Portuguese Empire in Brazil – Portuguese Royal Family in Brazil

1. introduction

We have seen the influence of revolutionary ideas on the main liberation movements in Portuguese America.

We have also studied certain events linked to the arrival of the Court in Brazil.

In this chapter, we will look at the period during which Dom Joao VI stayed in Rio de Janeiro, the capital of the Portuguese Empire in the Tropics.

The period from 1808 to 1821 was marked by a series of socio-cultural transformations.

In general, it was a period of accelerated social and urban development.

The capital of the empire will be the main focus of our study from now on, as it was in Rio de Janeiro that the royal family settled and made the most significant changes to the kingdom.

2.

2. Transfer of the capital from Lisbon to Brazil

The transfer of the Brazilian capital from Salvador to Rio de Janeiro was a strategic military decision made by the Secretary of State, the Marquis of Pombal.

In 1763, Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, who held the titles of Count of Oeiras and Marquis of Pombal, was given the mission of administering the Portuguese state by Dom José I (successor to Dom João V and predecessor of Dom Maria and Dom João VI).

When the Marquis of Pombal formed Dom José I’s cabinet in 1750, he sought to strengthen the state, on whose solidity the functioning of mercantilism depended, and invested in monarchical absolutism as a way for Portugal to survive as an independent nation. […] In the colony, the Pombaline period was characterised by great repression, typical of mercantilism, but also by a concern for administrative performance.

By 1750, Portugal was lagging behind England and France.

Nevertheless, Pombal’s aim was to maintain Portugal’s colonial possessions and limit the English presence in Brazil.

The Marquis of Pombal’s administrative reforms included the creation of the following companies

• Companhia Geral do Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão – 1755
• General Company of Pernambuco and Paraíba – 1759

According to Boris Fausto (2007, p. 110):

The first company aimed to develop the northern region by offering attractive prices for goods produced there and consumed in Europe, such as cocoa, cloves, cinnamon, cotton and rice, which were transported exclusively on the company’s ships.

It also introduced black slaves, most of whom were re-exported to the mines of Mato Grosso, given the poverty of the region.

The second company sought to reactivate the Northeast along the same lines.

Despite his attempts to rebuild the Portuguese Empire, Pombal found it difficult to cope with the economic crisis caused by the fall in the price of sugar, due to the aforementioned competition from Spain, and the reduction in the amount of gold extracted from the mines in the interior.

The most controversial of Pombal’s policies was the expulsion of the Jesuits from Portugal and its colonies.

Pombal wanted to integrate the Indians into Portuguese civilisation and prevent the development of the Society of Jesus in the colonies.

In order to “solve the educational problems caused by the expulsion of the Jesuits, the Portuguese Crown took measures.

A special tax – the literary subsidy – was created to support state-sponsored education”.

Pombal thus reformed education in Portugal and Brazil, removing the right of the Jesuits to teach. As a result of Pombal’s reforms, the Olinda Seminary was founded in Pernambuco – an institution specialising in science and mathematics.

Teaching then became the responsibility of the state, as we can see from the following document:

Statutes to be observed by the Masters ofthe Boys’ Schools in this captaincy of São Paulo, 1768..

1. That there shall be two masters in this city and one in each of the neighbouring cities, nominated by the respective city councils and approved by the General, and that they shall not be able to exercise their ministry without such approval and without taking a provision or licence from him.
2. That all the boys they admit shall be subject to the order of the same general, and shall not be allowed to go to another school without the same order, and this so that the masters may chastise them freely without fear of their parents taking them away for this or other frivolous reasons that are commonly practised, and if they wish to take them away for any other employment, they shall give bail to produce within a certain time a certificate of the profession or trade in which they have been employed.
3. That no boy shall proceed to study the Latin language without first obtaining the same licence, which shall be given with information from the teacher as to their ability, to know if they are well instructed in reading, writing, arithmetic, and good manners, so that they may not proceed to other higher studies without these first and most necessary foundations of the Christian religion and civil duties.

SOURCE: Document taken from the book by: DEL PRIORE, Mary. The Golden Book Of Brazilian History. Rio de Janeiro: Ediouro, 2001, pp. 120-121.

In this sense, the Marquis of Pombal represented the Portuguese state itself. Or rather, he was the main representative of a specific social group, the Portuguese bourgeoisie.

A social group that demanded political and educational reforms and, above all, commercial advantages that were suspended with the opening of the Brazilian ports.

Political centralisation was one of the main actions of the Pombaline government.

This centralisation was characterised by the concentration of power in one place.

In Portugal, orders were issued from Lisbon, whereas in Brazil they had to be directed from Rio de Janeiro.

It should be remembered that Rio de Janeiro had ports closer to the Minas Gerais region, which was beginning to overtake the port of Salvador in terms of the volume of goods traded.

The location of the port also meant that the Crown had more effective control over the mining region.

In this sense, the new capital of the empire came to enjoy political and economic hegemony.

The market, in turn, began to be influenced by a social class of liberal professionals linked to trade, who took advantage of the new conditions enjoyed by the city of Luminense.

3. Restructuring of Rio de Janeiro

The presence of King João VI and the Portuguese Court led to a series of socio-cultural transformations in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

In his book “Sobrados e Mucambos”, Gilberto Freyre gives us an impressionistic picture of the Prince Regent, while at the same time highlighting the urban innovations of the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarve.

Why not read an extract from this important work on Brazil’s colonial past?

The presence in Rio de Janeiro of a prince with the powers of a king; a bourgeois prince, a slob, his gestures soft, his fingers almost always honeyed with chicken sauce, but wearing the crown; He brings the queen, the court, the nobles to kiss his greasy but wise hand, soldiers to parade in front of his palace on festive days, foreign ministers, physicists, conductors to play him church music, imperial palm trees in whose shade the first colleges, the first library, the first bank grew; the mere presence of a monarch in a country as republican as Brazil, with its rocks of disobedience, its plantation lords, its miners and its paulistas, who disobeyed the distant king, who disrespected, imprisoned and even expelled representatives of His Majesty (like the lords of Pernambuco with the Xumbergas); The mere presence of a monarch in a country so anti-monarchical in its tendencies towards regional and even feudal autonomies changed the isionomy of colonial society; it altered its most characteristic features (FREYRE, 2002, p. 7). 723)

Among the significant changes in Rio’s urban landscape, we highlight the presence of official press organs (Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro and Golden Age of Brazil); the Royal Theatre of São João; as well as libraries, museums and academies.

At that time, the temporary seat of the Empire was a real cultural explosion.

Schools were founded: for medicine, for the navy, for war and for commerce; a Royal Press, which had always been denied to us; in 1814, a bookshop that was to become the nucleus of our National Library; the Museum, the Botanical Gardens.

A genuine euphoria, as John Mawe tells us, gripped the colony.

Everything that had been denied us was being created, everything that we lacked, especially the tools, the instruments capable of generating progress in the field of intellectual culture.

It was as if Brazil had awoken from a long sleep and was on its way to liberation, a sketch of a university that the Prince Regent wanted to entrust to José Bonifácio.

What the colony hadn’t achieved in three centuries, it did in less than a decade.

This intense cultural movement stimulated scientific studies of Brazilian flora and fauna.

To discover the potential of Brazilian nature, foreign naturalists were allowed to study the Portuguese part of the new continent.

These scientists made a real effort to map the colony’s vegetation, animals, geography and different ethnic groups.

4. The scientific and artistic spirit

At the beginning of the 19th century, the Western world began to learn about Brazil’s flora, fauna and geography.

King João’s government encouraged the arrival of European scientists and artists, who planted the first seeds of academic development throughout the country.

The foreign naturalists sought to record the animal and plant species of the Brazilian forests, and to map the landscape of the countryside and the city through painting and drawing.

Likewise, the habits of the people, or rather the different regional cultures, were recorded by the travelling scientists (what we call ethnographic records).

Among the naturalists, Carlo Frederico Filipe von Martius, a physician and botanist, João Batista von Spix, a zoologist, and Jorge Henrique von Langsdorff stood out.

The English mineralogist John Mawe and the French naturalist Saint-Hilaire also came to Brazil.

In 1816, the French Artistic Mission arrived in Rio de Janeiro.

The architect Montigny, who designed the city’s building projects, and the painters Taunay and Debret were part of the mission.

The latter even painted members of the Portuguese royal family.

In the decades before photography, there was no way of recording plants, animals and landscapes other than by drawing or painting.

For this reason, naturalists were usually expert draughtsmen or were accompanied by specialist draughtsmen and painters […] Debret spent 15 years among our people, painting and drawing.

In addition to his work at the Academy, he portrayed various members of the royal and imperial family, painted historical scenes and made numerous studies and sketches, some of which he used for his work Voyage Pitoresque et Historique au Brésil […].

This work, published between 1834 and 1839, is the result of his observations and studies of Brazilian life and history, with the first volume devoted to the indigenous population and the last two to everyday life, street scenes and historical scenes.

The writings and images produced by these foreign travellers, artists and naturalists appear as true historical documents. Through them, we can learn more about that period.

However, these foreign representations of Rio de Janeiro and other Brazilian regions are full of prejudices about the population, customs and colonial urban structure.

Brazil was generally seen as an archaic and backward country. However, the lush tropical vegetation was the main highlight of these images, representations of Brazil.

5. Habits of the Portuguese Court

In addition to the construction of a new architectural structure and the development of the sciences and arts, Rio de Janeiro’s urban space served as a stage for noble courtiers and members of the royal family.

The city’s streets became a stage for the public display of courtly customs.

Luxurious carriages and dress contrasted with the dirty, narrow streets of a city with a majority Afro-descendant population.

The Luso-Brazilian elite adopted new customs, less from Portugal and more from France and England.

The English brought a taste for living in isolated, well-divided and more hygienic houses, far from the city centre; for products of higher quality: crystal and glass, crockery and porcelain, iron pots and pans.

There was also a change in the way people ate, with the use of forks and knives, and the use of new medicines.

Despite the military conflicts between the Portuguese and the French, it was France that dictated fashion in Rio.

To have ‘good taste’ in those days meant having a house decorated with French wallpaper and English furniture.

Women had to know how to behave in public with the utmost discretion and be able to read and write.

They had to know how to dance at a ball.

A whole set of rules of behaviour served as a symbolic form of differentiation between the elite and the poor, if not the slaves. Etiquette was a visual way of marking social and cultural differences.

It wasn’t long before the urban middle classes began to imitate courtly customs. Among the cultural practices adopted from the aristocracy are the public walk in the gardens, the cult of the garden, the admiration of nature and outdoor leisure.

6. The emergence of a middle class

Economic development, fuelled by mining in the 18th century and the presence of the Court in Brazil, gave colonial society a more urban character.

In this sense, new urban groups appeared, and with them came a greater professional diversification of Brazilian society.

Until then, Brazilian society had been mainly divided between a rural aristocracy that owned large estates, a middle class of free workers (farmers, artisans, merchants, etc.) and slaves.

During the mining era, however, there was a development of trade and services that led to the growth of an urban middle class made up of civil servants, the military, artisans, liberal professionals, literati and merchants.

In turn, the cities that housed this middle class underwent a process of transformation.

City merchants invested in a wide range of businesses: slaves, dry goods, insurance, the postal system and education.

Others became bankers. There were also merchants who travelled from town to town selling their wares.

In addition to the various forms of itinerant trade, urbanisation had increased the size of the stationary market. This was divided into shops and sales.

The first, large ones, were in the town centres, the second, smaller ones, on the outskirts.

Both sold dry goods and manufactured products such as cloth and tools, as well as food and drink.

Inventories show, for example, that in one of these shops the buyer would find products such as incense, jam, cinnamon, barrels of cachaça, bacon and salt for pots, soap and jars of vinegar.

Their owners financed the activities of even smaller merchants who brought them goods from distant ports, and employed clerks, bookkeepers and accountants to keep track of collections and stocks.

Immigrants seeking new opportunities in the “tropical eldorado” were the main actors in this socio-cultural diversification.

They were tailors, coopers, carapins (naval carpenters), caulkers, silversmiths, goldsmiths and shoemakers. The women were embroiderers, seamstresses, hatters and feather makers.

However, the urban development and all the cultural colour contrasted with the social differences between free and slave, rich and poor.

The difference between the country and the city began to emerge, between the urban bourgeoisie, identified with the values of civilisation, and the humble peasant, associated with a backward and ignorant country.

7. In this chapter you have seen

• The centralising measures adopted by the Marquis of Pombal in Brazil to strengthen the administrative structure of the colony.
• The main urban and social transformations carried out in the capital of the Portuguese Empire in the Tropics.
• The encouragement of the creation of research and secular educational institutions, and the financing of scientific and artistic expeditions to Brazil to learn about its nature and culture.
• The customs of the court as a symbolic differentiation of power.
• The emergence of an urban middle class as a result of the development and diversification of colonial society.

See the following periods in the history of colonial Brazil:

1. Brazilian Independence – Breakdown of colonial ties in Brazil
2. Portuguese Empire in Brazil – Portuguese royal family in Brazil
3. Transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil
4. Foundation of the city of São Paulo and the Bandeirantes
5. Transition from colonial to imperial Brazil
6. Colonial sugar mills in Brazil
7. Monoculture, slave labour and latifundia in colonial Brazil
8. The establishment of the General Government in Brazil and the founding of Salvador
9. Portuguese maritime expansion and the conquest of Brazil
10. Occupation of the African coast, the Atlantic islands and the voyage of Vasco da Gama
11. Pedro Álvares Cabral’s expedition and the conquest of Brazil
12. Pre-colonial Brazil – The forgotten years
13. Establishment of the Portuguese Colony in Brazil
14. Periods in the history of colonial Brazil
15. Historical periods of Brazil

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