazil is given in a monumental work by Serafim Leite (1938- 1950). The conflict between the Jesuits and the Portuguese was widespread, and came to a climax in 1759 when they were finally expelled from Brazil, during the administration of the Marquis of Pombal. For greater details cf. Dauril Alden (1969). A reference to the conflicts with the Jesuits in Northern Brazil can be found in Mathias C. Kienen (1954).

16. The territorial jurisdiction of São Paulo reached its peak in 1709, when the Governor of Rio de Janeiro, Antonio de Albuquerque, was designated an area which included Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, Paraná, Santa Catarina and part of Rio Grande do Sul. Roberto Simonsen calls our attention to this, stating that "Os primeiros governadores paulistas viram-se forçados a fixar suas residências em Vila da Nossa Senhora do Carmo, hoje Mariana, para ficarem mais próximos a zona de mineração." The first governors of São Paulo were forced to establish their residences in Vila da Nossa Senhora do Carmo, which is today Mariana, so they could be near the mining zone. The fact is, however, that Antonio de Albuquerque's mission was to resolve the conflict and ultimately to reduce the Paulista's control of the area. Interpretations of the role and administrative authority of Antonio de Albuquerque vary. Pedro Calmon, for one, considers 1709 the year during which Minas Gerais and São Paulo separated. Simonsen' s version is supported by Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and for them, the separation only became effective in 1720. Cf. Roberto Simonsen (1962), p. 229; Pedro Calmon (1959); Diogo de Vasconcellos (1948); and Buarque de Holanda (1960), p.306.

17. Diogo de Vasconcellos (1948), p. 29: "Acima dos Paulistas, gozavam da vantagem de serem conhecidos e amparados pelos compatriotas opulentos das praças marítimas, que lhes forneciam a crédito instrumentos e escravos africanos, obreiros estes únicos, que podiam suportar as fadigas medonhas como foi a das minas." A system of retrieving gold in the river beds had to be established almost immediately, as the more exposed deposits were quickly exhausted. This new system required skill, capital and Negro slaves, which the Paulistas lacked (at that time the enslavement of the Indian native had long been over). Cf. also C. Boxer (1962).

18. Pedro Calmon (1959), p. 970: "O obrigaram a aceitar o governo delas (Minas), e o mando do exército que se formou contra aqueles povos (paulistas); e pelo castigo das armas os reduziu à obediência das leis de Sua Majestade e de suas Reais Ordens."

19. J. Soares de Melo (1929) as quoted by Calmon (1959), p. 968: "Não ser fiel ao seu rei pois foi um dos que resistiu e impugnou o contrato das carnes nestas Minas."

20. An important example of this conflict was the fight of the merchant guilds, the Mesa do Bem Comum dos Mercadores, against the trading monopoly which had been given to the General Company of Commerce by the Portuguese: "Na luta contra a Companhia que se reflete nas consultas do Conselho Ultramarino observa-se que a Companhia do Comércio dá vantagens aos navios estrangeiros de Gênova, Hamburgo e Inglaterra que eram contratados para a armada e tinham preferência no transporte dos gêneros coloniais na viagem de retorno, percebendo fretes exagerados e postergando as caravelas de capitalistas portugueses que só podiam carregar depois das embarcações de maior porte'. (In the struggle against the Company, which is reflected in the consultations to the Conselho Ultramarino, one can see that the Company of Commerce gives preference to foreign ships from Genoa, Hamburg and England. These ships were contracted for the navy and received preferential treatment when transporting colonial goods on their return trips. They received exaggerated freight fares whereas the caravelas of the Portuguese capitalists were only permitted to load after the bigger boats had done so.) Eulália Maria Lahmeyer Lobo (1965).

21. Cf. Isaías Golgher (1956) and the comments by Paula Beiguelman (1958), and Francisco Iglésias (1957).

22. For the description of this meeting cf. Pedro Calmon (1959), pp. 972-73.

23. Celso Furtado (1968).

24. Noel Deer (1949) p. 453, as quoted by Furtado.

25. The literature on the Dutch presence in Brazil is extensive; the best text in English is C. R. Boxer (1957).

26. A detailed, anthropological study of the sugar aristocracy is found in Gilberto Freyre's classic Masters and Slaves. It is important to note that the conversion of cane into sugar was carried on not in the plantations but in the sugar mills, which could process the production of several plantations. The highest position in the sugar economy was thus occupied by the owner of the sugar mill ("Senhor de Engenho"), an activity which demanded capital and led to some concentration of population and manpower. In other words, the sugar aristocracy was not completely rural and was based on control of the land. The city of Olinda was not a simple urban outgrowth of the sugar economy, however. As Nelson Werneck Sodré summarizes it, "Olinda, ao cair nas mãos dos Holandeses (em 1630), possuía cerca de 2 mil moradores. Os bens religiosos, na cidade, eram consideráveis. Contava com cerca de centena e meia de clérigos, um colégio Jesuíta, um convento beneditino, um carmelita, duas igrejas e cinco ermidas. Eram numerosos - a crônica refere duzentos - os comerciantes abastados... " (Olinda had approximately two thousand residents when it fell into Dutch hands in 1630. Religious properties in the city were considerable. The orders had about 150 clergymen, a Jesuit school, a Benedictine and a Carmelite convent, two churches and five hermitages. Rich tradesmen were numerous; according to documents of the time, there were about 200... ). [N. W. Sodré, 1944)]

27. Pe. Antonio Gonçalves Leitão, as quoted by Mário Melo (1941): "Em poder destes forasteiros ou Mascates residia todo o comércio; eles portanto eram os que supriam os engenhos, e também os únicos que recebiam as caixas de açúcar. No fim das safras cada Senhor de Engenho devia uma soma considerável ao Mascate que tinha suprido, e então este inflexível credor instantaneamente o apertava... Desta sorte em poucos anos tornaram-se os Mascates grossos capitalistas e em vez de seguirern as pisadas dos primeiros que para Pernambuco vieram (que só do comercio cuidavam) intrometeram-se nos negócios públicos, introduziram-se nos Palácio dos governadores, e finalmente predispuseram-se para levarem a efeito o seu intento, isto é, aniquilar a Nobreza do País." Mário Melo takes sides with the local aristocracy against the Portuguese newcomers. There is at least one Portuguese historian who takes sides with the Portuguese, but his view of the situation is the same: "Nas duas grandes comoções por que passou Pernambuco, em 1654 e 1710, a nobreza sempre procedeu por motivos subalternos e para ela até desprimorosos sendo em ambos o principal não pagar aos credores." (During the two big commotions experienced by Pernambuco in 1654 and 1710, the nobility always proceeded according to questionable and even dishonorable motives, of which the most important was not to pay debts [Vicente Ferrer (1914), p. 44]

28. Celso Furtado links the decadence of the sugar economy in Brazil with the beginning of the sugar industry in the Caribbean, leading to an expansion of the world production and a decline of international prices. Cf. Celso Furtado (1959), chapter VI.

29. See Caio Prado Jr. (1967), for an analysis of the expansion of the cattle-raising economy in Brazil.

30. Joseph Love (1971), p. 8: "In 1680... the Portuguese took a bold step to extend their New World empire southward, pushing down to the eastern bank of the River Plate to found Holanda do Sacramento, which they defiantly planted across the estuary from Buenos Aires. For the next 150 years the territory between Laguna and the mouth of the Plate was the scene of continual warfare as first Spain and Portugal, and later Argentina and Brazil, fought over the limits of their domains. Since Colônia staked out the southernmost limit of Portugal's claim, it had to be defended... Colônia was destroyed four times by the Spaniards and rebuilt three times by the Portuguese; with the Treaty of San Ildefonso in 1777, it definitively passed over to Spanish hands." A detailed account of the conflicts on the southern border can be found in Alcides Lima (1935).

31. Fernando Henrique Cardoso (1962), p. 85: "Ao lado da tensão constante em que viviam as populações sulinas em face das guerras, guerrilhas e acordos infindáveis, que por si só seriam suficientes para tornar mais vigorosa a pressão da ordem militar sobre a ordem civil, as condições da luta naquelas fronteiras... tornavam a própria ordem militar não diria mais rígida porém mais dependente, para a sua preservação, da existência de pessoas com qualidades e incentivos (como a coragem pessoal e a ousadia diante do inimigo) que as tornavam, ao mesmo tempo, pouco aptas para a submissão aos regulamentos e à rotina."

32. Cardoso (1962), p. 107 ff., describes the relationships between the colonial administration and private power in Rio Grande do Sul in terms of patrimonial rule.

33. Alcides Lima (1935), p. 108: "Grande parte deste mau resultado econômico era devido sobretudo à péssima administração governamental, à centralização da metrópole, e aos excessivos gastos que se faziam no sustento do exército."

34. Love (1971), p. 15.

35. A year by year account on the formation of Rio de Janeiro is Vivaldo Coaracy (1965).

36. V. Coaracy gives several references to the role of Rio de Janeiro in the maintenance of the Colônia de Sacramento. In 1680 the new governor of Rio de Janeiro, Manuel Lobo, was given the assignment of establishing the Colônia with local resources at the borders of the River Plate. Six years later, a new governor, João Furtado de Mendonça, "representou ato soberano sobre Os pesados encargos que para a população eram constituídos pelos constantes auxílios enviados à Colônia do Sacramento, desfalcando a praça de mantimentos e de elementos da guarnição." (Complained to the King about the heavy burdens which the continuous supplies sent to the Colônia de Sacramento represented for the population: it deprived the local market of supplies and the local garrison of manpower) . According to the author, "Ainda por muitos anos foi mantida a política de conservar e sustentar a Colônia do Sacramento exclusivamente com os recursos fornecidos pelo Rio de Janeiro. É verdade que fora a Câmara do Rio quem, com o objetivo de fomentar o comércio com o Prata..., havia insistido anteriormente pela fundação da Colônia, que tão caro lhe havia de custar, sem produzir os resultados esperados. " (The policy of supplying and supporting the Colônia de Sacramento exclusively with resources from Rio de Janeiro was carried on for still many years. It is true that it was the Chamber of Commerce of Rio de Janeiro which had previously insisted on the founding of the colony, as a way of boosting the trade with the Rio de la Plata area; but this was to cost them dearly, without producing the expected results). [V. Coaracy (1965), p. 212-13.]

37. Economic stagnation was a characteristic more of the first than of the second half of the century. The lowest period occurred during the Napoleonic wars, but, in the second half of the century, a new product, coffee, had already entered an expanding international market.

38. See note 41 below.

39. A brief account of the creation of the Brazilian army is given by Euripides Simões de Paiva, "A organização do Exército Brasileiro," in Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (1960), p. 265-77. A detailed account of the creation of the Brazilian navy is given by Prado Maia (1965) who shows its Portuguese origins. For military effective in the nineteenth century, see the data collected by Luis Werneck (n.d.) and by Olavo Brasil de Lima Júnior (1970). The national army was never in complete harmony with the civilian political elite, who sought to check its power with the creation of the National Guard in the nineteenth century, and the maintenance of a military police in the states during the Old Republic and even afterwards. This side story obviously has deep implications for the understanding of civilian - military relationships in Brazil since the Regency period.

40. Data for the equivalence between Brazilian and British currency can be found in Oliver Onody (1960).

41. Raymundo Faoro (1958), pp. 141 ff.

42. Maria Antonieta de A. G. Parahyba (1970).