1500-1549 Brazil Dutch
1624-1661







Brazil, 1549-1630



In 1549, the Portuguese crown took the administration of Brazil in it's own hands, dispatching the first royal governor, Tome de Sousa. The city of Salvador de Bahia was founded, the capital of the colony (until 1763) and the seat of a newly established Diocesis in 1552.
The Portuguese earlier had established sugar plantations on Madeira. Now sugar cane was introduced in Brazil. Soon, African slaves were imported to work the labour-intensive plantations. Another crop grown on plantations was tobacco.
The colony experienced low-scale border wars with the Amerindian tribes. Early attempts to convert the Amerindians to christianity and convince them to give up polygamy and cannibalism met with little success; only the Jesuits (since 1549) did make progress.
Brazil's export-oriented plantation economy growing, found the market of Lisbon too limited; Flanders was a much more attractive market. In 1571, King Sebastiao made Brazilian trade with non-Protuguese ships illegal. With the settlement in Brazil becoming economically profitable, immigration intensified and further settlements along the coast were founded, such as Cabo Frio 1615, Belem 1616. The quest for rain forest products such as Brazilwood and the lack of fertile soil on the coast (all had been handed out) lead to a movement penetrating inland.
A French settlement at Guanabara Bay, established in 1555 and inhabited by both Catholics and Huguenots, was taken in 1567 (an earlier expedition in 1560 had failed) by an expedition lead by Mem de Sa, who founded Rio de Janeiro that year. Sao Paulo had been founded by Jesuits in 1554.
An attempt in 1570 by Jesuit officials, with royal support, to banish the enslavement of Amerindians was widely ignored, and resulted in the settlers becoming suspicious of the Jesuits, a suspicion which would last for centuries. While no branch of the Inquisition was established in Brazil, in 1580 the Bishop of Bahia was given inquisitorial powers.
In 1580, Portugal was united with Spain in Dynastic Union. Although the country remained to have a separate administration and it's colonial empire remained Portuguese, the event was to hamper the development of the colonies and draw them into the European wars of the Habsburg Dynasty. Especially, the (indirect) trade with Flanders, Europe's most important market, suffered.
In 1600, Brazil's population was estimated at 57,000, of whom 25,000 whites, 18,000 Amerindians and 14,000 negroes (Worcester p.33).
A second attempt by the French to settle in Guanabara Bay (near Rio) 1612-1615 was defeated.

Brazil became a diversified colony. The region stretching from Salvador de Bahia to Pernambuco was sugar plantation country; the sugar plantations, for a number of reasons, were close to the coast; the society was Portuguese in language and, to a certain degree, in lifestyle, the centers of society urban in outlook. A number of other coastal settlements, such as Rio de Janeiro, retained their Portuguese character, despite lacking the prosperity provided by the sugar plantations. Then there was Sao Paulo, the center of a cattle herding society. The business was not profitable enough to allow for the import of African slaves; the Paulista society drew more on the (usually forced) employment of Amerindians as vaqueiros (Brazilian cowboys); Portuguese settlers often married Amerindian women. It was the Paulistas which opened up Brazil's interior, the Paulista bandeirantes were cattle herders, slave raiders and traders, discoverers, pioneers and prospectors. Their contact to the Portuguese motherland was limited; the language of Paulista society, of the Brazilian interior was Lingua Geral, an adaptation of the Tupi language; it was this language the Jesuits used to teach the Amerindians christianity.






EXTERNAL
FILES 		Articles from infoplease : Brazil
DOCUMENTS
REFERENCE Boris Fausto, A Concise History of Brazil, Cambridge Concise Histories, 1999
Donald E. Worcester, Brazil, from Colony to World Power, NY : Scribner 1973
John Charles Chasteen, Born in Blood and Fire. A Concise History of Latin America, N.Y. : W.W. Norton 2002



This page is part of World History at KMLA
First posted in 2000, last revised on October 30th 2005

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