Witch0Winter
Banned
Where Hearts Were Entertaining June
At Last, An English Colony
POD: The English Armada doesn’t get stuck at Corunna and succeeds in beating Spain in 1589.
The roots of the United Kingdom of Brazil, one the supreme superpowers on the planet, can be traced back to its humble origin in 1589. After the successful repulse of the Spanish Armada by the Royal Navy, Queen Elizabeth sent a sizable armada under Francis Drake to force Spanish King Philip II into peace. The fleet sailed with 6 royal galleons, 60 English armed merchantmen, 60 Dutch flyboats, and about 20 pinnaces. In addition to a sizeable number of troops, there were 4,000 sailors and 1,500 officers and gentlemen adventurers. Drake led the fleet in his flagship Revenge from England down to the Bay of Biscay, where the English Armada razed cities on the coast and caused general mayhem for Spain.
The Armada’s first major setback occurred at the town of Corunna, Galicia. Drake had made to bypass the town of Santander for the Galician city and make only a quick stop, but the winds changed course and continued to blow only westerly. They kept up for three days, while the officers and soldiers grew antsy that it might continue on for some time while their supplies and advantages weakened. However, on the fourth day the winds changed course, and the English Armada successfully made their way south to Lisbon. In the Portuguese city, English soldiers made quick work of the Spanish garrison and began to raise a rebellion of Portuguese citizens. The rebellion’s popularity grew like wildfire, and soon most of the Portuguese countryside was raising up against the Spanish crown. Faced with this new complication and losing against the English on every front, Philip II at last agreed to talk peace terms in late 1589.
Queen Elizabeth sent envoys to Paris, as did Philip II, and the talks began. The terms wanted by each were harsh, but a deal was eventually made after tense negotiating. Seeing as it was a losing fight at that point in time, England agreed to drop their claims with Portugal for now, though not their actual alliance, and would drop their support of the rebellions. In exchange for this and for stopping the war, the troublesome Brazilian colony, formerly of Portugal, would be given to England. It would also be open to rebellious Portuguese, to keep them out of Spain’s territory. The terms were agreed upon by all, and in 1590 the Anglo-Spanish War concluded. However, not all was completely well. England hadn’t gotten all the terms it asked for, and the Portuguese African colonies were kept in vague terms, in a legal gray area between England and Spain. Whatever the matter, however, England suddenly found itself with a new colony.
While the acquisition of a large and fairly profitable colony, Queen Elizabeth—and by extension, England—felt on top of the world and like England was quickly earning its place in this brave new world. However, acquiring Brazil came with its own set of headaches. For one, English authority suddenly had to supplant decades of Portuguese authority. To do this, Queen Elizabeth appointed Sir Walter Raleigh as Governor of Brazil, tasked with enacting English Common Law on the colony and taking control of the 100,000 or so Portuguese colonists, including slaves. The sugar cane plantations had started to ruin under Spanish rule, and he was tasked with bringing them back up to peak efficiency. The newly-knighted Sir Francis Drake was put in charge of the new British West Indies Company, a company tasked with managing all English assets in the Americas.
Sir Walter Raleigh landed in Brazil in 1591, setting foot in the capital of the colony, Port Elizabeth—formerly Salvador de Bahia, the capital of Portuguese Brazil. The city, like the large town of Queenstown (formerly Recife) had been named in honor of Queen Elizabeth, who was widely celebrated through England for her victory over the Spanish Armada and the success of the English Armada.
The largest problem for the English with Brazil, at least initially, were the 100,000 colonists already occupying the colony who suddenly found themselves subjects of the English Crown. These numbers were further bolstered by 5,000 political dissidents from Portugal, shipped over by the Spanish. To alleviate this problem, Sir Walter Raleigh negotiated with Queen Elizabeth to begin sending as many English colonists as would come to the colony, offering them land and wealth in the New World. One of the strategies Raleigh used was to get only the more loyal colonists instead of religious dissenters or other rebellious types. The idea was to establish a class of loyal Englishmen who would fill out some of the upper class jobs in the New World like bankers, clerks, and merchants.
In 1594, the first colonists arrived in Port Elizabeth, consisting of a small fleet of ships carrying 1,000 men, women, and children and their supplies. Another one of Raleigh’s goals was to establish familial groups in Brazil rather than young men. He worried that too many brash young men in one place would tip the delicate balance of the colony out of order. Instead, poor yet skilled families were encouraged to emigrate from England to Brazil. Over the course of the next 6 years, close to 8,000 Englishmen would move to the new colony, mostly to the towns of Queenstown, Port Elizabeth, and Raleigh—formerly Rio de Janeiro—named after the governor despite his personal objections.
As the 16th century turned to the 17th, England had gone from a regional power to a nation spanning oceans and teeming with people ready to take advantage of all England had been given, driven by a charismatic queen. For England, it looked to be the start of a grand new century.
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