Duarte Coelho

Brazil’s export economy is at this time based primarily on a wood that yields red and purple dyes called pau-brasil (from which the country derives its name).

Brazil’s Portuguese settlers have engaged in cutting and shipping brazilwood since the 1520s.

The area around Pernambuco (now Recife) had been one of the first in Brazil to be settled by the Portuguese Crown.

João III of Portugal had divided Brazil into Hereditary Captaincies in 1534: realizing that they had no human or financial resources to invest in such a large and distant colony, the Portuguese had decided to assign this task to private entrepreneurs, called Donatários (this system had already been successful in the settlement of the Portuguese colonies in Africa).

Because of several problems, notably the lack of support from the Portuguese metropolis, most Captaincies failed.

One of the few to prosper has been the Captaincy of Pernambuco, which had been assigned to Duarte Coelho Pereira, the man who had founded Olinda in 1535 and become famous for expressing his enchantment with the beauty of the place, giving the name to the city, an anchorage that handles their exports of sugar and their imports.

Coelho’s grant extends from the mouth of the São Francisco River northward to the vicinity of modern Recife, founded in 1548 as a village on the banks of the Capibaribe and Beberibe rivers and on an island near the mouths of the rivers.

Coelho has found in Pernambuco plenty of fertile land and an excellent climate for the cultivation of cane; all he needed was labor to work in the crops and to keep the "engenhos" (rustic wooden machinery) moving.

At first, the Portuguese had tried to use the indigenous peoples of Brazil, but they soon realized that the indigenous culture was not compatible with the work in the engenhos.

Their solution is to import enslaved people from Africa.

Coelho has converted Pernambuco into a great sugar-producing region, offering the first example of a profitable agrarian export from the New World to Europe.

(Recife is today the second largest city in the Northeastern Region of Brazil, the largest metropolitan area and one of the most important cultural, economic, political and science-minded city in this region.)

Porto Seguro fails to prosper as a captaincy.

The constant fighting with the local Aimoré people may have been related to the presence of many married Portuguese couples and, consequently, little intermarriage with the natives.

Likewise, Bahia fails at this stage because its donatário lack managerial skills.

Many of the Portuguese there are veterans of India, where abuse of the natives is routine.

The Tupinambá finally tire  of the mistreatment, and many of the Portuguese at Bahia, including the donatário, are captured and ceremonially killed and eaten.

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?