Relief gave way to uncertainty shortly after arriving in Salvador, however. At 11 a.m. on January 22, 1808, the ships weighed anchor in the shoals—near where today the Mercado Modelo and the Lacerda Elevator stand—and found . . . not a soul in sight. It was as if Bahia was ignoring the arrival of the royal family. For the passengers and crew, this lack of any kind of response came as a great surprise. After all, news of their voyage had arrived in Brazil two weeks earlier, brought by different sources. On January 14, the brig Flyer—a small sailing vessel much faster than heavy transport ships—entered the port of Rio de Janeiro with the mission of informing the viceroy that the prince regent was approaching. Shortly thereafter, the frigate Medusa, battered by the storms around Madeira, docked in Recife with three of João’s ministers aboard. Another ship, the Martim de Freitas, arrived on the 10th, also on the Northeast coast. Some ships of the royal retinue itself, carrying two of Prince João’s aunts and two of his daughters, landed in Rio on the 17th. During its stopover in Cape Verde, the frigate Minerva had already informed this group, part of the fleet that left Lisbon on November 29, that the prince had decided to sail for Bahia.
In those days, the Brazilian coast made use of a paltry communication network based on seaside forts, villages, and lighthouses to transmit urgent information. An integral part of the defense system of the colony, it allowed governors and captains general from diverse provinces to alert their neighbors of pirate attacks, invasions, rebellions, or other threats to Portuguese-owned territory. Given certain specific information, each of these posts had the responsibility of retransmitting it to its next neighbor as fast as possible. What news could be more important than the arrival of the monarchy?
But even breaking news traveled slowly in this glorified mode of mouth-to-mouth communication. It took weeks to traverse the thousands of miles of coastline.5 Even if the authorities of Salvador had known that the royal court was coming to Brazil, the city still wouldn’t have had time to prepare a grand reception properly.
The collective anxiety dissipated, though, when Governor João de Saldanha da Gama, count of Ponte, arrived to greet Dom João.
“Are the locals not on their way to greet me?” asked the surprised prince regent.
“Sir,” said the governor, “the entire city did not come immediately because I specified that nobody should approach until I received orders from Your Royal Highness.”
“Let the people come as they please,” the prince replied, “since they want to see me.”6
After the governor came the archbishop, José da Santa Escolastica, to greet Prince João. But no festivities took place that day. The great reception feast would wait another day. Exhausted by the ocean crossing, the royal family slept one last night aboard the ships, surrounded by the calm waters of the Bay of All Saints and under the protection of the cannons of Fort Gamboa that presided over the entrance to the city.7
The prince disembarked on the morning of January 23.8 This time, multitudes swarmed the docks of the bay. Cannon shots and salutations mixed with the incessant tolling of bells in the numerous churches of the Bahian capital. After reaching solid ground, the royal family entered the carriages waiting for them and proceeded along the Rua da Preguiça and the Ladeira da Gameleira until reaching the Largo do Teatro (today, Castro Alves Square). There, representatives of the City Council welcomed the prince and his retinue and invited them to continue on foot, under a purple canopy, to the Sé Church, where the archbishop performed a Te Deum Laudamus in gratitude for the success of the ocean crossing. Along the way, rows of soldiers saluted, while the bells of every church continued to chime. At night, the royal party met at the governor’s palace. There followed an entire week of music, dance, performances in the streets, and extended ceremonies of hand-kissing, in which the prince regent patiently received endless queues of subjects. Farmers, merchants, millers, priests, public servants, soldiers—all had come to pay homage to the sovereign.
Its churches sparkling with gold and baroque carvings, white houses spread across the hillsides, and imposing mansions cresting the mountains, Salvador, one of the most beautiful cities of the Portuguese empire, dazzled visitors from abroad, as we can see from this description by one Maria Graham, who arrived on October 17, 1821:
This morning, at day-break, my eyes opened on one of the finest scenes they ever beheld. A city, magnificent in appearance from the sea, is placed along the ridge and on the declivity of a very high and steep hill: the richest vegetation breaks through the white houses at intervals, and beyond the city, reaches along to the outer point of land on which the picturesque church and convent of Sant Antonio da Barre is placed. Here and there the bright red soil shows itself in harmony with the tiling of the houses. The tracery of forts, the bustle of shipping, hills melting in the distance, and the very form of the bay, with its promontories and islands, altogether finish this charming picture; then the fresh sea-breeze gives spirit to enjoy it, notwithstanding its tropical climate.9
Despite its bustling port and its political and economic importance, Salvador remained a relatively small city of about 46,000 inhabitants, slightly smaller than Rio de Janeiro, which had 60,000 at the time.10 Salvador’s location—elevated terrain sloping down to the sea—matched Lisbon and Porto in Portugal, Luanda in Angola, Macau in China, and Rio de Janeiro and Olinda in Brazil.11 All followed the same model: churches, convents, public buildings, and residences of wealthy families all took their place in the high part of the city. In the low part, on a strip near the sea, lay the commercial quarter with its warehouses, stores, workshops, and the wharves of the port. “There is nothing in the low city but merchants,” described the painter Johann Moritz Rugendas, who visited Salvador some years earlier. “The rich, and notably foreigners, also have country homes and vast gardens on the heights, outside the city limits. The slave market, the stock exchange, the traders’ shops, the arsenal, and the workshops of maritime construction remain in the lower city.”12
Ramps, paths, and narrow alleys connected these two sectors but made wheeled transport between them largely impossible. For this reason, city planners installed a great reel to hoist heavy merchandise up the hills. A century and a half later, the electric-powered Lacerda Elevator replaced this fragile system of mechanical tension and remains one of the postcard icons of the Bahian capital. Slaves and pack animals also transported merchandise, ascending and descending the ramps in long, slow-moving queues. The same slaves also carried visitors and distinguished residents up and down the hill in sedans and chairs suspended from hitching-posts.13
The churches, almost all constructed between 1650 and 1750, before the transfer of the colonial capital to Rio de Janeiro, decorated the landscape and enchanted visitors from abroad. Mansions in the upper city commonly had two stories, with primary residences, including rooms with verandas, parlors, and dining rooms, on the second floor. Ground floor spaces housed slaves and stored heavy merchandise.14 By and large, Salvador represented a “typical Portuguese city, medieval in its lack of planning and in its haphazard growth, forming a strong contrast to the methodically laid out Spanish-American towns,” according to English historian Charles Boxer.15
The dazzling landscape, however, gave way to disappointment when visitors entered the city. Maria Graham found everything dirty and falling apart. “The street into which we proceeded through the arsenal gate, forms, at this place, the breadth of the whole lower town of Bahia, and is, without any exception, the filthiest place I ever was in,” she observed.
It is extremely narrow, yet all the working artificers bring their benches, and tools into the street: in the interstices between them, along the walls, are fruit-sellers, venders of sausages, black-puddings, fried fish, oil and sugar cakes, negroes plaiting hats or mats, caderas, (a kind of sedan chair) with their bearers, dogs, pigs, and poultry, without partition or distinction; and as the gutter runs in the middle of the street, every thing is thrown there from the different stall
s, as well as from the windows and there the animals live and feed! 16
Her negative impression continued inside the city’s homes.
For the most part, they are disgustingly dirty. The lower story usually consists of cells for the slaves, stabling, etc.; the staircases are narrow and dark and, at more than one house, we waited in a passage while the servants ran to open the doors and windows of the sitting-rooms, and to call their mistresses, who were enjoying their undress in their own apartments. When they appeared, I could scarcely believe that one half were gentlewomen. As they wear neither stay nor bodice, the figure becomes almost indecently slovenly.17
Already in those days, the city had a reputation for processions and religious festivals that mixed rituals both sacred and profane. A traveler in 1718 observed the viceroy dancing around in front of the high altar, in honor of Saint Gonçalo do Amarante. “He rattled around in a wild manner that suited neither his age nor his standing,” wrote the Frenchman, who signed his name Le Gentil de la Barinais.18 Charles Boxer detailed that fathers and husbands in Salvador often kept their women and children confined at home to avoid their exposure to the loose morality of the city.
The frequency of slave prostitution and of other obstacles in the way of a sound family life, such as the double standard of chastity as between husbands and wives, all made for a great deal of casual miscegenation between white men and coloured women. This in turn produced many unwanted children, who, if they lived to grow up, became criminals and vagrants living on their wits in the margins of the city.19
He also refers to the shameful “practice of lady owners living on the immoral earnings of their female slaves, who were not merely encouraged but forced into a life of prostitution.”20
Prince João spent a month in Bahia, day after day passing in countless parties, celebrations, and strolls, while he was making important decisions that changed Brazil’s destiny. He and his mother, Queen Maria I, stayed in the palace of the governor. Princess Carlota Joaquina did not. After landing, she remained aboard the Afonso de Albuquerque for five days. Thereafter, she took up residence in the Palace of Justice in the center of the city.21 On January 28, just one week after docking in Salvador and after one more Te Deum, the prince regent went to the Municipal Council to sign his most famous legislation issued on Brazilian territory: the royal decree opening Brazilian ports to commercial trade with all friendly nations. From this date onward, imports were allowed “of all and any kind of materials and merchandise transported on foreign ships of those powers that keep peace and harmony with the Royal Crown.”22
Two myths about the opening of Brazilian ports still persist. The first attributes the decision to the Bahian public servant José da Silva Lisboa, future viscount of Cairu. A disciple of Adam Smith—author of The Wealth of Nations and father of modern capitalism—da Silva Lisboa supposedly presented a study to the prince regent on the advantages of opening up commerce in Brazil as a way of stimulating economic development in the colony. The second myth holds that Prince João intended it as a symbolic gesture to liberate the beleaguered Brazilians from the Portuguese monopoly and commercial isolation at last.
The opening of the ports without a doubt benefited Brazil and did coincide with the liberal opinions of da Silva Lisboa. But in practice it was an inevitable measure. With all of Portugal occupied by the French, commerce among the territories of the empire was grinding to a halt. Opening the Brazilian ports, therefore, made sound economic sense for the entire empire—not just Brazil—and the prince owed a debt of gratitude on that count to Britain. It was the price that he paid for protection against Napoleon; the move had been negotiated in London in October 1807 by the Portuguese ambassador, Domingos de Sousa Coutinho. The agreement provided not only for the opening of the ports but also for the authorization of a British naval base on Madeira.23 “The opening of the ports of Brazil to the commerce of the world meant, in reality, that, as far as Europe was concerned, they were opened only to the commerce of England as long as the war lasted on the continent,” writes Alan Manchester, as England ruled the seas and itself helmed a vast international trading empire.24
Historian Melo Moraes records that, on the eve of the departure from Lisbon, Lord Strangford met with minister Antonio de Araújo and warned that Admiral Smith would lift the naval blockade and permit the Portuguese fleet to leave only under the following conditions: “The opening of Brazilian ports, with free market competition reserved for England, which would immediately be based on a tariff of insignificant commercial rights. Moreover, one of the ports in Brazil (that of Santa Catarina) should be handed over to England.” De Araújo may have bristled, but, with the exception of the exclusive port in Santa Catarina, the crown met all of these demands after landing in Brazil.25
In Salvador, the prince regent also approved the creation of the first school of medicine in Brazil and the bylaws of the first underwriting company, christened as Maritime Commerce. He authorized the construction of a glass factory and a gunpowder factory, devolved power to the governor to establish the production and milling of wheat, ordered the opening of roads, and drew up a plan for the defense and fortification of Bahia, which included twenty-five new cannon boats, two cavalry squads, and an artillery.
The Bahian interlude featured many indulgences, pleasure trips, and popular celebrations. On February 11, the prince regent visited the Itaparica island, bringing with him the prince of Beira, Pedro, the future emperor of Brazil. On their return, a storm caught them by surprise, and they had to spend the night in the home of an island resident.26 On another occasion, João went out into the streets and threw gold coins to a clamoring mob. The Bahians tried not surprisingly, but in vain, to convince him to stay. Representatives of the provincial council promised to raise funds to build a luxurious palace and to underwrite the expenses of the court. The prince regent diplomatically refused the offer, however. Salvador lay more vulnerable to potential attack by the French than the well-protected, more distant Rio de Janeiro.27 It was to Rio that he set sail on February 26, completing the last step of the memorable journey to Brazil.
IX
The Colony
Two hundred years ago, Brazil didn’t exist—at least not the Brazil that exists today: an integrated country with well-defined borders and residents who define their identity as Brazilian, root for the same national football team, carry the same documents, travel to nearby cities and states for pleasure or work, attend schools with unified curricula, and buy and sell products and services from each other.
On the eve of Prince João’s arrival in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil consisted of a jumble of more or less autonomous regions without commerce or any other form of relations between them, having in common only the Portuguese language and the crown in Lisbon on the other side of the Atlantic. “Each captaincy had its own government, small militia and small treasury; communication between them was precarious, as each generally ignored the existence of the other,” recorded French naturalist August Saint-Hilaire, who traversed the country from north to south between 1816 and 1822. “There was no Brazil with a common center. It was an immense circle, whose rays converged very far from its circumference.”1
Not even the word brasileiro (Brazilian) adequately referred to people born in Brazil. Pamphlets and articles published at the beginning of the nineteenth century discussed whether the right term was brasileiro, brasiliense, or brasiliano. Journalist Hipólito da Costa, owner of the Correio Braziliense newspaper, published in London, believed that Europeans born in Brazil should be called brasilienses.2 In his opinion, a brasileiro was a Portuguese or foreigner who moved to the country, while a brasiliano was an indigenous person.3 “Brazil was nothing more than a geographic unit formed by provinces deeply estranged from one other,” according to historian Manuel de Oliveira Lima. All of this changed, though, with the arrival of the prince regent. “These provinces would incorporate into a real political unit, finding their natural axis in the capital
, Rio de Janeiro, where the King, court, and cabinet would come to reside,” added de Oliveira Lima.4
The map of Brazil in 1808 looked very much as it does in the present day with the exception of the state of Acre, bought from Bolivia in 1903. During João VI’s reign a small change in the southern borders also took place. The Cisplatina Province was annexed to Brazil in 1817 but then declared its independence eleven years later, becoming modern-day Uruguay. The Treaty of Madrid in 1750 had cancelled the older Treaty of Tordesillas and refashioned the Portuguese and Spanish colonial borders on the basis of uti possidetis, the concept of effective possession of territory.5 Occupying territory guaranteed its integrity. “Without Brazil, Portugal is an insignificant power; Brazil without force is a precious territory left to whoever wants to occupy it,” wrote Martinho de Mello e Castro, secretary of the Navy and overseas territories, in 1779 in a letter to the viceroy of Brazil, Luís de Vasconcelos e Sousa.6
De Mello e Castro meant that the future of Portugal depended on the occupation and defense of Brazil. For this reason, the forces of the Portuguese administration concentrated on this task. Explorers and cartographers had charted almost all the major Amazonian rivers by 1808. Forts marked and protected the most strategic points. In Tabatinga, on the border with Peru and Colombia, the marquis of Pombal had ordered the construction of a commercial warehouse and a fort, the cannons of which controlled access to the Solimões River.7 It stood as the most advanced post within Portuguese territory and the Spanish colonies to the west. Expeditions had reached all the way to the Oiapoque River, near present-day French Guiana, and had mapped the source of the Trombetas River, near present day Guyana.
1808: The Flight of the Emperor Page 8