One Nation Under the Southern Cross - an alternate Brazil TL (updated 13/08)
- Thread starter Ricard (i.e. Rdffigueira)
- Start date
I hope so, I took some inspiration from OTL's events, indeed
I'll try to post some new stuff soon.Deleted member 67076
This is is a neat outcome. Happy to see New Granada intact.
So I'm wondering 2 things looking at this map: Regarding Bolivia being part of Argentina, does that mean we will see much later migration of Indigenous peoples to the Pampas? In addition to that, the map does spell some very interesting economic and military implications, now that the region has another major power base and another major source of minerals. Should help out with the prevention of any debt trap now that mineral extraction can cover ranching, and having a few million more people allows a bigger internal market.
Also, I'd like to know what went on in Hispaniola. When we last left off the Portuguese were still occupying it. What happened afterwords?
1) You are correct in your points about *Argentina. Having a larger resource and manpower base will alow *Argentina/La Plata to rise to even greater heights than OTL, once it overcomes its political instability (much like Brazil). I'm making no secret that La Plata will be Brazil's geopolitical rival much like France was to Germany, and I figured that strengthening *Argentina would be more interesting. However, a stronger *Argentina will face greater external opposition once it tries to enforce its (self-imagined) role as leader of the South American nations, especially towards its threatened neighbors: Chile, Peru/Andine Republic and the Indigenous peoples of Patagonia. It is but a matter of time before they try to craft alliance with Brazil or New Granada (or even another foreign power) to escape from the Platean influence.
Also, its interesting to note that ITTL all the countries that functioned as buffers between Brazil and Argentina - Uruguay and Paraguay - have effectivelly disappeared, and a the annexation of Upper Peru [i.e. Bolivia] means that *Argentina shares a very long border with Brazil. It will take time for the frontier region between the countries become settled and developed (Gran Chaco and Santa Cruz on the western side, and Matto Grosso and Grão-Pará in the eastern side), but, once it happens, there will be another flashpoint of troubles between the neighbors.
2) About Hispaniola, the Luso-Brazilian and British occupation didn't last. After the end of the Napoleonic Wars, with the Congress of Vienna, the colonial territories, excepting the Guyanas, were all ceded back to their previous owners. Guyanas was an exception because Britain sought to "compensate" its former ally Portugal after the bombardment of Lisboa, but the problem is that is remained de facto occupied by a Brazilian military force after the War of Independence, and the Portuguese so far made no serious effort to reclaim it. Thus, the island of Hispaniola afterwards, having been affected by lesser butterflies, will follow a path similar to OTL, unless otherwise noted, of course.
Regarding the Guyanas itself, they will be dealt with very soon.
Deleted member 67076
Actually, Id argue that Spanish Hispaniola should be under Mexican administration after the Congress, given Spain would be exhausted and stretched thin. It was previously a part of New Spain's rule, and reported to Veracruz as much as Madrid.
Mexican ruled Santo Domingo would habe enough of a garrison to prevent any rebellions (thus, averting the Republic of Spanish Haiti and so on) unlike Spain who had to ship all her troops to Cuba, Puerto Rico and Peru in order to maintain what was left.
That's a very interesting argument, I honestly had not considered this perspective. I'll be sure to adopt these points you've raised if the political situation in Hispaniola is addressed in another future chapter.
In fact, would you say that Spanish Mexico would be willing to attempt a conquest of Haiti itself, so as to integrate the whole of Hispaniola into their dominions again? I suppose that it Spain would try to hit two birds with one stone: restore its prestige/reputation and to establish a reliable colonial dominion in the Caribbean after the cataclysmic losses of the Napoleonic Wars, governed from the Viceroyalty of Mexico.
It would be an interesting development, especially due to the fact that Haiti was a "pariah state" in the Americas. How would the USA react to a Spanish annexation of Haiti? This would put the "Monroe Doctrine" (whose conception was unaffected by butterflies) in conflict with the North-American refusal of admitting a "freedmen" nation.
Deleted member 67076
Spanish Mexico most likely would just want to leave Haiti alone. An invasion would be insanity for though New Spain would still be on the upswing of economic and population growth (having avoided the decade long chaos of its independence war/Conservative-Liberal Civil War), its military would need to be recovered and reformed (instead of being mostly militia).
I doubt there'd be enough incentive to mount an invasion in the aftermath of the French losing 60,000 troops there and the tacit British support of the rebels (shipping arms, equipment, doing elicit trade and what not).
Not sure what the state of the Mexican navy would be here but the Spanish one was gutted in the Napoleonic wars, which hurts transports. It'd be a long, expensive campaign for little benefit, for after the revolution in Haiti; the country is marginalized region that's filled with heavily armed and well trained ex slaves. Little economic benefit in it too given Cuba, Puerto Rico, Santo Domingo, Honduras and Nicaragua are or can easily become major sugar, coffee and spice producers in time.
If the Spanish wanted to reestablish firm control with respect to fear of invasion, the easiest option would just be to ship in a bunch of peasants from the Mexican and Spanish hinterlands (that was the Bourbon strategy in Santo Domingo anyway, and it worked excellently- the population quintupled in the century to a pre Revolutionary high of 150,000), build some forts and station more soldiers. (And ideally, respect the rights of the free colored population that made up most of the country, but I doubt that's likely to happen)
Hence, just ignoring what's going on and pretending the problem doesn't exist while still preparing for any potential conflicts.
First of all, thanks for the comprehensive answer, Soverihn. I think the best part of constructing an alternate history TL is, in the end, to learn more about our own History, and I can only thank for your support in this regard.
I was aware about the French attempt of reconquering Haiti, but did not knew the causes or even the extent of its failure. I guess I supposed a Spanish takeover would be easier by the simple virtue of having a nearby military and manpower source in the Caribbean. Nevertheless, I had already figured the point you raised in the third paragraph: there were almost no benefits in trying to annex Haiti by military conquest, especially because Spain already has profitable and stable enterprises in Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Central American provinces. It is poised for an economic recovery in a much better condition than Portugal, France and the Netherlands, whose respective colonial empires suffered serious blows during the maelstrom of the Revolutionary/Napoleonic Wars. At least until the Carlist War.
23. The Brazilian Frontier
1. The New Bandeirantes Movement
The early republican period, much like the early colonial period in Brazil, would herald an age of exploration of the backcountry of former Portuguese America, a place known in the Portuguese vernacular as “Sertão”. The most accepted etymological root is a corruption of the appellation “Desertão” (lit. great desert), considering that the first contact the Portuguese adventurers in the 16th Century had with the Brazilian outback was the sun-scorched arid plains of the Northeast Brazil.
Nevertheless, the term Sertão became a parallel of the North-American “wild frontier”, the African “savannah” or the Australian “bush”, an umbrella term encompassing a variety of landscapes, ecosystems, myths and cultures, painting a wilderness still untouched by the encroachment of (post-European) civilization. Sometimes pictured as a paradisiacal expanse of exuberant jungles and mineral riches sprouting from the bosom of the Earth, and other times as a godforsaken country of primitives locked in a state of savagery and monstrous creatures, the backcountry in any way or another would captivate the imagination of the Brazilians who regarded themselves “heralds of civilization” in comfortable cities by the Atlantic Sea.
To the aristocrats, politicians and entrepreneurs, the Sertão represented a realm of unexplored and virgin wealth; to the poor free men, from the field or the city, it represented an antediluvian otherworld of dangerous adventures and tantalizing pleasures; to the slaves and forlorn pariahs living in the cesspit of the social pyramid, it was regarded, simply, as a promised haven of freedom, as an escape from the most miserable existence.
After the 1830s, indeed, the Sertão would be again a hazy fantasy conjured by the popular imagination of the people living in the Brazilian littoral, from the pampas of Banda Oriental to the humid and crowded ports in Grão-Pará. From that decade onwards, the former Portuguese America would experience a series of migratory movements and patterns directed to the Brazilian backcountry, in a drive towards to the west very similar to the United-Stadian “Manifest Destiny” and to the British colonists in southeastern Australia to explore and populate the wasteland in the heart of the continent. A similar pattern would later be observed with the Plateans and Chileans in the expansion into Patagonia, and with various European colonists into the uncharted darkness of Africa.
Sertanists exploring the tropical jungle in southern Matto Grosso
Notwithstanding these comparisons, however, the Brazilian expansion into the outback must be understood in its own context. The Brazilian hinterland, that is, roughly the whole expanse comprising the former territories of São Paulo, Minas Gerais, Matto Grosso, Goyáz and the whole of Grão-Pará (whose entire area is greater than, for example, the entire Austrian Empire), had for centuries been explored by either the Bandeirantes – groups of adventurers searching slaves and precious metals – or the Jesuits, mainly during the 16th and 17th Centuries. The apogee of these exploratory and colonization movements occurred by the 1650s, when the Jesuits had already founded settlements into the Amazon rainforest and even into the southern Pampas, while the Bandeirantes had mapped an overland trekking route directly from São Paulo into the Amazon River. Nevertheless, these enterprises were relatively small-scale and were discontinued, on one hand, by the Portuguese Crown’s banishment of the Jesuit Order from Brazil, and, on the other hand, by the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais and southern Matto Grosso, which for almost a century created a centripetal drive towards that region, while significantly increasing the Crown’s interference in colonial affairs.
By the early 19th Century, with the end of mineral extraction in Southeastern Brazil due to the depletion of the minefields, and the end of the turbulence caused by the War of Independence, the social and economic trends slowly moved back towards the cultivation of profitable goods and breeding of livestock to be sold in the external markets. In this regard, coffee revealed itself to be Brazil’s best chance; the vast amounts of sugar and tobacco’s production in the Northeast had been supplanted since the 18th Century by the Dutch and French yielding in the Caribbean, while Brazil’s cotton supply was completely overshadowed, in Europe, by the one produced in the United States. These factors, of course, explain the long decline of the Northeastern States in Brazil – mainly Pernambuco and Bahia – and the growth of the Southeastern States – such as São Paulo and Minas Gerais – whose climate was the most suitable for coffee crops.
This meant, thus, that more land would be sought after to allow a maximization of coffee production in the country. Brazil had, in paper, a vast and continental-wide amount of land to be farmed, but most of it was unsettled, and, in many places, unexplored. Then, much like the “Manifest Destiny” movement in North America, the Colonization of the Sertão was, first and foremost, a colonizing mission, with the purpose of settling the uninhabited lands and turning them into productive farms.
By the early 19th Century, with the end of mineral extraction in Southeastern Brazil due to the depletion of the minefields, and the end of the turbulence caused by the War of Independence, the social and economic trends slowly moved back towards the cultivation of profitable goods and breeding of livestock to be sold in the external markets. In this regard, coffee revealed itself to be Brazil’s best chance; the vast amounts of sugar and tobacco’s production in the Northeast had been supplanted since the 18th Century by the Dutch and French yielding in the Caribbean, while Brazil’s cotton supply was completely overshadowed, in Europe, by the one produced in the United States. These factors, of course, explain the long decline of the Northeastern States in Brazil – mainly Pernambuco and Bahia – and the growth of the Southeastern States – such as São Paulo and Minas Gerais – whose climate was the most suitable for coffee crops.
This meant, thus, that more land would be sought after to allow a maximization of coffee production in the country. Brazil had, in paper, a vast and continental-wide amount of land to be farmed, but most of it was unsettled, and, in many places, unexplored. Then, much like the “Manifest Destiny” movement in North America, the Colonization of the Sertão was, first and foremost, a colonizing mission, with the purpose of settling the uninhabited lands and turning them into productive farms.
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President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro was certainly not the prime mover of this decades-long period of internal migrations, but he was one of the earliest politicians that fostered it, by devising long-term exploration, settlement and fortification projects, policies and even government incentives.
Romantic literature and audiovisiography in Brazil, especially from the second half of the 20th Century, usually portrays President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro’s inspiration as being based on his own cherished idealization of the “Bandeirantes”, as brave, virile and patriotic adventurers who had founded São Paulo itself and from there had launched a crusade to conquer the whole continent.
Nevertheless, even if Inácio Joaquim Monteiro genuinely prized his Bandeirante heritage (as many Paulistas did, especially during and after the Independence War, including many of his own Ministers), he was, in heart, a landowner and a businessman. Economic interests would (and did) always come before social, cultural, or political reasons. Inácio Joaquim Monteiro saw himself as a visionary, as a herald of a greater and prosperous Brazil, enriched by the production and commercialization of coffee, and thus he desired to expand the almost sacred crafting of the “black gold” to whatever extent Nature itself permitted.
During his term, a very straightforward policy of colonization began, as the President proposed a bill and the Parliament voted favorably, to provide short-term financial incentives to free, able-bodied and married males to move from cities in the littoral to construct homesteads and farms in the interior of São Paulo and of Matto Grosso, especially in the southern and western reaches of both States. This became known as the “Settlement Law” (1829), or, more popularly, as “Law of the Sertões”, and would later be amended by expanded by successive generations of politicians and statesmen for decades.
Curious enough, there was, in the first moment, no specific mention regarding the production of coffee, but rather of wheat, manioc, beet and similar crops. Indeed, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, his Ministers and many of the Parliament’s Members realized that, for such a grand enterprise to succeed, firstly there was a necessity of creating a basic “infrastructure” of frontier towns, trading posts and production centers. In Matto Grosso, Goyáz and Grão-Pará, the bigger settlements were remote and isolated relatively to the littoral, as most of them had grown around border outposts constructed by the Portuguese (centuries ago) with the sole purpose of securing the frontier against the incursions of the Spaniards from Nueva Granada, from Perú and from La Plata. Patches of settled and productive communities would have to be built and fostered to link the littoral to the distant borders of the nation, and thus, slowly, through some decades, the Federal Government believed it could provoke a populational spreading from the already densely inhabited coastal capitals to the vast Brazilian heartland.
Romantic literature and audiovisiography in Brazil, especially from the second half of the 20th Century, usually portrays President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro’s inspiration as being based on his own cherished idealization of the “Bandeirantes”, as brave, virile and patriotic adventurers who had founded São Paulo itself and from there had launched a crusade to conquer the whole continent.
Nevertheless, even if Inácio Joaquim Monteiro genuinely prized his Bandeirante heritage (as many Paulistas did, especially during and after the Independence War, including many of his own Ministers), he was, in heart, a landowner and a businessman. Economic interests would (and did) always come before social, cultural, or political reasons. Inácio Joaquim Monteiro saw himself as a visionary, as a herald of a greater and prosperous Brazil, enriched by the production and commercialization of coffee, and thus he desired to expand the almost sacred crafting of the “black gold” to whatever extent Nature itself permitted.
During his term, a very straightforward policy of colonization began, as the President proposed a bill and the Parliament voted favorably, to provide short-term financial incentives to free, able-bodied and married males to move from cities in the littoral to construct homesteads and farms in the interior of São Paulo and of Matto Grosso, especially in the southern and western reaches of both States. This became known as the “Settlement Law” (1829), or, more popularly, as “Law of the Sertões”, and would later be amended by expanded by successive generations of politicians and statesmen for decades.
Curious enough, there was, in the first moment, no specific mention regarding the production of coffee, but rather of wheat, manioc, beet and similar crops. Indeed, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, his Ministers and many of the Parliament’s Members realized that, for such a grand enterprise to succeed, firstly there was a necessity of creating a basic “infrastructure” of frontier towns, trading posts and production centers. In Matto Grosso, Goyáz and Grão-Pará, the bigger settlements were remote and isolated relatively to the littoral, as most of them had grown around border outposts constructed by the Portuguese (centuries ago) with the sole purpose of securing the frontier against the incursions of the Spaniards from Nueva Granada, from Perú and from La Plata. Patches of settled and productive communities would have to be built and fostered to link the littoral to the distant borders of the nation, and thus, slowly, through some decades, the Federal Government believed it could provoke a populational spreading from the already densely inhabited coastal capitals to the vast Brazilian heartland.
2. The Sukachev Expedition
In 1829, a diplomatic mission coming from St. Petersburg, in the Russian Empire, arrived in Rio de Janeiro, with a group of artists, soldiers and scientists, with the intent of establishing an embassy in Brazil and conducting an exploration of the Brazilian fauna and flora. This was not the first time a foreign expedition had operated in Brazil; as early as 1822, a group of botanists and ethnologists had arrived, at request of the King Christian VIII of Denmark and Norway, and went to explore the Amazon Basin. Now, the Russians, which heavy patronage of the young Tsar Nikolai I, desired to undertake an even more ambitious expedition, one that was avidly supported by President Joaquim Monteiro and his Ministers: a mission going from the south to the north Brazil by the means of fluvial transportation.
The expedition was led by the zoologist Alexei Vladimirovich Sukachev, who had spent the previous seven years exploring the wilderness of Siberia, in the company of the Asiatic tribal nations living under nominal suzerainty of the Tsar in Moscow. Sukachev harbored a particular fascination for bird species, and since his first weeks in Brazil, he was already impressed by a sight of toucans and macaws in the woods near the capital. One of his colleagues, the German-born anthropologist Carl Friedrich Witten, would spend the rest of his life in Brazil, residing in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro and regularly voyaging to the interior to meet Amerindians tribes and chronicle their customs and way of life.
The Russians at first conjectured a plan to go straight north from Rio de Janeiro to arrive in the Amazon basin, but the President’s own Minister of Science, assisted by various experts from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Rio de Janeiro (inaugurated by Mena Barreto in 1823) in a meeting with the foreign explorer, convinced them that this path would be much more dangerous and disaster-prone. The route suggested by the Minister was the one followed by the Russians: they would travel to São Paulo, and from there navigate along the rivers to reach the Paraná River (which formed the border between Brazil and La Plata), from whence they would voyage upriver all the way to the birth of the watercourse. From the great swamps in western Brazil, they could walk north until they reach one of the Amazon River’s tributaries, and thus would be finally led to the largest river of the Americas.
The expedition was led by the zoologist Alexei Vladimirovich Sukachev, who had spent the previous seven years exploring the wilderness of Siberia, in the company of the Asiatic tribal nations living under nominal suzerainty of the Tsar in Moscow. Sukachev harbored a particular fascination for bird species, and since his first weeks in Brazil, he was already impressed by a sight of toucans and macaws in the woods near the capital. One of his colleagues, the German-born anthropologist Carl Friedrich Witten, would spend the rest of his life in Brazil, residing in a suburb of Rio de Janeiro and regularly voyaging to the interior to meet Amerindians tribes and chronicle their customs and way of life.
The Russians at first conjectured a plan to go straight north from Rio de Janeiro to arrive in the Amazon basin, but the President’s own Minister of Science, assisted by various experts from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Rio de Janeiro (inaugurated by Mena Barreto in 1823) in a meeting with the foreign explorer, convinced them that this path would be much more dangerous and disaster-prone. The route suggested by the Minister was the one followed by the Russians: they would travel to São Paulo, and from there navigate along the rivers to reach the Paraná River (which formed the border between Brazil and La Plata), from whence they would voyage upriver all the way to the birth of the watercourse. From the great swamps in western Brazil, they could walk north until they reach one of the Amazon River’s tributaries, and thus would be finally led to the largest river of the Americas.
Modern map of the route followed by the Sukachev Expedition
It was exactly the path chosen by João de Deus Mena Barreto when he led the 2nd Brazilian Corps into Matto Grosso to defeat the last Portuguese royalist stronghold, in 1818. Indeed, it was a better way due to the convenient access to rivers and towns where the expeditionaries could move with less effort and resupply without risking living off the land.
The mission would take almost three years, and was widely considered a success, even despite the tragic casualties suffered by some of its renowned members due to the tropical diseases, as they had ventured through jungles, swamps and rivers infested with every sort of flies, mosquitos and other vermin. The discoveries of the Russians were catalogued in a series of volumes in 1836 and caused excitement in the scientific community of Europe after its simultaneous publication in St. Petersburg and Berlin (“A Treatise on the Fauna and Flora of the Brazilian Heartlands”), and would herald other similar undertakings, like a German one commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia (1838-1840), and even a self-financed visit by Sir Robert McIntyre (1841), a Scottish amateur botanist and artist, who much later would contribute to the development of photography in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, after his death in 1859, his will prescribed that the Modern Arts Association of Edinburgh (founded by him and his brother) commission an expedition to photograph the animals and plants of Brazil to compile a “natural album”, one of the very first attempts of the kind.
The mission would take almost three years, and was widely considered a success, even despite the tragic casualties suffered by some of its renowned members due to the tropical diseases, as they had ventured through jungles, swamps and rivers infested with every sort of flies, mosquitos and other vermin. The discoveries of the Russians were catalogued in a series of volumes in 1836 and caused excitement in the scientific community of Europe after its simultaneous publication in St. Petersburg and Berlin (“A Treatise on the Fauna and Flora of the Brazilian Heartlands”), and would herald other similar undertakings, like a German one commissioned by King Friedrich Wilhelm III of Prussia (1838-1840), and even a self-financed visit by Sir Robert McIntyre (1841), a Scottish amateur botanist and artist, who much later would contribute to the development of photography in the United Kingdom. Interestingly, after his death in 1859, his will prescribed that the Modern Arts Association of Edinburgh (founded by him and his brother) commission an expedition to photograph the animals and plants of Brazil to compile a “natural album”, one of the very first attempts of the kind.
3. The Indians’ Question
Since the 17th and 18th Centuries, laws had been passed by the Kings of Portugal acknowledging that the Amerindians had rights towards their lands and customs, including a charter that affirmed, word by word, that the Indians were beyond the Crown’s jurisdiction. In practice, however, the colonists and settlers only cared about the Indians’ rights when they found it convenient; most of the time, the so-called “primitive” inhabitants of the continent were enslaved, slaughtered or simply coerced into leaving their ancestral lands. Only the Jesuit Order provided a serious bulwark against the colonial aggression against Indians (at least those more accepting of catechism, such as the Guarani tribes in Rio Grande do Sul and the Tupi confederations in the Amazon rainforest); thus, after the Jesuits were expelled from Brazil in the late 18th Century, the Indians in Brazil lost the most formidable champion of their cause.
By the early 19th Century, even the government policies were still grounded on the premise that the Indians were primitive and savage, and, as a rule of thumb, could be liable to expulsion if they harmed interests of European colonists. A distinction was drawn in favor of the “índios de paz” (amiable groups) against the “índios bravos” (hostile tribes), with the first warranting some degree of consideration by the authorities, and the latest deserving outright extermination or displacement under the banner of “holy wars”.
By the epoch, however, the Luso-Brazilian society was demographically concentrated on the littoral, with the various aboriginal ethnicities of the region having either perished or assimilated. Orbiting the pastoral fringe of society (such as in the States of São Paulo, Santa Catarina and Minas Gerais), there lay a constellation of minor groups already familiar with post-European contact, but which still in its majority retained the cultural and social structures. In the farther backcountry, such as in Matto Grosso, Goyáz, Maranham, Piauhy and Grão-Pará, there was a countless number of peoples that had never had contact with any “civilized” nation.
By the early 19th Century, even the government policies were still grounded on the premise that the Indians were primitive and savage, and, as a rule of thumb, could be liable to expulsion if they harmed interests of European colonists. A distinction was drawn in favor of the “índios de paz” (amiable groups) against the “índios bravos” (hostile tribes), with the first warranting some degree of consideration by the authorities, and the latest deserving outright extermination or displacement under the banner of “holy wars”.
By the epoch, however, the Luso-Brazilian society was demographically concentrated on the littoral, with the various aboriginal ethnicities of the region having either perished or assimilated. Orbiting the pastoral fringe of society (such as in the States of São Paulo, Santa Catarina and Minas Gerais), there lay a constellation of minor groups already familiar with post-European contact, but which still in its majority retained the cultural and social structures. In the farther backcountry, such as in Matto Grosso, Goyáz, Maranham, Piauhy and Grão-Pará, there was a countless number of peoples that had never had contact with any “civilized” nation.
First contact between a Brazilian troop of explorers and Indians from Matto Grosso
It took foreign interest to kindle the very first initiative in favor of protecting and promoting Amerindian way of life in Brazil during the early republican period. Such was the case, for example, of Pierre Montsant, a French explorer who founded the “French-Antarctic Association” – in reference to the failed French colony that had been established in Rio de Janeiro during the 16th Century, known as France Antarticque – whose main aim was the promotion of non-political French interests in Brazil, but also claimed to be “concerned” with the state of the Indians in Brazil. The association was founded as a gentleman club for French visitors in Rio de Janeiro (1824), but would in some years grow to be a serious endorser of cultural trends from Europe, and as its numbers and influence grew, especially among the café-obsessed and francophone cultural élite, it came to sponsor various projects (such as voyages from French people coming to Brazil) and even drafted a bill which might be proposed to the Parliament with the purpose of debating the viability of creating reservations for the Indians so as to preserve their cultures and languages.
President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro and his Cabinet took no initiative regarding the “Indians’ Question”, but a Member of the Parliament from São Paulo, named José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva proposed one of the first bills on the subject, which was approved and became the first version of the “Indian Statute”.
President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro and his Cabinet took no initiative regarding the “Indians’ Question”, but a Member of the Parliament from São Paulo, named José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva proposed one of the first bills on the subject, which was approved and became the first version of the “Indian Statute”.
Yes, it will. But this will be a much latter phenomenon. Brazil has yet to receive a large number of immigrants (I can anticipate, in fact, that some migration patterns, such as the Germans and Italians, will be similar to OTL, but others, mainly those resulting from diasporas determined by microhistorical occurrences - such as the pogroms in Russia that caused Jews to move to North America and the potato blight in Ireland - won't necessarily happen, at least not on the way we've seen IOTL), but by the late 19th Century the federal government will sponsor migrations by European ethnicities, using the same gamble the USA did: offering cheap land and "work" opportunities for those escaping the conflicts of the Old World.
This won't necessarily mean, however, that these groups will go to settle en masse in the Brazilian heartland, like it happened in the American Midwest and in Argentinian Patagonia (I'm thinking about that Welsh community in Chubut. There was a great TL about them in this forum). The climate, the environment and the fact that - as will be explained in future issues - the soil is relatively poor for agriculture will provoke a cannalization of the immigration waves to the South and the Southeast, like it happened IOTL (where most immigrants settled in Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo). The main divergence, in this regard, lies in the fact that Brazil has the control of Uruguay/Banda Oriental, a prime ground for cattle breeding, and whose climate is much more suitable to Europeans coming from temperate areas. We can expect Brazilian Banda Oriental being a powerful "magnet" for immigration, thus greatly increasing the already substantial strategic value of the region to the federal government.
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I don't know if a Settlement Law can be truly successful without facing the problem of the sesmaria system. In OTL the Lei de Terras happened to be a complete economic failure, someting in the same lines of the US' Homestead Acts would eventually solve the land problem in Brazil, however, something as radical as a Brazilian Homestead Act would be completely detrimental to the landholding elite.
A very good question! I imagine the answer must be, at first, affirmative, but we have to take in mind some aspects of the matter. The institution of slavery itself will remain for some time even after the slave trafficking is (forcibly) put to an end (soon enough, as we'll see), so there won't necessarily be a shortage of African workforce immediately after. There is, of course, an economic incentive for enslaving Indians, but, on the other hand, for those migrants with more substantial resources will have the means to simply bring their own already enslaved blacks to settle in the backcountry. As soon as the Indians put up some resistance - and they will, as they always did, in spite of the white supremacist ideology that the Amerindians were "lazy" and had no fitness for hardwork - this reduces the interest in prosecuting enslavement campaigns against aboriginals like the Bandeirantes did in the 17th Century. In fact, one of the causes of the introduction of African slavery in Portuguese America was exactly the fact that it had become more profitable in the long run to bring Africans than war with the Indians.
Besides, even if economic interests usually override social, cultural and religious premises, Brazil has a centuries-long "taboo" (I'm using this word for lack of a better one) against the enslavement of the indigenous peoples due to the influence of the Catholic Church. The Jesuist were the first champions of the cause of the Indians against colonial abuse, but the Church as a whole in Brazil defended the same cause... all while using Biblical justifications to permit the enslavement of Africans (much like what happened in the pro-slave states of the US).
There is also the fact that, at least in the first decades of this new colonial wave, the main economic activity will be cattle grazing, which does not demands the use of heavy workforce like the cultivation of plantations, and so the trend will be for the employment of free (even if poor) men.
Finally, once the federal government takes steps to effectivelly abolish slavery as an institution, it will be in force for both African-descended peoples and Amerindians.
There are always coolies.
I must agree with St. Just in this one. Coolies made more sense in the context of the British colonial empire, as the same British economic interests that operated on South America and the Caribbean could count on a reliable network of workforce "importation" from far Asia (the same for the US, I suppose, with the Chinese diaspora in the Pacific coastline). This is not the case of Brazil - at least not until the late 19th Century.
Nevertheless, I predict that indentured servitute will be an issue and a reliable substitute for African slavery. Cruel as it may, the targets of these abuses will usually be freed blacks, mulattoes, poor immigrants (mainly the non-specialized workers coming from Mediterranean Europe or even Asia itself), considering that the government will not, until the 20th Century, give any kinds of incentives to stop this practice. Peasantry and proletariat submitted to subhuman work conditions, after all, was an universal problem, that happened in Mexico much like in China and Russia, and, IOTL, became a powerful drive for revolutionary movements. ITTL, it won't be different, but you'll have to see the ideas I have for these subjects in later chapters.
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That's an interesting observation.
Regarding the sesmarias itself, I indeed failed to address this subject on any chapter yet, but I figure that, unlike OTL, in which the Brazilian Empire came more or less as a "continuum" of the political, economic and social trends of the Portuguese colonial empire, the Republican Brazil of TTL experienced a complete rupture with the legal and economic framework of the colonial organization. This means that even if not directly especified by a legal code, the sesmarias system was de facto effectively abolished in 1819.
This doesn't changes the fact, obviously, that Brazil has a serious problem with land distribution. The majority of productive lands are owned by plantation owners interested only in the production of raw goods for the external market - sugar, cotton, tobacco, and now coffee (with meat and leather included in the same package, in spite of the fact that cattle-grazing activity has a distinct modus operandi). This will obviously present a problem for future statesmen more interested in advancing a "homestead-like" colonization project - and they WILL be inspired in the North-American model, successful in the US and in Canada - clashing with the interests of the coffee oligarchy.
Agrarian reform will be a topic discussed until the 20th Century, it won't be solved in the 19th, unfortunately, but we will see, in due time, the appearance of more "progressive" (by 19th Century's standards) leaders determined to disturb this status quo.
I have nominated this TL for a Turtledove an it needs a second to spread glorious Brazilian democracy across the globe.
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...nominations-and-seconds.408092/#post-14042762
https://www.alternatehistory.com/fo...nominations-and-seconds.408092/#post-14042762
Thank you, my friend @King of the Uzbeks! I can't tell you how I appreciate this, and it's very good to see that you are still with us in this journey in ATL-History. Hope someone volunteers to be a Second
EDIT: @Workable Goblin seconded the nomination. Thank you very much! I'm really happy that you guys are giving this support. Hope we can match these great other TL's published in this Forum.
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24. No Calm Before the Storm (1829-1830)
1. The Census’ Insurrections of 1830
One of President Mena Barreto’s earlier projects had been the execution of a nation-wide census to collect information regarding the races of Brazil and their condition, mainly for fiscal purposes (as it might allow for a more efficient tax policy), but also a military objective, to assess the overall pool of manpower. It seems that he intended to start it during his second term, but the outbreak of the Second War in Banda Oriental made him change his plans, and the project for the census was abandoned.
The idea, however, was not, and Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, convinced by his Minister of the Treasury, decided to undertake this massive work. The preliminary frame devised it to last for at least five years, considering the continental dimensions of Brazil, and the necessity of implementing the researches by different regions at a time to allow a more reliable harvest of data.
The census was supposed to amass information about the following issues: race; number of sons and daughters; quantity of slaves, cattle, and other goods; size of real estate and availability to military duties. The basic parameter of data collection would be the “household”, that is, each settlement would be evaluated taking by perspective each family’s patriarch, with the wives and children being considered appendices to this familial structure. This would obviously ease the effort of collection information, especially by the fact that, in the inevitable cases in which some basic data could not be appropriately evaluated, the census’ project created some methods of “inferring” or extrapolating the lacking statistics.
Painting of a census taker in the interior of São Paulo in 1830
What Inácio Joaquim Monteiro could not have foreseen was that a combination of factors, namely the overall ignorance of the population (especially from the lowest strata of society), as well as the sheer ineptitude of the public officers charged with undertaking the census, would spark a series of minor insurrections, especially in the countryside. It certainly did not help that, in most of the places, the agents that visited the households, asking suspicious questions and demanding entrance to survey properties, were usually the tax collectors that usually operated in the same districts. The citizens can hardly be blamed, then, by presupposing that the government intended to increase fiscal burdens, or, in some places, according to rumors, they feared that a wave of confiscations would take place.
None of the uprisings escalated into a large revolt; in some cases, it involved barely a dozen protesters, but, on other places, more substantial groups were formed, usually by the influence of parochial religious or even political leaders. By 1830, the number of protests against the measure had spiked enough to warrant the attention of the Federal Government, especially because, fearing the exasperation of the population in a year close to the general elections, some mayors, district sheriffs and even governors refused to leave the census’ agents operating in their places.
Ironically, the largest revolt occurred in São Paulo, the President’s home state, in the district of Sorocaba, inhabited by a community of ranchers reverential to their own commerce, which they believed to be threatened by an undesired interference of the government. The rebels were dissolved after a brief skirmish with the State Militia, ordered to attack by the Governor of São Paulo, but the whole situation created a sour taste in the mouth of the region's electors, who would be certain of manifesting their discontent in the Election of 1831.
The census was discontinued due to the advent of the Atlantic War in 1830, but it would be resumed in the next years by Inácio Joaquim Monteiro’s successor in Presidency.
None of the uprisings escalated into a large revolt; in some cases, it involved barely a dozen protesters, but, on other places, more substantial groups were formed, usually by the influence of parochial religious or even political leaders. By 1830, the number of protests against the measure had spiked enough to warrant the attention of the Federal Government, especially because, fearing the exasperation of the population in a year close to the general elections, some mayors, district sheriffs and even governors refused to leave the census’ agents operating in their places.
Ironically, the largest revolt occurred in São Paulo, the President’s home state, in the district of Sorocaba, inhabited by a community of ranchers reverential to their own commerce, which they believed to be threatened by an undesired interference of the government. The rebels were dissolved after a brief skirmish with the State Militia, ordered to attack by the Governor of São Paulo, but the whole situation created a sour taste in the mouth of the region's electors, who would be certain of manifesting their discontent in the Election of 1831.
The census was discontinued due to the advent of the Atlantic War in 1830, but it would be resumed in the next years by Inácio Joaquim Monteiro’s successor in Presidency.
2. The Conspiracy against the Northeast
The President, supported by a competent Cabinet of Ministers and various consultants, insisted during his term’s years in a very austere administration to reduce expenditure and thus allow the country’s economy to recover from financial debt, and successfully increased revenues by adopting a more protectionist policy, increasing tariffs and brokering new commercial treaties, attracting the attention of Dutch, Walloon and German entrepreneurs, the new competitors to the British commerce in South America. His purpose, like of many of his successors in Presidency, was be to overcome the heavy dependence on British exports, especially regarding industrialized goods such as textiles, firearms and machinery.
This meant, on the other hand, that many of the projects devised by Mena Barreto’s administration would have to be cut, especially the more ambitious ones, regarding the modernization of ports, the construction of a military fleet for the Brazilian Navy and the expansion of the roads. In fact, President Joaquim Monteiro preserved some of these ventures, albeit diminishing their scale. During his term, the paved road linking Porto Alegre (in Rio Grande do Sul) to São Paulo was finally concluded, a necessary undertaking to foster the transportation of meat and milk from the Pampas to the army stationed in the frontier in Matto Grosso.
The revocation of Mena Barreto’s last hour decree to hamper slave trafficking created a lot of goodwill in the majority of the Parliament. Yet, realizing that a camouflaged counteraction to the British interference regarding slave trafficking would soon generate reprisals from the government in London, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, even despite his personal stance on the matter, decided to propose his own bill to regulate the transatlantic trade of “African livestock”. It was a more conservative arrangement, which emphasized the liberty of slaver ships to operate in the Atlantic Sea, but proposed a gradual termination of the practice by a yearly increase in taxation and reduction of the quantity of imported slaves. It took some months, but the bill was approved by a thin majority, but it would only enter in force from 1832 onwards, which his party considered to be a success.
Joaquim Monteiro’s idyll was, however, suddenly finished by the unexpected outbreak of a political scandal in his Cabinet, in November 1829.
One of his most trusted Ministers, Paulo Eduardo Freire de Fonseca, had for some years been romantically involved with a theater actress from Bahia, known simply as “Morena”, unaware that she was an acquaintance of Marcelo Morgado, an aspiring newspaper editor in Salvador.
This meant, on the other hand, that many of the projects devised by Mena Barreto’s administration would have to be cut, especially the more ambitious ones, regarding the modernization of ports, the construction of a military fleet for the Brazilian Navy and the expansion of the roads. In fact, President Joaquim Monteiro preserved some of these ventures, albeit diminishing their scale. During his term, the paved road linking Porto Alegre (in Rio Grande do Sul) to São Paulo was finally concluded, a necessary undertaking to foster the transportation of meat and milk from the Pampas to the army stationed in the frontier in Matto Grosso.
The revocation of Mena Barreto’s last hour decree to hamper slave trafficking created a lot of goodwill in the majority of the Parliament. Yet, realizing that a camouflaged counteraction to the British interference regarding slave trafficking would soon generate reprisals from the government in London, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro, even despite his personal stance on the matter, decided to propose his own bill to regulate the transatlantic trade of “African livestock”. It was a more conservative arrangement, which emphasized the liberty of slaver ships to operate in the Atlantic Sea, but proposed a gradual termination of the practice by a yearly increase in taxation and reduction of the quantity of imported slaves. It took some months, but the bill was approved by a thin majority, but it would only enter in force from 1832 onwards, which his party considered to be a success.
Joaquim Monteiro’s idyll was, however, suddenly finished by the unexpected outbreak of a political scandal in his Cabinet, in November 1829.
One of his most trusted Ministers, Paulo Eduardo Freire de Fonseca, had for some years been romantically involved with a theater actress from Bahia, known simply as “Morena”, unaware that she was an acquaintance of Marcelo Morgado, an aspiring newspaper editor in Salvador.
In that month, Marcelo Morgado received a letter from Morena, in which she detailed a bedtime confession of the Minister, explaining that President Joaquim Monteiro had secretly drafted a bill with the purpose of merging the States of Rio Grande do Norte, Parahyba and Ceará into a single federative unit, and he intended to present this proposal to the Parliament at the end of his term, as soon as he obtained a safe majority in the Houses, considering that this matter demanded a constitutional amendment. With his maneuver, the President apparently hoped to create a strong electoral and parliamentary base to himself (during his predictable second term) and even to his partisans, who might attempt to hold political offices in those rich provinces. This would also create a powerful counterbalance of the great influence of Pernambuco and Bahia, whose immense population permitted each of them to choose many Members of the Parliament. For this to succeed, however, the President intended to prolong the federal provisory government in the three territories for as long as it was convenient, and bribed the judges in Rio de Janeiro to delay the trial of the incumbent Governors, Sebastião de Holanda Filho and Filipe Nóbrega de Valência, so as to prevent the rising of other political opponents in the region.
Needless to say, the diffusion of the Presidential’s plans by the melodramatic newspapers in Salvador seriously enervated the already agitated sociopolitical climate of the Northeastern States. In a matter of weeks, as the scandal spread across the country, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro saw himself suddenly fallen from a position of dominance in the government to a virtual ostracism, especially in the Parliament and in among the State Governorates. All the deputies and senators - from Bahia to Grão-Pará - unanimously denounced the strategy, exposed as a short-sighted political speculation, and were supported by voices coming from the Liberal Party, who vehemently vilified the proposal as an unconstitutional and shameful violation of the Federal Pact.
With some luck and more sensibility, the President might have prevented a collapse of his popularity in the Electoral College (especially in the Southern and Southeastern States, who secretly desired a republican balance in the Northeast) and salvaged some political support, but his increasingly blundered responses to the scandal in fact damaged his reputation.
The most sensitive subject became the very placement of the 4th Brazilian Corps. Representatives from Parahyba demanded that the army immediately retired from the occupation of Natal back to their headquarters in Piauhy, apparently distrusting the presence of a federal army in those circumstances. Of course, we must never forget that, in this early period of Brazilian republican History, there were but a few ties connecting the various peoples of Brazil, and the inhabitants of the Northeast Region still regarded themselves as a separate cultural and social group in comparison to those inhabiting the Southeastern and Southern parts of the nation, even if they were bound by the same language and by the dubious ribbon of the Federal Pact. The soldiers of the 4th Brazilian Corps were mostly from Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Bahia; now, more than ever, they were seen as a semi-foreign force of occupation, handicapping the self-determination of the citizens of Rio Grande do Norte, Parahyba and Ceará to prosecute an unconstitutional scheme.
The President relented on the subject, genuinely fearing that the lack of sizeable military force in an unstable region would welcome rebellions and schisms. His obvious attempts of delaying the decision only infuriated the already agitated representatives of the Northeastern States. Finally, only in 1830 did the 4th Brazilian Corps received its orders to return to their quarters in Piauhy, but Tomás Afonso Nogueira Gaspar was to remain in Natal with a garrison to govern the occupied regions.
Needless to say, the diffusion of the Presidential’s plans by the melodramatic newspapers in Salvador seriously enervated the already agitated sociopolitical climate of the Northeastern States. In a matter of weeks, as the scandal spread across the country, Inácio Joaquim Monteiro saw himself suddenly fallen from a position of dominance in the government to a virtual ostracism, especially in the Parliament and in among the State Governorates. All the deputies and senators - from Bahia to Grão-Pará - unanimously denounced the strategy, exposed as a short-sighted political speculation, and were supported by voices coming from the Liberal Party, who vehemently vilified the proposal as an unconstitutional and shameful violation of the Federal Pact.
With some luck and more sensibility, the President might have prevented a collapse of his popularity in the Electoral College (especially in the Southern and Southeastern States, who secretly desired a republican balance in the Northeast) and salvaged some political support, but his increasingly blundered responses to the scandal in fact damaged his reputation.
The most sensitive subject became the very placement of the 4th Brazilian Corps. Representatives from Parahyba demanded that the army immediately retired from the occupation of Natal back to their headquarters in Piauhy, apparently distrusting the presence of a federal army in those circumstances. Of course, we must never forget that, in this early period of Brazilian republican History, there were but a few ties connecting the various peoples of Brazil, and the inhabitants of the Northeast Region still regarded themselves as a separate cultural and social group in comparison to those inhabiting the Southeastern and Southern parts of the nation, even if they were bound by the same language and by the dubious ribbon of the Federal Pact. The soldiers of the 4th Brazilian Corps were mostly from Minas Gerais, São Paulo and Bahia; now, more than ever, they were seen as a semi-foreign force of occupation, handicapping the self-determination of the citizens of Rio Grande do Norte, Parahyba and Ceará to prosecute an unconstitutional scheme.
The President relented on the subject, genuinely fearing that the lack of sizeable military force in an unstable region would welcome rebellions and schisms. His obvious attempts of delaying the decision only infuriated the already agitated representatives of the Northeastern States. Finally, only in 1830 did the 4th Brazilian Corps received its orders to return to their quarters in Piauhy, but Tomás Afonso Nogueira Gaspar was to remain in Natal with a garrison to govern the occupied regions.
*****
In 1830, pressured by enraged factions in the Parliament and by the public opinion, President Inácio Joaquim Monteiro signed a formal declaration of war against the Kingdom of Portugal.
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