Ilheus, Espirito Santo, São Tome, Santo Amaro,…

1552 CE to 1563 CE

Ilheus, Espirito Santo, São Tome, Santo Amaro, and Santa Anna also fail because of poor management and hostile relations with the natives.

The coast is now exposed to French incursions.

Such an outcome is not what the crown had in mind, and it decides wisely to listen to warnings.

The king, rather than replace inept donatário with others, establishes direct royal control, except over Pernambuco and São Vicente.

The crown may have acted at this juncture for several reasons: the Spanish discovery of the famed silver mountain at Potosí (1545), the decline of the Asian spice trade, and the crown's practice of reclaiming royal control after some years of leasing its rights.

The enhancement of royal power is part of the general Iberian pattern of establishing royal control over the sprawling colonial ventures.

In a larger sense, renewed royal control appears to have been linked to a new conservatism in Catholic Europe.

The Council of Trent (1545-63) defines church dogma and practice, religious tolerance fades, and the Inquisition is emplaced in Portugal in 1547.

The king names Thomé de Sousa the first governor general of Brazil (1549-53).

He orders Sousa to create a capital city, Salvador, on the Bahia de Todos os Santos (Bay of All Saints) and to spread the royal mantle over the captaincies, defending the weaker ones and reestablishing the failed ones.

Because native attacks are blamed for the failures, Sousa's orders amount to a declaration of war on the indigenous peoples of Brazil.

If they can be defeated, the French will have no allies and so will be less of a threat.

In addition, Sousa is to increase royal revenues.

The twin objectives of control and revenue are characteristic of royal policy for the rest of the colonial era.

Bahia, as the city and province will be known, is selected for its central location and its fine bay, and because the crown has purchased it from the heirs of the donatário.

Sousa builds fortifications, a town, and sugar mills.

His knottiest task is forming a policy on the natives, whose status remains unclear.

Although he has treasury and coast guard officials with him, their roles are oriented toward Portuguese colonists and European interlopers.

The crown had placed the natives under its "protection" as early as 1511, and it orders Sousa to treat them well, as long as they are peaceful, so that they can be converted.

Conversion is essential because Portugal's legal claims to Brazil are based on papal bulls requiring Christianization of the natives.

However, those who resist conversion are likened to Muslims and can be enslaved.

In fact, as historian Sergio Buarque de Holanda has shown, by identifying Brazil as a destination of the wandering Apostle St. Thomas the Portuguese settlers are able to argue that all natives had had their chance to convert and had rejected it, so they can be conquered and taken captive legitimately.

Thus, a distinction is made between peaceful, pliable natives who as wards deserve crown protection and those resisters who want to keep their independence and on whom 'just war" can be made and slavery imposed.

The dual mission of the governors is contradictory: how can they stimulate the economy using slave labor while converting the natives?