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3. The Bahiana Revolt (1794)
The Captaincy of Bahia in the late 18th Century was by far the most populous region of Brazil, and its capital, the city of Salvador, not only was one of the largest urban settlements, but it had also been the capital of the colony for almost two centuries (from 1549 to 1763). In fact, it was the moving of the administrative seat of the colony to Rio de Janeiro in the middle 18th Century that precipitated its decline.
The sugar-cane cultivation, that had greatly enriched the Kingdom of Portugal through those two centuries, came to shape not only the economy, but also the society, the demographics and even the politics of the northeastern provinces of Brazil – from the massive presence of African slaves forced to work in the plantations to the exceptional authority of the latifundiários (great plantation owners), who commanded their own private militias and effectively controlled the political affairs in the local communities. Now, however, the sugar-cane cultivation was in decline, and its symptoms were visible to naked eye, as the former wealthy and populous provinces of the Northeast became gradually impoverished, unable to satisfy the selfish burdens imposed by the Portuguese Crown.
In the last decade of the 18th Century, successive periods of droughts, combined with the price-control policies enforced by the then governor D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, caused a serious famine. As it happened that hungry mobs sacked markets to steal fresh meat, corn and grain, a climate of general insubordination contaminated the low-ranking soldiery in the barracks.
In June 1793, not long after the Mineira Revolt had been suppressed, a famine riot in Salvador forced the local governor, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, to flee the city with his retinue to avoid the same fate that befell the Viscount of Barbacena in Vila Rica, five years earlier.
The uprising was quickly harnessed by visionary demagogues, and became a movement to proclaim independence from the tiny Iberian kingdom beyond the Atlantic Sea. The revolutionary ideas of the French and American Revolutions were already being disseminated among the population of Salvador and other towns in the Recôncavo Baiano [1], and were now championed by intellectual leaders such as the physician Cipriano Barata and by a masonic group known as “Cavaleiros da Luz” (Knights of Light). It soon became a popular movement, with many individuals from the “middle class” of Salvador, like physicians, clergymen, bureaucrats and soldiers, and some leaders even came from poorer classes, like free blacks and mulattos. Because most of them were employed as tailors, shoemakers and barbers, the revolt was associated with these professionals.
The more remarkable legacy of this short-lived attempt of emancipation is that it advocated the abolition of slavery – with immediate manumission of slaves – and the implementation of an egalitarian and democratic government.
The people of Salvador, capital of Bahia, in the 1790s
Despite its revolutionary project and the initial military success, the provisory government failed to coopt the support of the other provinces of the Northeast Region, and became isolated after a flotilla came Recife to blockade the port of Salvador.
In the middle of October 1794, the deposed Governor D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro returned with an army mustered in other towns from Bahia and besieged the revolutionary capital. Starvation soon afflicted the rebellious citizens, and the dissatisfaction and fear of the Royal punishment emboldened a group of disgruntled Portuguese officers to stage a coup and restore the control of the city to the Governor. In the night of 22 October 1794, they secretly opened the city gates to the besiegers and assassinated the populist leader Cipriano Barata in his own house. The Royalist forces penetrated the defenses, and, after two days of barricade fighting, forced the rebels to submit.
The black and mulatto leaders were hanged and quartered in public square, while the leaders of Portuguese descent were exiled to Africa.
Brazilian History for a long period would applaud louder the Mineira Revolt – whose proposals were more convenient to the rural and urban high-classes – and the Baiana Revolt, marked by an ideological radicalism fell into a relative oblivion, excepting a fond memory inside Bahia itself (indeed, the flag used by the rebels would be eventually adopted as the official flag of the State of Bahia). Nevertheless, this episode would be rejuvenated in the national consciousness by the abolitionist and suffragist movements that gained impulse in Brazilian republican politics by the 1840s, and today is recognized as a very important precedent in the emancipation process.
Modern scholarship argues that these two “nativist crusades”, despite having failing their immediate objectives, were in the long run vindicated by History, as Brazil did indeed obtained independence, and adopted a republican system, even if contaminated by idiosyncratic trends inherited from the British intervention in the 1800s.
As the 19th Century dawned, however, even if there was a stark distinction between “Brazilian” – as a person born in this side of the Atlantic – and “Portuguese” –as someone coming from Portugal or its other colonies – and those peoples already regarded each other as different nations, the very notion of a “Brazilian Nation” was nonexistent. As of yet, each of the colonial provinces stared inwards, but the hardships and losses of future wars would eventually spark the flaming sentiments of unity and brotherhood among those born in Brazil to divorce itself from the destiny of Portugal.
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[1] “Recôncavo Baiano” is the region surrounding the All Saint Bay in Bahia, where most of the population of the province lived (to this day, is the most populous region of the State of Bahia, inside the metropolitan region of Salvador).
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Historical Notes: Until the middle 18th Century the capital of Brazil was established in Salvador, being the most convenient port to syphon the sugar-cane production from the Northeast Brazil to Portugal. After the gold and diamond extraction began in Minas Gerais, however, the capital was moved to the fledgling port of Rio de Janeiro to control the flow of precious metals to the Atlantic Sea, especially because smuggling was at its height. Historians agree today that the change of the administrative center was one of the causes that provoked the impoverishment and neglect of the Northeast Region, and the sudden growth of the Southeast Region, around the regions of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and São Paulo.
IOTL, the Baiana Revolt occurred in 1798, but due to the butterflies caused by the Mineira Revolt, and its inspiring example in Brazil, the rebellion in Bahia occurred much earlier.
The Captaincy of Bahia in the late 18th Century was by far the most populous region of Brazil, and its capital, the city of Salvador, not only was one of the largest urban settlements, but it had also been the capital of the colony for almost two centuries (from 1549 to 1763). In fact, it was the moving of the administrative seat of the colony to Rio de Janeiro in the middle 18th Century that precipitated its decline.
The sugar-cane cultivation, that had greatly enriched the Kingdom of Portugal through those two centuries, came to shape not only the economy, but also the society, the demographics and even the politics of the northeastern provinces of Brazil – from the massive presence of African slaves forced to work in the plantations to the exceptional authority of the latifundiários (great plantation owners), who commanded their own private militias and effectively controlled the political affairs in the local communities. Now, however, the sugar-cane cultivation was in decline, and its symptoms were visible to naked eye, as the former wealthy and populous provinces of the Northeast became gradually impoverished, unable to satisfy the selfish burdens imposed by the Portuguese Crown.
In the last decade of the 18th Century, successive periods of droughts, combined with the price-control policies enforced by the then governor D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, caused a serious famine. As it happened that hungry mobs sacked markets to steal fresh meat, corn and grain, a climate of general insubordination contaminated the low-ranking soldiery in the barracks.
In June 1793, not long after the Mineira Revolt had been suppressed, a famine riot in Salvador forced the local governor, D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro, to flee the city with his retinue to avoid the same fate that befell the Viscount of Barbacena in Vila Rica, five years earlier.
The uprising was quickly harnessed by visionary demagogues, and became a movement to proclaim independence from the tiny Iberian kingdom beyond the Atlantic Sea. The revolutionary ideas of the French and American Revolutions were already being disseminated among the population of Salvador and other towns in the Recôncavo Baiano [1], and were now championed by intellectual leaders such as the physician Cipriano Barata and by a masonic group known as “Cavaleiros da Luz” (Knights of Light). It soon became a popular movement, with many individuals from the “middle class” of Salvador, like physicians, clergymen, bureaucrats and soldiers, and some leaders even came from poorer classes, like free blacks and mulattos. Because most of them were employed as tailors, shoemakers and barbers, the revolt was associated with these professionals.
The more remarkable legacy of this short-lived attempt of emancipation is that it advocated the abolition of slavery – with immediate manumission of slaves – and the implementation of an egalitarian and democratic government.
The people of Salvador, capital of Bahia, in the 1790s
Despite its revolutionary project and the initial military success, the provisory government failed to coopt the support of the other provinces of the Northeast Region, and became isolated after a flotilla came Recife to blockade the port of Salvador.
In the middle of October 1794, the deposed Governor D. Fernando José de Portugal e Castro returned with an army mustered in other towns from Bahia and besieged the revolutionary capital. Starvation soon afflicted the rebellious citizens, and the dissatisfaction and fear of the Royal punishment emboldened a group of disgruntled Portuguese officers to stage a coup and restore the control of the city to the Governor. In the night of 22 October 1794, they secretly opened the city gates to the besiegers and assassinated the populist leader Cipriano Barata in his own house. The Royalist forces penetrated the defenses, and, after two days of barricade fighting, forced the rebels to submit.
The black and mulatto leaders were hanged and quartered in public square, while the leaders of Portuguese descent were exiled to Africa.
One of the black leaders of the movement prepared to be hanged
Brazilian History for a long period would applaud louder the Mineira Revolt – whose proposals were more convenient to the rural and urban high-classes – and the Baiana Revolt, marked by an ideological radicalism fell into a relative oblivion, excepting a fond memory inside Bahia itself (indeed, the flag used by the rebels would be eventually adopted as the official flag of the State of Bahia). Nevertheless, this episode would be rejuvenated in the national consciousness by the abolitionist and suffragist movements that gained impulse in Brazilian republican politics by the 1840s, and today is recognized as a very important precedent in the emancipation process.
Modern scholarship argues that these two “nativist crusades”, despite having failing their immediate objectives, were in the long run vindicated by History, as Brazil did indeed obtained independence, and adopted a republican system, even if contaminated by idiosyncratic trends inherited from the British intervention in the 1800s.
As the 19th Century dawned, however, even if there was a stark distinction between “Brazilian” – as a person born in this side of the Atlantic – and “Portuguese” –as someone coming from Portugal or its other colonies – and those peoples already regarded each other as different nations, the very notion of a “Brazilian Nation” was nonexistent. As of yet, each of the colonial provinces stared inwards, but the hardships and losses of future wars would eventually spark the flaming sentiments of unity and brotherhood among those born in Brazil to divorce itself from the destiny of Portugal.
_________________________________
[1] “Recôncavo Baiano” is the region surrounding the All Saint Bay in Bahia, where most of the population of the province lived (to this day, is the most populous region of the State of Bahia, inside the metropolitan region of Salvador).
_____________________________________________________
Historical Notes: Until the middle 18th Century the capital of Brazil was established in Salvador, being the most convenient port to syphon the sugar-cane production from the Northeast Brazil to Portugal. After the gold and diamond extraction began in Minas Gerais, however, the capital was moved to the fledgling port of Rio de Janeiro to control the flow of precious metals to the Atlantic Sea, especially because smuggling was at its height. Historians agree today that the change of the administrative center was one of the causes that provoked the impoverishment and neglect of the Northeast Region, and the sudden growth of the Southeast Region, around the regions of Rio de Janeiro, Minas Gerais and São Paulo.
IOTL, the Baiana Revolt occurred in 1798, but due to the butterflies caused by the Mineira Revolt, and its inspiring example in Brazil, the rebellion in Bahia occurred much earlier.
- Rdffigueira
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