A New World with New Ideas - A Brazilian Timeline

[CobraFumante]

Chapter I - A Saint for every Soul

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An old man looks to the sea, its majestical blue waters alongside the bright sky fill his eyes with joy and happiness, he stops for a bit and contemplates on how his life has changed, he was so far from home and yet so close to it, for in the land he now lives he made his house, he ate his daily bread and prayed to the almighty god, best of all his ideas helped define a nation and changed its course forever stamping his footprint in the history books, he had a name as all people do, revered and acclaimed by all the inhabitants of the land who knew him, his name was Bartolomé de Las Casas and as his looks further into the ocean more and more memories come afloat of how things got this way.

It was November 11th 1484, there in the Spanish city of Seville Bartolomé was born, he was the son of Pedro de Las Casas a merchant who descended from French migrants who came to rebuild Seville after its conquest in 1248, Las Casas childhood is a mystery however with little to no sources on his early years, what we know is that Las Casas studied in Salomanca getting his degree there, by 1502 we know that him and his father travelled to the New World settling in the island of Hispaniola with Bartolomé participating in the expedition of Nicolás de Ovando[1], following his services as a Conquistador Las Casas earned an Ecomienda[2] and became a landowner and a slaver, during those year he would treat his servants with brutality and indifference to their suffering, even in 1510 when he became the first Catholic priest ordained in the Americas he still exploited the natives for his own monetary gain, however soon after the was ordained something happened that would change his life.

In September 1510 a group of Dominican fryers arrived on the island, they were disgusted by the practices of the Encomiendas, the whipping, rapes and constant abuses horrified the holy men, who preached sermons condemning the system and even denying confession to slavers which included Las Casas, furious Bartolomé and the other colonists petitioned the King of Spain and had the Dominicans removed, however they had planted the seeds of doubt in his head, Bartolomé would become ever more confused about the morality of his actions and the more the thought about it the more guilt he felt, finally in 1514 he changed his mind and freed his slaves while simultaneously preaching other to do the same, the colonists of the island then turned on Las Casas and had him removed from the island.

Back in Spain he continued to preach against slavery and the Ecomiendas, the upper classes did not like this as the money gathered from the Americas filled Spanish coffers alongside with their own pockets, (POD) so in 1517 a group of armed thugs stroke Las Casas after he gave a sermon criticizing slavery, the would-be assassins left the man severely injured however by the grace of god Las Casas lived, he went into hiding for an year before finally realizing that his country was no longer safe for him, so in 1518 Las Casas departed from Seville and arrived to the neighboring Kingdom of Portugal, more specifically he went to the court of El Rei[3] D.Manuel I of which the priest quickly gained the favor and even became close to the King’s son João, in 1521 Manuel died and was succeeded by João now called João III, the priest lived on Lisbon while also continuously fighting for native rights, it would be in 1533 when a peculiar letter arrived at the hands of the king, this letter would latter prove to have the most important question regarding the history of Portugal’s biggest colony.

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[1] The expedition consisted on the complete subjugation of the natives of Hispaniola
[2] For those who don’t know it’s a system on which the land of the Indigenous people were decided amongst the European conquerers with the natives living inside the Ecomiendas working without pay and becoming slaves
[3] This is how the Portuguese kings styled themselves the term comes from Galician-Portuguese and remained unchanged throughout the centuries

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter II - The most important choice

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In the year of 1533 the court of the Lusitanian kingdom was shocked by the arrival of a letter, said latter came from the colony of Portuguese America, despite of the highs Brazil has reached over the past century back then the place was a backwater, it didn’t produce the immense wealth that the Feitorias[1] of the East Indies produced nor the Gold and Ivory acquired in Africa, Brazil was by all means just an extra and not the main show, trying to fix this Pero de Gois, Captain-Mor da Costa do Brazil, requested El-Rei, the shipment of 17 Ethiopians[2] to his Captaincy of São-Thomas (Parahyba)[3], D.João was inclined to accept this until a voice raised in opposition.

Bartolomé rose upon hearing about the proposition and with vigor told the monarch not to accept the request of the Captain, upon hearing this some nobles protested this as a mere priest trying to subvert the merit of the King, however D.João ordered both sides to quiet down before letting Bartolomé speak his mind about this and why he shouldn’t accept it, so Bartolomé said:

B - “My Lord, it is unjust and ungodly of us to condemn these people to suffer for our own benefit, as you know I lived in Hispaniola and was a slaver myself, I saw the brutal conditions that this system of slavery imposes and I think it is not right for us to damn these souls to earthly suffering”

Upon hearing this a Noble answered :

N - “What do you care? They are heathens and don’t deserve gods love, they are animals who live in huts and eat raw meat, we shouldn’t threat Indians like our kin much less the Ethiopians”

In a fit of rage Bartolomé responded:

B - “Who are you to claim who deserves gods love? Weren’t we Barbarians who lived in huts before the light of Rome and Christ blessed us? These folk have no fault of being so far from the word of god, they have no fault in being ignorant to civilization when they are so far from it[4], we shouldn’t exploit them from what they are, rather we should teach them about what they can become, be they Indian or Ethiopian it’s our mission as the warriors of Christ to spread his word far and wide.

“But what about the extra wealth?” Said an unidentified Noble.

“What about it?” Answered Bartolomé.

B - “My Lord… do not let worldly ideas of gold and spices cloud your rightful judgement, for centuries to come the people will speak about this meeting, about how D.João III either saved or condemned two races to slavery and suffering, please my king make the right choice and give those people and their souls the ability to pass to heaven free of mistreatment and cruelty, please… say no to the letter.

After pondering the question for many hours the King of the Portuguese gave his definitive answer.

“No”.

The Indians and Ethiopians would not be condemned into slavery in his American possessions, for the King was the ultimate overlord of his West Indian holdings, he then went to his quarters to write and official response to the Captains stating that both the Red and Black skinned people were under their suzerain’s protection.

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[1] They have the same etymological origin as Factories and they mean “a place were things are made”
[2] The concept of Africa as the entire continent was not yet universal, some people called only the north of the continent as Africa while other called the Subsaharan part Ethiopia which literally means “Land of the Burned Face”
[3] Thomas was the Archaic Portuguese way of saying either Tomé or Tomás and also Parahyba was how it was written back then
[4] Despite how wholesome he is Las Casas still has some soft prejudice in the form of believing the Indians and Black weren’t really civilized and needed to be converted to be saved

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter III - A whole new world
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Since the “discovery” of Brazil by Pedro Álvares Cabral the it was never important, it didn’t have the mighty silver and gold deposits of Spanish America, nor the precious spices and fine crafts of the East, instead the colonies only export was the red coloured brazilwood, which allowed for the creation of red paint, the main color used by the nobility of Portugal, but even then, this amounted to nothing in comparison to what Portugal generated in its monopoly of the Spice trade, it fought various wars with the Ottomans and local Indian rulers to keep it that way, thus Brazil was relegated to a colony of secondary importance used only to gather wood and to resupply ships on their way eastward, however things changed with the arrival of the letter.

The fierce debate about wether they should import Ethiopian slaves or degrade the Indians to slave status was ultimately won by Bartolomé, who defended the rights of the Natives and Bantus against such system. However, such arrangement meant that the colony couldn’t develop in the same molds as those of the Spanish Americans, so even thought the king agreed to Las Casas proposal another alternative way of bringing people to Brazil would be needed, luckily for the Portuguese Las Casas already had something in mind, his plan, was to start a settlement scheme in which European farmers, poor street dwellers and unwanted minorities would be settled in Brazil, not only that he proposed going there personally in order to enforce the rights of both Natives and small colonists against the ruling elite, as well as stop the colonists from getting to angry at the colonial elites, with the plan being presented to João by the end of 1533 and put into action by 1534. With his idea finally approved, Las Casas went on to truly make it work, his first task would be to obtain settlers to well… settle, for that Las Casas ventured into the North of the kingdom more specifically the regions of Entre-Douro-e-Minho and Trás-os-Montes, whose mountainous nature made agriculture rather difficult and meant that good land was very concentrated, not only that the rural areas of such provinces were poorer and less developed than the regions around Cõymbra and Lisbõa[1] and also presented a problem of overpopulation, thus making eager volunteers flock to the port of Porto in order to make the travel to the lands beyond the Atlantic, Las Casas also convinced some Galician to come along the way, so on the 17th of June 1535 a fleet of 6 ships and 432 people left from Cõymbra and headed strait to Brazil, they arrived on the 10th of July at the city of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos alongside these colonist also sailed Las Casas who came to exercise his duties as Guardião dos Índios Ocidentais[2].

Before the colonists left for Brazil Las Casas and João were negotiating for Las Casas to have a position of power in the Portuguese America to better enforce the will of the King there, of course this needed to be well crafted otherwise there was the danger of the elites trying to murder Las Casas and the locals resentful of the elites, so while Las Casas could play the role of a benevolent saint who took care of the poor and oppressed, he also needed to attended some of the elites wishes and in general try to connect with them.

The arrival of the ships at Salvador was a game-changer if successful Las Casas would be able to prove that slavery was unnecessary and also prove that Brazil had a place on the Portuguese Empire, the new colonists were then sent to outside the city walls on farmland which was supposed to be used for slave-plantations but instead was being used by independent small farmers, Las Casas upon arrival went to speak directly to the Captain[3] and proclaimed his purposed and gave the governor a letter written by the king himself, the contents of the letter specified that Las Casas was to ensured that the colonists, elites and Indians all were satisfied and to let no one oppress the other, the message was then dispatched to all the other Captains, afterward he went to meet the Cacique[4] of the local Tupinambá tribe and established accords of mutual cooperation between Europeans and Natives, amongst these were accords upon commerce of goods and the settlement of further Europeans, this particular part stipulated that the land needed to be bought from the tribe before settlers were able to come, within a few days Las Casas was able to make an ally securing the lives of the colonists and guaranteeing aid in the the Captains got some rebellious ideas.

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[1] The old Portuguese way of referring to Coimbra and Lisboa
[2] Guardian of the West Indians
[3] Back then Brazil was divided into hereditary Captaincies and who ruled them was a Captain
[4] In Spanish at least it can mean someone who is powerful but in Portuguese (at least Brazilian Portuguese) it is simply a tribal chief

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter IV - Olá Sertão
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With the first fleet of colonists arriving in Salvador also came in new things, chief amongst these was that the Captains now had a new class of people to deal with, since they were Portuguese or Galician they couldn’t be enslaved nor forced into servitude, this would be a major headache for the Captains later on, for now they simply waited to see how things turned out.

After the success of the first fleet and their acquiring of new land more and more Portuguese and Galicians made the journey overseas, in 1536 up to 356 new colonists arrived, by 1537 some 419 got there and the number kept getting higher. The colonists for the most part avoided the cities as most of them were from rural areas and mostly just wanted to gain plots of land for themselves, the make-up of those settlers was also not quite diverse as during the first 50 years of colonization, about 90% of all settlers would be Portuguese and Galician (collectively known as Lusos[1]) and from these 90%, around 80% would come from Trás-os-Montes and Dentre-Ouro-e-Minho and some 10~15% would come from Galicia, with the proportion of Galicians steadily rising throughout the decades, in general, the Lusos would make the overwhelming majority of free settlers until the reign of King Sebastian I and be the dominant culture for all of colonial Brazil. The second group was made of the Conversos[2] which was composed of former Sephardic Jews who converted to Christianity or Jews who lied about their conversion, thus most Sephardics who came to Brazil were usually sent in the form of Degredados[3] as the Portuguese State could acuse them of just about anything and then send them to Brazil, the community at first was highly insular and disliked contact with the Lusos, however after a decade or two they began to formally integrate.

Culturally speaking, the the Northern Lusos were by far the most influential group of settlers, their dialect for instance would form the basis for what would eventually be the Brazilian dialect of Portuguese, not only that but the clothings, traditions and toponyms show an overwhelming northern influence. This overwhelming cultural influence, often meant that other non-urban groups of people would integrate into this dominant northern luso culture rather than the more prestigious culture of the urban elites, this is seen clearly in the Conversos, who, over the decades abandoned their unique Judeo-Portuguese language and culture and instead adopted the luso language and culture, the result of which was that both groups heavily intermarrying with each other, a phenomenon which is very well attested as we have numerous letters from priests complaint about Christian men and women marrying with Sephardic men and women, this also meant that white people in the Brazilian northeast tend to have some Middle Eastern admixture to them.

Bartolomé meanwhile was spending his time negotiating with Indian tribes and local Captains for peaceful coexistence, both sides had something to gain as the Natives were dwindling in population ever since the Europeans arrived, many had acquired Old World diseases and tribes perished in the tens of thousands, Las Casas which already experienced this phenomenon back in Hispaniola was keen on protecting the Indians, the Captains meanwhile lacked the men and material to push the Indians back and hoped that Las Casas could keep the “savages” at bay. Las Casas also spent time with the growing immigrant populations and helping them, during the 1550’s religious orders like the Jesuits and Dominicans arrived on the colony in great numbers, Bartolomé used those orders to not only baptize the Natives but to also offer education to the colonists[4] and also church service, as a result multiple churches were constructed throughout the colony with every little town required to have a church and a priest, a position of great power due to the extreme religiosity of settlers as well as the fact that priests were the ones in charge of making people how to read and write.

Keep in mind however that not all tribes saw this with good eyes, the Caeté and Tabajara tribes were not friendly to Las Casas nor the Portuguese and launched frequent raids against farms and small settlements of Pernambuco and Itamaracá, unfortunately for the Indians such raids often brought back European diseases of which the natives had no immunity, the result was that entire villages were left deserted as plague and death swept trough their populations. After they were weakened, the Portuguese began their counter-attack as they began raiding their enemies lands and stripping them of their valuables, however during these raids no slaves were taken as Las Casas was determined to not let any Indian to be taken, eventually the Portuguese led a group of Portuguese Regulars, European Militias and Native Allies into the enemy heartland, the resuiltimg conflict was bloody but short as the European advantage in horses, iron and gunpowder allowed for them to quickly secure victory and capitulate their enemies, the resulting war was dubbed the “Savage War” allowed for the Portuguese to take control over huge swaths of land in the north as they exposed harsh treaties upon their defeated enemies, this new free land was later allocated for incoming settlers and basically set the precedent on how Portuguese expansion into Brazil was going to be.

Since we are already talking about Indian-Portuguese relations, it would be wise to present you guys to another group of people that would define early Brazilian history, the Mestiços, a group of people descended from the unions between Europeans and Native-Americans. Their origins however are a not very colorful, Mestiços were usually the result of unions between European men and Amerindian women and in a lot of cases such relations were not consensual as some times you could see young men (usually between the ages of 18-25) “marrying” Indian girls who were often under 18, this is once again something well documented as we have loads of letter of angry priests who were rambling about the Portuguese men basically walking into the Sertão[6] and taking multiple wives for themselves. This, is of course not to say that there weren’t unions between Indian men and White women, it’s just that the latter were much rarer than the former, this is usually attributed to some factors like the fact that between the 1500s-1550’s white men constitute between 60~70% of the white population and thus had a lack of women, this coupled societal pressures put upon females generally made it very hard for them to go and marry Indians and basically resulted in Mestiços being overwhelmingly made out of white males and Indian females.

By 1560 the Portuguese hold on Brazil was basically solidified, there were many Lusos living alongside the vast Brazilian coast, the new race of mixed people usually integrated into Luso culture and thus worked with the Portuguese as translators and merchants. and many native tribes basically allied themselves with the Portuguese after European diseases devastated their populations and made them incredibly vulnerable to attacks from native tribes, thus resulting in a colony that while still in its infancy would grow into becoming something much grander

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[1] This world will be used to refer to Portuguese and Galicians living in the new world before the term Mazombo appear
[2] Conversos were Jews forcefully converted to Christianity, they were usually of mixed European-Levantine backgrounds and were very persecuted even after converting
[3] A Portuguese word for criminal/guilty person
[4] Literacy Rates between the colonists were already kinda low since they usually came from humble backgrounds, literacy rates would drop even further as there was simply no incentive to learn how to read and write
[5] The Portuguese word for mixed, in this case someone of mixed-race
[6] Portuguese word which means Hinterland

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter V - Brazilian Feudalism

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When people hear the word feudalism they think about medieval Europe with the nobles and their castles, this image sometimes is more romanticized then others, but at its core Feudalism is decentralization of power and in no place was this more the case than early Brazil, this was in due part because of a system known as the Capitanias Hereditárias (the Hereditary Capitancies), a political system created by the king of Portugal in order to more effectively administer the gigantic colony of Brazil. The system worked as such, the king would split the colony into multiple stretches of land, then give said stretches to someone (usually the lower nobility) known as a Captain and basically turning them into feudal lords who ruled over the land in the name of the king with absolute authority, they were then supposed to develop the land as they saw fit, which usually meant giving land to other people which would then make money and then tax said money to then finally send it to Portugal.

With the arrival of Portuguese and Galician colonists the system begun to evolve even further to a proto-feudalism, the colonists who migrated to the interior created vilas[1] and to create each new vila had to be the Captain needed not only to approve of if but then send a Coronel[2] to oversee the community, he would provide the local Captaincy with tax money and also locally grown products (while pocketing some money for himself) and in turn the Coronel would have control over the community doing so in the name of then Captain, the local Coronel also had to provide religious service to the people and so each vila had a church where sermons were given, these sermons were conducted in Portuguese so as to allow for the peasantry who had very low literacy rates[3] to comprehend what they were being taught. The result, was that early northeastern Brazil really resembled the feudal social-structures, however there were some starch contrasts between this system and European feudalism, namely that the “peasants” were not bound to the land and could leave it whenever they pleased, not only that but they could also carry firearms which was considered essential to be able to live in the frontier.

Thus this period of Brazilian history was fittingly known as Coronelismo, we even had an exact date to when it began, 12th of May 1550, on that day Joaquim Soares de Souza a minor noblemen born in Portugal travelled to the New World more specifically the Captaincy of Pernambuco, he was friends with then captain Duarte Coelho who gave him a plot of land surrounding Vila de Nova Esperança[4] and gave him the ability to do as he pleases there. This process would continue until until 1748 when the role of Colonel was officially abolished by the government in Lisbon, however the system itself began to decline by the beginning of the 17th century and by the time of its abolishion was basically a shell of its former self as the Colonel had by this point been stripped of most of its powers.

The system of Coronelismo however was only really present in settlements close to the capitancies’ seats of power, the further you travelled from the capitals the more independent and autonomous were these settlements, some didn’t even have Coronels and lived independently from any central authority and in many cases didn’t even pay taxes as no government authority ever came to their settlement, these isolated communities also had an even lower literacy rate as establishing actual church services was much harder and in many times was seen as not worth it, the law was also much different from what was practiced along the bigger/costal settlements, laws were more of a set of customs and norms that were imposed by family groups and were more akin to the tribal societies of the Amerindians but with a touch of Europeaness, another problem these settlements had was that they were frequent victims of hostile raids by enemy tribes who in most cases took the population as captives, but all in all these far away settlements were also a beacon of mixing as Índios and Mestiços made a huge part if not a majority of the population of those towns, which basically meant that whites more often than not cohabitated him them and intermarried with them at rates far greater than in the Brazilian coast.

This system would continue like that for a long time before being ultimately dismantled, it left a mark on Brazilian culture which can be seen to this day when comparing rural communities to bigger cities and is a topic constantly studied by schools all over the country.

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[1] Settlements of between 500 to 5,000 people
[2] AKA a Colonel
[3] Literacy rates actually fell in places like New France (which I’m trying to emulate) as people were mostly farmers and so literacy was not something deemed necessary
[4] Village of New Hope located in Rio Doce a neighborhood of the city of Olinda - PE

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter VI - We are not alone

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To say that Portugal was the only European nation with interests in the sunny beaches of Terra da Vera Cruz[1] would be wrong, other nations looked at the colony with hungry eyes ready to take a bite whenever the opportunity presented itself. Throughout, the 16th century as Portuguese ships transported the lucrative Brazil-wood from the Feitorias on the coast and to the Metropolis, French pirates and corsairs from Normandy and Brittany, began raiding those Atlantic transports and seizing its cargo, as a response the Portuguese government began heavily patrolling the South Atlantic waters, however even with Portugal’s undisputed dominance of the seas piracy continued. As Portuguese and Galician settlers began moving into the colony and establishing settlements along the coast, French pirates began diverging their efforts from capturing Portuguese ships and instead went on to sack and pillage costal towns. As a response, the Portuguese authorities allowed for the construction of defensive works around the Capitancies’ capitals, however most of these consisted of wooden palisades which only did the bare minimum at scaring away pirates, the exception to this however was Salvador, which possessed walls of stone and mortar as well as a regular Portuguese garrison and was thus, impervious to attacks from French pirates.

Due to the increase in fortifications of the seats of power in Brazil, small towns that formed around them also began receiving protection, thus with the increased difficult of conducting raids in Brazil, pirate activity in Brazilian shores drastically decreased over the incoming decades. Weirdly enough however, was the fact that some French pirates that found no hope of raiding Brazil, decided instead to settle there and join their “enemies”. The Normans and Brentons integrated pretty well, they took Portuguese or Indian wives, they learned to speak the local dialect of Portuguese, raised their children in a Portuguese manner and over the decades vanished as a distinct identity. It is believed that about 200 French pirates settled in Brazil and left a small but noticeable influence in the Brazilian northeast, be it linguistical, cultural or genetic.

Despite all of this other European powers never made any bold attempts at colonization, until now… “On November 1st 1555 a group of French Huguenots under French admiral Nicholas Villegaignon who, left their homeland in France due to the need for a Protestant haven in which they could prosper, formed a fort at the bay of Guanabara on the Captaincy of São Vicente, they named their settlement Fort Coligny and from there created a French colony on the New World. The colony in the beginning struggled, as their colonial site was located in island without access to fresh water and thus were entirely dependent on the natives to bring them supplies, however this meant that the settlement couldn’t remain a mystery for long and soon it was bound to be found, this happened on the 28th of November when a Portuguese man named Rodrigo Vincente, spotted the settlement while walking alongside the Guanabaran beaches with his native wife Iara.

Due to the poor communication and infrastructure of Brazil, word of the French fort would only arrive in Salvador by January 1557, once the news of the French enclave were made known to the Captains they started to organize a response, a letter was sent to Lisboa requesting arms, ammunition and men to dislodge the French once and for all, the necessary forces arrived by August and coupled with local Luso, Mestiço and Indian forces departed from Salvador on the 23rd with a force of 2,500 men and 36 warships.

The Portuguese forces arrived at Fort Coligny on the 4th of May of the next year and set camp on the outskirts of the bay, the Huguenots tried to dislodge the Portuguese by employing night attacks on their camps but had little effect, on the 8th of May the Lusitanians started barraging the fort with the 3 cannons they had brought with them, the wooden palisade was quickly turned into dust and the colony became wide open, the Portuguese tried storming the settlement but had little success, they tried it again but had similar results, seeing that they wouldn’t be able to overcome the French before dusk the Portuguese decided to retreat to their camp, on the dead of night the French slipped trough the Portuguese patrols and took position on the top of the hills surrounding the bay, the commotion of the moving French woke up the Portuguese who now saw that the French had the advantage of high ground, the assault on the Fort quickly turned into a siege of the hills which was only broken when Indian and Mestiço troops sneaked into the hills and expelled the French from it, in open ground the French were soundly beaten and befor Edson had surrendered.”

Battle of Fort Coligny, video made by Kings and Generals​

On the aftermath of the battle only 100 French colonists remained, rather then sending them home the local Captain saw fit to allow the French to continue living there provided they swore loyalty to the crown of Portugal, Fort Coligny was later renamed to São Sebastião da Vitória which was shortened to just São Sebastião, after that no other European power would try to colonize the south of the colony

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[1] The very first name the Portuguese gave to the land before “Brazil” was a thing

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter VII - Reforms, Reforms and Reforms​

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In the wake of the expulsion of the French from Guanabara it became evident to the Portuguese crown that change was needed, first of all the local forces weren’t able to expel the invaders on their own rather they needed assistance from the metropolis, second the various capitaincies were far to decentralize to coordinate amongst themselves which required Portuguese interference yet again, third was the colony’s lack of strength both militarily and economically which hindered its ability to fight back, it was agreed that this needed to change.

In 1559 the Portuguese crown appointed Mem de Sá[1] as the first governor-general of Brazil, he was to coordinate with the Captains and become the official representative of the Monarch on the Americas, meanwhile Las Casas which until them had done a pretty good job at his position was ordered to teach Mem de Sá on the colonial affairs, including but not limited to, relations with the Indians, management of the Luso population, the defende against pirates and other Europeans as well as the colonies finances. It was a difficult task but de Sá dived head-first into the various colonial problems, within his 5 year governorship he created new rodes connecting Salvador to other cities which allowed for orders to travel much faster, as well as providing troops more effective means of transport, he also expanded the port of Salvador allowing for it to become the most important stopping point between the Cape of Good Hope and Portugal, he reformed the bureaucracy to become more effective and took away the Captains power to create new settlements allowing any person to create a new village without the approval of the local Captain, this was also the first nail on the coffin of “Brazilian Feudalism”, after 5 years of service Mem de Sá decided to retire and was replaced by Joaquin da Silva[2].

To diminish the colonial need for Portuguese troops constant interventions, it was agreed to create a militia system to serve the Colony’s military needs, under this system all men between the ages of 18 and 60 were to report to their local priest for service, in times of need they would be called for service and join other forces in operations, this system would continue to exist until 1910 and it served its purpose, manpower was no longer an issue and as the population exploded in numbers the security of the colony also increased as the able-bodied population soared, this greatly diminished the need for Portuguese regulars leaving to the locals to defend their land.

In order to fix the economical and military weaknesses of Brazil D.Sebastião ordered for the creation of the first large forges of the colony, this was done to alleviate the need for iron imports, latter a gunpowder mil was created, both of these were able to supply the colonial troops with ammunition as well as other civilian needs, another step taken was the creation of a naval supplies depot which would aid the Portuguese navy in any given conflict.

These reforms were very successful and managed to turn Brazil from mere territories protected only by the ocean to a force able to respond to threats at any given time, all in order to secure his majesty’s empire safety.



[1] OTL he was the third Governor General of Brazil, here due to butterfly effect the position of governor-general is established much latter and de Sá ends up being the first governor.
[2] Guy I just invented.

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter VIII - Goodnight sweet Priest
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Since the French were expelled from Guanabara the colony had experienced a period of peace and tranquility which allowed for the colony to boom even further in its development, the first thing done was the creation of the Lei do Sertão which sought to create numerous settlements alongside the Rio São Pedro[1], these colonies were created in an effort to create trading post further inland as well as surround Salvador with villages which acted as first lines of defense in case of an attack on the capital of the colony, the first of these settlements was the Arraial de Anissa Senhora[2] a mere 6,2 miles from the city, over a period of 10 years over 102 small settlements were created, most of these were farmsteads or small communities of only 5 families but they continued to sprawl and grow filling the Brazilian northeast.

In the commercial sector the port of Olinda was also upgrade to resupply Portuguese ships on their way to India, this created a rivalry between the cities of Salvador and Olinda as both battled for the immense profits the spice-trade generated, to further this rivalry was the creation of olinda’s own forging complex as well as the creation of an official fort just outside the city, this privilege had until no only been given to Salvador.

However lets stop talking only about the Northeast and focus on the south of the colony, before even the French settlement of Guanabara the Portuguese had already a sizable number of settlements in the area, chief amongst these was São Vicente[3], close to the city of Santos and close as well to a nearby mission called Missão do Tietê which was later shortened to Tietê[4], the however also had problems, chief amongst these was its much smaller population in comparison to the Northeast, the Mestiço population also was bigger proportion wise as people settling here weren’t usually composed of family groups but rather groups of young Conquistadores, they often clashed with the local Indians and gained a bad reputation both amongst the Indians and the North as they frequently stole Indian girls to be their wives.

Things however wouldn’t always be so bright, in 1566 Las Casas the man who had convicted the king to safeguard the rights of the Indians and reject the importation of African slaves passed away, eventually he was canonized as a Saint and eventually become the Patron Saint of Brazil, his death shocked the colony and efforts were made to contact even the most distant peoples, be they European, Mestiço or Indian, his funeral was accompanied by a full week of mourning and so went one of the greatest heroes on the history of the colony.

However his death also showed something, Brazil was more decentralized then previously thought, the General-Government’s reforms had created new problems, for one the vilas, arraials and freguesias[5] which were essentially independent from the Captains, the creation of Câmaras Municipais[6] allowed for the cities to better trupe themselves took away most power from the Captains, although this was though as a way to undermine the Captains and strengthen the Governor allowed for these towns to grow as powerful as the Captains, this created dozens of problems as tax-fraud reports arrived in huge numbers, an even greater problem for the central government was that there was no immediate solution, there was nothing that could replace this system as there was simply not enough government employees to keep exercising authority over the hundreds of hamlets, this was something that they would be something that governors would need to accept until the 18th century.

To add up to all of this the local Cariri[7] tribes had unified under a single king, his native name was lost but we still remember him by his baptism name Árua, he was not a friend of the Portuguese tough and was looking for a chance to strike at his enemy and hopefully drive the white devil into the ocean however he couldn’t withstand the full might of the Portuguese and needed a distraction to begin his attack, the Portuguese side was not much better as the Captains also despised his defiance of the crown of Portugal and wished to crush him, but their lack of power stopped them before they could do anything, this changed in 1576 when a young explorer by the name of Guilherme seduced the daughter of the Cacique, the woman who was only a little younger then him was dissatisfied with her arranged marriage to a Cariri noble and so fled with him back to his home in the Captaincy of Pernambuco, Árua was furious at this betrayal and swore to kill both of them as well as all the Portuguese on the continent… keep in mind that all of our sources on this war comes from the Portuguese so this story above might be entirely fake, but we will never really know.



[1] TTL version of the Rio São Francisco
[2] TTL version of Itacarama, also an Arraial is a settlement of between 10 to 100 people
[3] This is actually the first Portuguese town here in Brazil
[4] TTL version of São Paulo
[5] A settlement of between 100 to 500 people
[6] A chamber where the leading members of their community would convene to govern their settlement
[7] An Indigenous linguistic group which lives in the interior of the Northeast

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter IX - War Never Changes​

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Although during Las Casas overseeing of the colonies relations with the Natives were amicable there were always enemies, those who never saw the Portuguese as allies, but invaders keen on taking their land (Not entirely untrue), the Cariri where one of those enemies, as they saw the Portuguese cultivating good relations with the Tupis[1] as a clear indication of their true intentions, so throughout the 1560’s the Cariri launched numerous raids and incursions against the Portuguese colonies in Brazil, at first they attacked settlements who were isolated from any form of reinforcements, but then they got bolder and begun attacking arraials and other forms of settlements, full scale war was only avoided due to Las Casas intervention, but now he was dead and after the princess departed with her Portuguese lover the Indians decided to strike and war became inevitable. This is the story about how love created conflict, conflict between to states who hates each other and schemed to have the other destroyed, this is the tales of the Cariri War.

With the declaration of war by the Indians the Captains cheered at this opportunity to showcase their valor and obtain personal glory and prestige, so they readily ordered the militias to start assembling, the Governor-General gave orders for the Portuguese Regulars to be ready for conflict, but what happened they could have never seen, the Cariri stroke first with surprising speed and prowess as to the Cariri’s advantage, they had already been planning on fighting the Portuguese for quite a while so when they attacked they were prepared. Their first course of action was to take lightly fortified settlements close to their territory and from there encircle and attack bigger ones, their first “battle” was when they arrived at Forte Galego[2] whose wooden palisades and fewer than 10 defenders were no match for the hundreds of veteran Indians, from Forte Galego they begun to move along the Rio São Pedro and during their march they burned down any settlement they saw with the people inside either being killed or enslaved[3], however as they moved on and found increasingly well fortified and well armed settlements their advance slowed down, such as the attack on Arraial del-Rei D. Miguel[4] where the city had a stone “citadel” which resisted Indian attacks for over 2 months before succumbing, they continued to press on and take many settlements however they found themselves against a Portuguese stone-fort maned by Portuguese regulars who managed to resist every attempted attack by the Indians, although their advanced was stoped they would continue to raid into Brazilian territory for the rest of the year.

In Salvador the situation was one of chaos, as the Cariri advanced further and further there was a real fear that settlements like Santíssima Virgem[5] would fall paving the way for an attack on Salvador itself, but the attack never came, as the Cariri advance was stopped in its tracks near Forte D.Henrique[6], finally able to catch a break the Colonial government issued a mobilization decree and the beginning of preparations for a general counter-attack, by the arrival of Christmas a force of around 5,000 men which included Portuguese Regulars, White Militiamen and Tupi Allies was gathered near Salvador with the planned for next year. In the 4th of March 1569 the Lusitanian army departed from Salvador and passed thought Santíssima Virgem with their objective being Forte Galego and from there to Cariri terriory, by the 15th of April they had arrived at their destinations with the lack of infrastructure and discipline being the reason for such a late arrival, however now that they were there they set out to meet the Cariri in battle, their search ended on the 17th when they found some 1,000 Cariri sacking nearby settlements, the battle would be known as the battle of Monte-Chapéu[7] where the Luso-Tupi forces smashed the Cariri force thanks to their Mosqueteiros[7] who fired volley after volley and dispersed the Cariri, but they were unable to catch them as they fled to the interior to reunite with the main Cariri force.

From then on the Luso-Tupi forces would try to pursue the Cariri army while the Cariri would try to avoid direct battle and instead try to lure the Portuguese into a trap (Teutoburg style), this almost worked when the Lusos nearly followed them deep into Cariri occupied teriorty which the Lusos interpreted as a retreat, however the Tupis who sensed a trap convinced them to stop and saved the Lusos from a possible disaster, after the incident they kept marching on. Finally on the 23rd of August they found the Cariri army in an open field, with no way out the Cariri charged at the Luso-Tupi army, however due to the great number of guns and cannons they were repelled with the fleeing Cariri being cut down by cavalry, it’s estimated that up to 800 Cariri died on that day in comparison the Luso-Tupis only faced around 150 loses, after this victory the Luso-Tupis marched onto the Cariri heartland and from there claimed victory… well that is the word “claimed” as the Cariri continued to fight using guerrilla tactics against the occupying force, it would take until 1571 for total victory to be achieved.

Finally on the 19th of April 1571 Árua II[8] surrendered himself ending the conflict, as a result of the conflict the Cariri moved further inland to avoid any form of retribution by the Portuguese, the war was bloody with many being lost on both sides, Brazil had lost dozens of settlements and the lackluster infrastructure of the frontier was damaged, however the war wasn’t really that destructive materially for Brazil, what was really destroyed was the perspective that all natives were friendly, this would be something that future governors would use as an excuse to wage unjust war upon neighboring tribes, but for now peace was achieved and the day was seized by the Luso-Tupis.

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[1] A cultural-linguistic group of natives that inhabited the costal areas of Brazil, they were closely related to the Guaranys and influenced a great deal
[2] The OTL city of Miguel Camon - BA
[3] Due to Old World illnesses killing up to 90% of the Indian population some tribes opted for the enslavement European, Mestiços and other Indians, men were pressed into the army, women became concubines and children were adopted by Indigenous families
[4] The OTL city of Capim Grosso - BA
[5] The OTL city of Feira de Santana - BA
[6] The fort would be close to the OTL city of Riachão do Jacuípe - BA
[7] The name is just to damn funny for me to change it
[8] The fictional king of the Cariri Confederation

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter X - The Young King——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————​

In the year of our lord 1554 a child was born, he was a special kid for he was the son João Manuel a Portuguese prince and since his birth he was destined to become the King of Portugal, one of the richest and most powerful the world had ever seen, he would need to be an able statesman as well as a leader of armies if his nation was to continue its trend of successes, but worry not for this boy was ready, his name would echo trough the history of Portugal as perhaps one of its best kings, I am talking about Rei D.Sebastião.

Now Sebastião’s life didn’t had a great start, his father died 2 weeks after he was born and he was also struck with an enormous task, for at the age of 3 his paternal grandfather João III of Portugal passed away, leaving Sebastião as the de jure ruler of a huge and complex Empire, since he was a kid it was decided to establish a regency council was established, it was handled first by his paternal grandmother, Catherine of Austria, and then by his great-uncle, Cardinal Henry of Évora. This period saw the continued Portuguese colonial expansion in Angola, Mozambique, and Malacca, as well as the annexation of Macau in 1557. Sebastião was a bright and lively boy. Contemporaries described him as fearless due to his great physical strength. Tall, slim, and blond, he was brought up by his grandmother Catherine. She was a domineering woman who exercised firm control over her grandson. Obedient as a child, he became obstinate and impulsive in later life.

Finally in 1572 he came of age and assumed his role as king, his early reign was marked by strengthening relations with other European powers like the HRE and England, Sebastian created laws for the military, the Lei das Armas, that would become a military organization model. Goa was attacked by a pan-Asian alliance in 1570 during the War of the League of the Indies, but the Portuguese were successful in repulsing the assault. Also in 1570, Sebastian ordered that the Brazilian Indians should not be used as slaves and ordered the release of those held in captivity. In 1572, the poet Luís de Camões presented his masterpiece Os Lusíadas and dedicated a poem to Sebastian that won him a royal pension. In 1573, he commissioned the construction of the Royal Basilica in Castro Verde as a tribute to the Battle of Ourique. In 1575 with the Carta de Lei de Almeirim, the king established a system of measures for solid and liquid products and also defined the role of public servants.The Celeiros Comuns (Communal Granaries) were inaugurated in 1576 on Sebastian's orders. These were lending institutions intended to help to poor farmers when farm production decreased, giving credit, lending seeds and commodities to the needy. They were allowed to pay back their debts with farm products when they recovered from losses. The mathematician and cosmographer Pedro Nunes was appointed by Sebastian as a cosmography teacher for sea pilots. It was during Sebastian's reign that Nunes wrote his Petri Nonii Salaciensis Opera. In 1577, Sebastian's ordinance Da nova ordem do juízo, sobre o abreviar das demandas, e execução dellas decreased the time for handling legal actions, regulated the action of lawyers, scribes and other court officials, and created fines for delays.
Since the beginning of his reign D.Sebastião never hid the fact that he was an expansionist king, someone who would battle and achieve glory and fame to his Iberian kingdom and Morocco was a prize he always wanted to get, luck would be on his side when Mohammed II fled Morocco and headed straight to the Portuguese court and begged for help to reclaim his throne which as he said was stolen from him by his greedy uncle Abd Al-Malik, sensing an opportunity Sebastião seized the opportunity and begun assembling an army to fight the Moroccans.

After some time of preparation he had assembled an immense army of around 30,000 men[1], the army was composed of Portuguese regulars, volunteers and mercenaries, not only that he could count on the support of some 6,000 Moroccans who remained loyal to the prince, after the preparations were ready the army set sail from Santa Maria and landed on Arzila on the 24th of June 1578.

On the 4th of August 1578, the Portuguese and their Moorish allied troops were drawn into battle, the Moroccan strategy was to use their superiority on cavalry to encircle the Portuguese army, the Lusitanians on the other hand relied on their superior firepower which came in the form of more and better guns and cannons. During the beggining of the battle the Portuguese were able to avert disaster when a soldier saved Thomas Stukley from being hit by a cannonball[2], the Moroccans in their part charged into the Portuguese flanks only to be met by a hail of musket and cannon fire, the Portuguese center then begun to advance separating themselves from the flanks, the Moroccans thought that the Portuguese had made a mistake and wasted no time in encircling the center, in that moment Ahmad Al-Mansur allegedly said “Congratulations Portuguese all you have achieved with this move was make myself sight in relieve”, however as the Moroccans encircled the center their backs were exposed to a hail of fire from the Portuguese flanks, moreover the Portuguese center had created a triangle formation allowing them to fire at the Moroccans from all sides, after 4 hours of battle the Moroccan lines broke and the armies of the Sultanate fled in disarray, Ahmad would later be captured and executed by Mohammed II.

In the following peace treaty the Moroccans agreed to give back to the Portuguese all of the forts and bases along the coast they had previously captured.

Returning to Portugal a hero Sebastião had proven to be a capable commander and was acclaimed as Defensor da Cristandade[3], from there on Sebastião sought to fix problems yet to be fixed, chief amongst these was the fact that he was childless and unmarried so he went looking after a bride, he settled on his first cousins Isabella Clara Eugenia[4] who he married in 1579 and bore his child just 9 moths later[5], another problem would be paying the 1,000 extra German and Flemish mercenaries he raised last minute[6], to do this he offered them lands in Portuguese American where they could be bring their families alongside them, soon some 3,000 Flemings and 1,000 Germans arrived on Terra de Vera Cruz and established settlements on the far south of the colony, these new settlers did create a bit of a problem as they were far more aggressive to natives and weren’t as open to mixing as their Portuguese counterparts.



[1] By the powers of butterfly here Sebastião is far more successful in raising an army than in OTL
[2] In OTL Thomas (which was an English mercenary) was killed by a cannonball early in the battle while leading the Portuguese center, his death was one of the main reasons the Portuguese lost the battle
[3] Translates to “Defender of Christendom” even tough he allied with Muslims to help a Muslim get on the throne of a Muslim power
[4] In OTL he actually proposed to her but by 1578 he was to dead to marry her
[5] This is actually a POD since Sebastian was likely infertile IRL so even if he survived he probably wound’s have an heir
[6] OTL he only had about 3,000 Germans and Flemish mercenaries and those 1,000 won’t pay themselves

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XI - Foreign Entanglements

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After the victory over the Moors at Alcacér Quibir, Sebastião ascended to the status of a hero, comparable to the likes of Alfonso I[1], chroniclers all around the country wrote about the young warrior king who took the cross and smashed the Mohammedan heathens of North Africa (despite this not being true), the remainder of his reign however would be relatively calm in the European theater, in the seven seas however things were about to intesify.

During the 1580’s a Turkish pirate by the name of Mir Ali Beg was wrecking havoc on Portuguese shipping trough the Indian Ocean, Sebastião who dreamed of turning the Indian Ocean into a Portuguese lake dispatched a force to hunt the pirate down, what the Portuguese didn’t know was that the pirate had support from the Ottoman Empire, who since their defeat against the Luso-Ethiopian alliance wished to cripple its rival somehow, hereby begins another Ottoman-Portuguese war over control of the Indian Ocean, the war would take 9 years and result in a Portuguese victory over the Turks, who now had most of its Indian allies defect to the side of the Portuguese Empire.

However the main problem for the Portuguese would come in the form of the Dutch, who were in the midst of their 80 years long independence war from Spain, he Dutch desired a colonial empire of their own and looked at the Portuguese with preying eyes, they assumed that the nation was a paper tiger and unable to defend its vast possessions, the most precious of it was Brazil which had the potential to be the world’s leading sugar producer but wasted its potential over moral issues such as slavery being wrong, so they assembled a fleet and made their way to Brazil more specifically to the Colony’s capital at Salvador, the invasion was a disaster (we will cover it better in the next update) and now the Portuguese were aware of the Dutch power-hungry intentions leading to a world conflict between the Dutch

The War was fought all over the world and resulted in a Portuguese victory and a return to the status quo as the Dutch were unable to capture any noteworthy Portuguese possessions, the failed taking of Ceylon and Malacca showed the world that Portugal was not to be trifled with, tough Sebastian would not be around to see it for the died in 1612 way before any formal peace could be established.

Before he died however D.Sebastião would be the outlawing of the Japanese Slave Trade, a large-scale slave trade between the Kingdom of Portugal and the Japanese Shogunate, in which in exchange for modern European weaponry the Shogunate would sell slaves to the Portuguese (mostly women), most of these slaves ended up in Portuguese colonies in Asia but some merchants tried to sell them as far away as Portugal itself, however before reaching Portugal the slave merchants would often stop in Brazil to resupply and there they saw that the demand for women was high due to the colony’s unbalanced gender makeup, thereby the slave merchants began selling their Japanese slaves in Brazil itself and although the trade in both Portugal and Brazil were never that big (Brazil only imported up to 178 Japanese woman) the crown still sought to put their foot on the table and outlaw the trade in Brazil by 1600.

During the debate about the Japanese slave question, the French conducted yet another incursion into Brazil, this time in the Captaincy of Maranhão, where the French created the settlement of Saint Louis, however a combination of lack of support from France as well as a largely hostile population meant that the settlement lasted barely a year before the French were driven out, however since the settlement was built in such a good area the decided to keep it and simply rename it to Fortaleza de Sant’Anna not to be confused with Fortaleza de Nossa Senhora da Assunção[2] which itself is not to be confused with Asunción in the Viceroyalty of Rio de La Plata, he also ordered the construction of a city in the Northeast of Brazil to better defend the shipping lanes there, since the city was founded in Easter Day it was named Páscoa[3]. Another way his majesty used to better defend Brazil would be by increasing the number of migrants to the colony, in particular the southern ends of Brazil were very sparsely populated by Lusos if compared with the Northeast, thus in order to better defend the place, D.Sebastião began giving land to settlers from the islands of Madeira and Açores as these islands had been suffering from overpopulation and economic decline for quite a while, thus it was no problem getting people to leave, not only that he also began encouraging Galicians and Northern Portuguese to emigrate to the Brazilian south in order to bolster the Madeiran and Açorean settlements.

However, one thing that still persisted in the king’s mind was the idea that the reason the Japanese Slave Trade existed in Brazil was due to the lack of European woman in the colony, thus to solve the issue once and for all he created a program called “As Órfãs do Rei”[4], which consisted in the Portuguese government shipping girls between the ages of 16-22 to Brazil in order to increase the ratio of Portuguese woman in the colony which even after a century of continuous colonization was still of 3 to every 4 white males, thereby women who dwelled in the streets of Portuguese cities, as well as daughter of dead soldiers who served Portugal and orphaned girls, were granted a ticket to a new life on the tropics, most of whom just like the settlers came overwhelmingly (about 80~90% of all Órfãs) from the north of Portugal and Galicia. The project worked and by the turn of the 16th century there were actually more white women than men in the colony, as result of this intermarriages between European men and Non-European women sharply declined as the former had a preference to European women, in contrast to this the end of the 16th century saw an increase in marriages between European women and Non-European men.

This increasingly common phenomenon of European Women marrying Non-European Men, was in part caused by the Portuguese government as the courts of Lisbon sought to strengthen ties between Portugal and its native allies by marrying Portuguese women and native nobleman, the nobility of the tribes allied to Portugal for their part wished to take European wives and integrate into Portuguese culture and society as a way to achieve a more favorable position with Lisbon and thus be able to acquire more weaponry to better defend themselves. The idea began in 1594 when the Tremembé (an Indian Tribe native to the northern coast of OTL Maranhão), a small (it’s estimated that by 1600 the tribe had only 5,000 members) but old enemy of the Portuguese, made an alliance with Lisbon after their King was convinced by his wife, a Brazilian of Portuguese parents who was kidnapped from their villages and married to King Raoni, that allying with the Portuguese against the Cariri in the south was in the Tribe’s best interest, and since then the phenomenon expanded and by 1610, half of all of Portugal’s native allies had a European/European Descent queen, the Tremembé in particular took things to the extreme and by the same period around 70~80% of all woman married to Tremebean nobleman were either European or Brazilians of European origin.

And so ends the life of one of Portugal’s most revered kings who led its nation to glory against any foe and led to a continuation of the almighty Portuguese Empire.

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[1] The first king of Portugal
[2] OTL city of Fortaleza
[3] OTL city of Natal
[5] The King’s Orphans

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XII - “Guerra Flamenga”[1]

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Since the beginning of the 80 years war, the nascent Dutch Republic desired an empire of her own, she desired a global spanning empire that could provid the Low Countries with the wealth and prestige of other European powers and they were determined to achieve their goal, to achieve their goal The Hague created privates enterprises to do their bidding, the two most powerful companies were the VOC and the GWC[2], the VOC was tasked with establishing a trade monopoly in the Indian Ocean, while the WIC was tasked with gaining access to the Trans Atlantic trade, however in both of these objectives there was a nation ahead of them… Portugal. Thanks to the efforts of D.Sebastião the Portuguese had a monopoly over trade in the Indian Ocean, they had many strategic possessions like Ceilão, Malaca, Moluca, Macau, etc[3]; meanwhile in the West the Portuguese also controlled most of the Trans-Atlantic trade as they held both the majority of the East coast of South American in addition to the most important ports of West Africa, the Batavians thought that due to being a small nation Portugal could be easily crushed and the United Provinces could take its place as the premier naval power in the world… they were wrong.

The war Luso-Dutch wars would be dubbed the “Guerra Flamenga” and it was a disaster for the Dutch who failed at every one of their objectives, failed to capture Angola, Ceylon or Malacca; most important to our history however will be the 2 Dutch attempts of invading Brazil, first we need to see how Brazil was doing at the moment.

Since the end of the Cariri War, Brazil experienced yet more peace and prosperity, Portuguese as well as Flemish and German settlers continued to pour into the colony pushing its frontier ever to the west, many expeditions were conducted to explore the Sertão and soon the Portuguese had really accurate maps about the interior, this period also saw the Mestiços gain political and economic significance as they became the countries first big Cattle Ranchers and gained sizable wealth selling meat, leather and milk, they usually married with other cattle rancher families allowing for their descendants to be even more wealthy, they also had a tendency to marry with Brazilians of European descent due to their belief in the concept of “melhorar a raça”[4] some Mestiços also begun to enter local politics as more and more members of the Câmaras Municipais were composed by Mamelucos[5], during this period also saw the rise of a new religious figure in Brazil José de Anchieta, he was present in the founding of Tieté and unofficially assumed the duties assigned to the old Bartolomé, he became a significant political figure steering the colony to a path he thought to be holy, during his lifetime Brazil also greatly expanded its defenses with stone fortresses being constructed in other cities to deter aggression from both maritime powers as well as rogue natives, it is safe to say that Brazil by the end of the 16th century was a well-oiled machine stable and prosperous.

The Dutch new it would be hard yet they tried anyway, on December of 1623 Admiral Jacob Willekens led a GWC force of 3,300 men to the colonial capital of Salvador, the Dutch landed just north of the city and begun to siege the city, meanwhile the Governor of the colony Diogo Tristão sent messengers to the surrounding towns to summon their militia as well as to bring native allies and Portuguese regulars with them, by April of 1624 a force of 6,000 men gathered in the Vila de São Agostinho[6] and marched to relieve Salvador, the arrived soon after and together with the defenders who sallied out of town they encircled and slaughtered most of the Dutch forces sieging the city, some soldiers however managed to escape north where they scorched the fields burning farms and forests, the Colonial forces caught up with them at Teutônio[7] with the remaining Dutch forces finally surrendering, the Dutch however would not give up so easily and in 1628 the Dutch seized a Spanish treasure fleet and used its valuables to fund yet another expedition.

The Second Dutch attempt in 1630 the Dutch once again invaded Brazil, this time they went to the rich Captaincy of Pernambuco and quickly seized the fortress of Olinda as well as the neighboring city of Recife, from there they tried to spread out however armed civilian resistance considerably slowed their advance, in Dutch controlled Brazil the inhabitants formed resistance groups which sabotaged the Dutch war effort by both destroying infrastructure as well as giving information to the Portuguese army, the Dutch tried to move south into Bahia and secure the capital once again, however the governor already fearing the Dutch would try to invade a second time reinforced the walls of the city which made the Batavians retreat at first sight of the mighty walls, the Dutch also tried moving north into Parahyba[8] however their detour into Salvador gave the militias enough time for them to entrench and halt the Dutch advance, as more and more militiamen gathered in the north and more and more Portuguese troops amassed in the South the Dutch saw that they couldn’t stretch to much and so retreated back to Olinda which they fortified further, in their retreat they also scorched the earth once again forming a dead zone around Pernambuco, the siege of Olinda took 2 years until the Portuguese managed to break trough and the Dutch were expelled from Brazil, the Dutch would never attempt to mount any more attacks effectively ending the South American theater of the “Guerra Flamenga”.

The war did leave a good amount of damage in the colony as fields were burned, towns were razed and thousands were displaced, the colonial government would later receive direct aid from Portugal in order to rebuild, the Dutch invasion of Brazil remains a fun little notice in history which is relevant only to Brazilians really, but it is still very discussed what would happen if the Dutch conquered Brazil.



[1] Translates to Flemish War as by this point the Portuguese called all Dutch people Flemish
[2] abbreviation for Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compangnie (United East Indian Company) and Geoctrooieerde Westindische Compagnie (Patented West Indian Company) respectively
[3] Ceylon, Malacca, Maluku and Macau
[4] The literal translation would be “bettering of the race”, a concept engrained in the colonial mentality of how Europeans were superior to the conquered Indians and enslaved Africans, this led to blacks, indians and mixed-race people intermarrying with whites in order to “better” themselves
[5] Another name for the descendants of a mix of Indians and Whites
[6] OTL town of São Amaro - BA
[7] The OTL city of Teutônio-BA which was founded by the families of those ex-German mercenaries who settled in Brazil
[8] Paraíba was actually written why an y back then

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XIII - Into the Interior

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After the expelling the Dutch from Brazil and their subsequent defeat at the hands of the Portuguese Brazil was at peace and was able to lick its wounds, first thing to do was to assess how damaged was the colony, for this they enlisted the help of José de Anchieta to basically foundation a census, it took some years to finish but by 1638 it was done, Brazil had a whopping 110,000 people of which 75% were white while 25% were Mestiços, Indians were not counted as these were much harder to pinpoint, but an educated guess puts it at between 100 and 250 thousand Indigenous people, at the same time the Portuguese crown sent direct aid to the colony, this came in the form of Human Resources such as craftsmen, engineers and more settlers which included some 5,000 Flemish as well as 2,000 Basques and 1,000 Asturians to help heal the devastated soil and restore the once great city of Olinda which by now had fallen way behind Salvador in terms of importance.

By the mid 17th century a new movement gained traction in Brazil, the Bandeiras[1] which were groups of explorers who from cities in the Southeast launched expeditions into the colonies interior, their main objective was gold but they also drew maps and created settlements deep into South America, they also constantly violated the Treaty of Tordesilhas[2] and trekked along the Cerrado[3], later writers would romanticize the Bandeirantes as brave and honorable pioneers who braved the wilderness of the Brazilian interior, they were almost always portrayed as white men in European style clothing and were considered the forefathers of the Brazilians, tough keep in mind this is a lie, most of the Bandeirantes weren’t white rather most were Mestiços, they also weren’t all that great as many of their expeditions involved kidnapping Indians to be sold illegally, they were also at constant odds with local authorities which constantly tried to crack down on the illegal slave trade and in general were not well dressed.

Another phenomenon of the mid 17th century was the incoming of runaway slaves, as since in Brazil slavery was illegal, African slaves from Spanish America decided to try their luck and make a run for Portuguese America, some like Angela de Souza, a native West-African who was kidnapped and sold into slavery, managed to escape their places of work (in her case New Granada[4]) and make their way to Brazil, upon arriving they tended to intermarry with the locals if African pairs weren’t available, in her case, she married a Portuguese settler by the name of Miguel Pinheiro de Souza and quickstarted the first Mulato[5] couple in Brazilian history, however due to the nature of escaping from slavery, male escapees outnumbered female almost 7:1, thus most interracial marriages happened between Brazilian woman and African men. And by nature, I mean that most weren’t so lucky to escape, as it was already extremely difficult for a slave to escape from his plantation or master, then if he managed to escape he would need to walk trough hundreds of kilometers of Spanish territory before going trough hundreds of kilometers of Indigenous territory, the chances of you being caught were very high and retributions for being caught were also very severe, after a groups of slaves who tried to cross into Brazil were caught by Indian tribes and later extradited to Spanish territory they were all executed, showcases of force like these discouraged most of even trying.

Yet another event happening in the wake of the Dutch defeat was the beginning of many wars and raids against hostile tribes in the interior and southeast, while the Tupis who still lived in the Northeast were friendly to the Portuguese the same thing could not be said to those living in the rest of the colony, they constantly revolted and demanded more autonomy from the General Government which by now was exerting its power in the Southeast, these tribes also came in conflict with the German and Flemish settlers who didn’t like the Indians and tough of them as nothing more than savages, however the situation was manageable and conflicts never escalated beyond control, with this in mind Salvador decided to act first and employed tactics of divide and conquer, they essentially rewarded loyal tribes with gifts and rights while also crushing any tribe who might oppose them, this worked and for some 100 years peace between the Southern Tupis and the General Government was achieved, this of course was not helped by the fact that after the 30 years war ended in Europe Portugal decided to settle a new wave of migrants in Brazil which included some 9,000 Flemish, 3,000 Germans and 4,000 Basques.

But things won’t always stay bright forever as new problems lurk in the shadows ready to strike when the opportunity arises.



[1] It means “banners”… seriously they had not creativity whatsoever when it came to names
[2] That time Spain and Portugal decided to split the world amongst themselves
[3] A savannah like ecosystem in the interior of Brazil
[4] A Spanish colony consisting of OTL Panama, Colombia, Equador and Venezuela
[5] the result of the mix between white and black people

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XIV - Things go wrong
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Since the beginning of the colonization of Brazil nothing majorly bad ever happened, sure you had the Cariri war, Dutch invasion and even French people, but nothing compared to the absolute shitshow that was Spanish America, well get ready buckaroo because things will take a turn for the worse.

First things a drought happened in the Northeast, now droughts aren’t something new to the region but this time a 3 year long drought (1653-1656) hit and things turned bad very quickly, cattle died by the thousands and plantations were ruined as there was simply not enough water, things were so bad that people started to emigrate to anywhere but the Northeast, many refugees who went North into Pará ended up sailing up the Amazon and establishing the first Portuguese settlements deep into the Amazon chief amongst these Cidade das Amazonas[1] which would later be used to launch further expeditions into the Amazon basin, those who went South settled in the rapidly growing Southeast with many later joining Bandeiras and launching expeditions into the interior, there were also those who settled westward and came into conflict with local tribes who were unfriendly to the Portuguese, in total about 10,000 people died and tens of thousands more left the region leading to a massive labor shortage in the area, to try to fix this the Portuguese would ask the “British” government[2] to transport Irish penal labor to Brazil, Cromwell who had spent a good amount of time ravaging the island saw this as a great opportunity to expel possible insurgent, in total up 16,000 Irish people were sent to Brazil, there they were given plots of land and expected to resume the agricultural sector which they did and by the 1680’s food security in the area was restored.

During the 1650’s Brazil also saw itself at war with the Guarany[3], Brazilian Bandeirantes were constantly raiding into Guarany territory so they decided to pay in kind and begun raiding Brazilian territories in the south, already having to relieve the famine the Governor General had little money to fund an expedition into Guarany territory, so he decided instead to promise lands the other side of Tordesilhas to the veteran, which you know was a clear violation of the treaty, but hey it’s not like this would start any major conflict between Portugal and Spain right?… anyway the militia from the south plus an army of Portuguese regulars and Tupi allies crossed the Paraná River on the 16th of May 1656 and fought a grueling 6 years war with the Guarany who received aid from the Jesuits who were fed up with the Bandeirantes, the Spaniards in Alto Peru and Rio de La Plata made promises to help but in the end did jack shit, after numerous atrocities and the decisive battle of Cambira[4] the Guaranys were defeated and relinquished a bunch of land west of the Paraná[5] to the Portuguese.

On the plus side Brazil was experiencing one of its first literary schools, the Barroco, which arguably started way back during the Dutch Invasions by the priest Antônio Vieira with his sermons, but if you ask your average Brazilian about Barroco and PTSD from high school kicks in they will most likely think of Basílio da Gama with his writings about the conflict with the Guaranys and Gregório de Matos a 17th-century lawyer from Salvador who produced a sizable amount of satirical, religious, and secular poetry.

But in the end by the end of 1650’s Brazil was a shitshow, it had to deal with a humanitarian crisis as tens of thousands died or were displaced and the costs of war against the Guarany which I’m sure win’t cause anything major, the government was broke and a lot of the repair they did post Dutch invasions was suddenly worthless as they had to deal with even bigger problems, if only there was a good source of wealth which was very abundant and could sustain the government for at least a century an… oooooo, what is this shiny yellow rock.



[1] TTL version of Manaus
[2] At this point England, Ireland and Scotland tough separate entities were ruled by Oliver Cromwell as a single country so… there’s that
[3] A lot of native names in Portuguese used to written with Y rather than I, you can see it in Piauhy and Parahyba.
[4] Close to the city of Dourados - MS
[5] Basically the state of MS

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XV - War returns

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By the mid 17th century South America was a powder-cage as the Brazilians kept expanding beyond the designated frontier set by the treaty of Tordesilhas, throughout the last decades Brazilians founded settlements all over the continent, the most important of which were the “Seis Burgos” [1] which were six settlements created by settlers along the newly conquered territories from the Guarany, from these settlements further expeditions could be launched further into the interior, these exploratory parties often ran into conflict with the Natives and the Spanish who treated these explores as essentially outlaws which upon capture were to be executed, however the chance of acquiring gold drove many settlers into the newly conquered territory, soon they even created an illegal trading routes where Silver from Alto Peru[2] was transported to Brazilian ports and from there to Portugal and from there to the Portuguese coffers, relations were tense and the Spaniards were looking for an opportunity to deal with the perfidious Portuguese, they wouldn’t have to wait for long.

In 1663 the Portuguese sailed to the mouth of the Prata river and created a settlements right across Buenos Aires, the settlement by the name of Nova Viana[2] proudly stood in defiance against the Spaniards, which is why it needed to go, so the governor of La Plata decided to send an expeditionary force comprised of 800 Indians and Spaniards to siege the fort, after some time of grinding the Spaniards broke trough the walls and took the fort from the Portuguese, the Governor General of Brazil at the time Vasco de Mascarenhas issued an ultimatum to Buenos Aires in which they would leave the settlement, pay an indemnity for the damage as well as issue a formal apology; perhaps unsurprisingly they refused and so on the 17th of August 1663 both colonies went to war without the approval of their respective metropolis.

The war begun as the Brazilian militias from Tieté marched along the coast traversing through unoccupied Spanish territory until they reached the Pampas[3] on the 5th of January, there they met a Native resistance which considerably slowed down their advance, meanwhile the Spaniards managed to gather their own army and marched against the Portuguese who after seeing the Spanish retreated back to the protection of the Serras Catharinenses[4], there they were reinforced by militias from São Sebastião with more on their way, together the Brazilians made use of their numerical advantage to defeat the Spanish at the Battle of the Ducks[4], after the defeat the Spanish retreated back to Nova Viana, which they fortified to prepare for a Portuguese attack, by the 17th of May the Brazilians encircled the fortress and started a siege, to the aid of the attackers 4 Portuguese warships appeared and from the sea begun bombarding the beleaguered defenders until they surrendered on the 31st of the same month, as they were preparing to continue ion they received a letter from the governor-general himself telling them that both the kings of Spain and Portugal told them to stop hostilities and that the war was over.

This war proved to both Iberian monarchies that the old Treaty of Tordesilhas was obsolete and that they needed a better way to split the continent, so in exchange for seeding the port of Nova Viana the Spanish recognize the Portuguese ownership of Alto Paraguay, Araucaríana and Santa Catarina; furthermore the frontier between the Spanish and Portuguese empire was to be decided by the base of who settles it first, basically turning the conquest of South American into a race between the Portuguese and Spanish over who has the rights to what part of the continent.

However the most crucial consequence of this war was that the Portuguese saw how autonomous Brazil truly was and that governors would act on such crucial matters as war without the approval of the crown, this would latter down the line lead to a lot of trouble between Portugal and its South American colony.



[1] Leopoldópolis, Cidade do Oeste, Forte Avis, Gramados, Ingerstadt and Grossfelt; respectively the OTL cities Nova Andradina, Dourados, Ponta-Porâ, Rio Brilhante, Amambai and Naviraí
[2] Colônia do Sacramento in modern day Uruguay
[3] A temperate grassland spanning through Central Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Brazil and Eastern Paraguay
[4] A “mountain” range spanning the Brazilian state of Santa Catarina which back then was written as Santa Chatarina
[5] Battle fought at the town of Rio Grande - RS
[6] Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná and Santa Catarina

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XVI - Between Worlds

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With the end of hostilities between the Spanish and Portuguese colonial governments Brazil experienced once again a period of prolonged peace and prosperity at home, colonists from Portugal and Galicia continued to flock towards the lands of setting sun, many new settlements were created and constantly pushing the frontier westward, cities also experienced obscene amounts of growth with São Salvador being the first city to pass 10,000 people and be elevated to the position of Cidade, the next largest city Olinda sat at only around 4,000, this serves to show just how rural the Brazilian population was as although the country had reached a population of 300,000 by 1700 less then 10% lived in settlements over 1,000 people.

The Brazilian economy was also changing, the economies of the Northeastern Capitanias were entering into decline, as sugar produced there was no match to the slave plantations in the Caribbean which loaded European markets, so many people began moving south towards the Southeast which had a more amiable climate as well as opportunity for further and quicker expansion, the discovery of gold in 1692 only enhanced the decline, however it was already happening for some time.

Meanwhile in Portugal, El Rei D.Henrique I did something unprecedented and recognizing the growth of Brazil and her cities authorities for the construction of a university in São Salvador, this was the first but not the last university built in Portuguese America, this was an extremely controversial decision in Portugal as many did not see Brazil as important enough for a university. However for the average Brazilian this was something to be proud of as for them the Portuguese king finally saw them as important enough for a university, this building which was name Universidade do Sagrado Conhecimento de Nosso Senhor[1] essentially meant that instead of sending their kids overseas to study in Portugal they could do it in the land they were born, another big part of D.Henrique’s reign was the furthering of literacy in the colony which until then had a literacy rate of below 10%, this endeavor which was aided by the Jesuits had the effect of connecting the colony even further by creating a standardized system of education where children aged 6-16 would have regular classes in their settlement’s church (literally all settlements had one) and learn how to read and write, it would take a while but it would work and literacy would begin to sharply rise over the next decades.

Language standardization would also be another issue in Brazil, most Brazilians spoke a northern Portuguese dialect with high levels of Galician influence, however these dialects in Brazil begun to diverge even further, to combat this issue a Brazilian priest name Álvaro de Nóbrega created the LINGVA BRASILIENSIS as book which detailed the rules and phonology of a united Brazilian accent, the book was also a dictionary carrying over 1,000 words, this new dialect based around a fusion of Galician and Northern Portuguese was also a key to the past as it preserved many old sounds and spellings which were lost back in the old country, the vocabulary also presented a lack of native loanwords and high degree of Germanic and Celtic loanwords, which happened because Álvaro was sorta racist but I guess we will never know, what matters though is that this dialect would become the basis of the new school system as well as the basis for the modern Brazilian-Portuguese dialect.

However what would impact the end of the 17th century the most was when a Bandeirante named Fernando de Oliveira da Silva discovered gold in the interior of the then Capitania of Espírito Santo, this discovered would change the colony forever for now it was time for a gold rush.



[1] University of the Holy Knowledge of Our Lord

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XVII - GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLD

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The discovery of gold couldn't be kept a secrets for long, soon word spread across all corners of the vast Portuguese Empire that the precious stone could be found in great quantities in the lands of Portuguese

With the discovery of gold in the interior of the colony the Portuguese world was flipped upside down, massive migration waves from Portugal and Brazil flocked towards the Gold Mines of the interior, previous to this Portuguese migrants came overwhelmingly from the comarcas of Trás-Os-Montes and Entre-Douro-e-Minho as well as the islands of Madeira and Açores, now migrants from all over the country begun moving to the lands beyond the Atlantic, then there were also the Galicia who also experienced a tremendous flux towards Brazil, modern sources put the total immigration wave (1792-1800) at around 620,000 people divided into around 400,000 Portuguese, 200,000 Galicians and some 20,000 others who came primarily from Germania specially Flanders but there were also Spaniards, Englishmen and French who were lured in by the almighty gold .

Now the Bandeirantes were not happy about this and sought to defend their claim to the gold, this event became known as the Guerra dos Emboabas[1] and involved sporadic fighting between the Bandeirantes and the new settlers, in the end the Portuguese crown intervened in the side of the settlers and defeated the Bandeirantes proclaiming that any attempts at rebellion would not be take lightly, from then on things only went up, gold was mined in extreme quantities with the veins seeming to never end, the Portuguese crown eager for their own shared created a tax called Quinto[2] in which the fifth part of the gold mined was to be paid in the form of taxes, this however led to rising of contraband and the smuggling of gold through the colony, to combat this Lisbon created the Casas de Fundição[3] where gold dust was to be melted into gold coins or bars, they also banned the circulation of gold dust throughout the colony making so that gold could only leave the Mining Region in special places, but to the size of Brazil the smuggling of gold was still very common and subsequent attempts at cracking down on them failed miserably, another measure implemented by the Portuguese was the creation of the position of Contratador do Diamante[4] who was solely responsible for the extraction of diamonds in the colony.

Things were not all that bad however as the wealth that flowed back to Portugal was tremendous, the days of the Golden era of the Spice Trade was over now that Portugal had an even better source of revenue, using that money Portugal was able to fund a massive expedition into Spain during the Spanish War of Succession (which we will see later on) as well as flood the Portuguese cities with riches beyond their imagination, Portuguese cities now presented glamour incomparable to anywhere else in Europe, Lisbon became the Constantinople of the West with their lavish streets and expensive building materials it seemed like nothing of bad could ever happen to the metropolis, however it was not only Portugal that benefited from the wealth as Brazil and the Brazilians did as well, the General-Government which was previously so starved of funds now posed money for their wildest ambitions, São Salvador became wealthier then ever and the city was set on becoming the most important town in all of Brazil forever (foreshadowing), now equipped with the necessary resources the Brazilian government started the construction of many public projects all around the colony, the most important of which was the Via Áurea which linked the rapidly growing city of São Sebastião to the capital, minor roads were also built linking Tieté and Vila Rica[5] to São Sebastião.

This encroachment into the interior did not seat well with many Native Tribes of the area, the old Cariri for instance which now lived even further inland started to get upset at this huge migration wave, worse still was when Bandeirantes found gold along the Cuyabá River and begun establishing bases of operation in the area, the Cariri responded by burning the bases as well as killing all Mazombos[6] they found, Portugal did not take this lightly and prepared an expedition to finish the Cariri of, now just keep in mind that the Cariri were no saints either as during their conquest of the Cerrado they genocide whole tribes while absorbing those that they didn’t kill, so moral of the story there are no good guys.

The war between the Portuguese and the Cariri would last 9 years and be essentially a back and forth with Portugal winning land battles but being slowed down due to guerrilla warfare, now during the war the Portuguese showed once again why there are no good guys by viciously pillaging and raping their way across Cariri lands, hole villages were massacred and the war only really showed that you should not mess with Portuguese gold.



[1] Emboadas being how the Bandeirantes called the newcomers, the word itself referred to a bird with feathers on its feet, this was due to the fact that the Bandeirantes usually walked shoeless in comparison to the recent migrants who wore shoes
[2] Literally means “the fifth part”
[3] AKA Foundry Houses
[4] AKA diamond contractor
[5] The OTL city of Ouro Preto
[6] Word that meant foreigner and that over the course of the years would become the coloquial term for White Brazilians

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XVIII - For Glory

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At the beginning of the 18th century Europe found itself once again in a continent wide conflict, since the end of the 30 years war in 1648 Europe tried to create a stable balance of power so that nothing like this could ever happen again, the system proved effective and managed to keep war at bah for a whopping 50 years, the dispute that would ignite the flames of conflict would be the death of Charles “I’m really inbred” II, King of Spain as well as giant Colonial Empire, he himself had no children and so the succession to the throne turned into a crisis, on one side sat Philip of Bourbon and in the other Charles von Hapsburg, in the end Philip managed to get crowned first and was consecrated as king, now France supported this as this meant that their southern border would be shared with a friendly power, however everyone else absolutely hated the idea since it would mean that the Bourbon would be the undisputed masters of Europe and perhaps even the world, so a coalition of many European countries was gathered to oppose them and this is the context of our story.

In Portugal the kingdom was flourishing like never, gold flowing from Brazil filled Lisbon’s coffers and showered the city with wealth, other cities also greatly benefited from this as they went through major architectural and developmental changes, this flow of capital allowed for the Lusitania monarchs to pursue costly ventures, so during this era Portugal had spent a big amount of money into its army, which since its inception was always a second grade force, at least compared to the Portuguese navy, but now things were changing as funds flowed towards the army and now that Europe was at war again, it was time to put them to use.

Portugal officially joined the war on May of 1703 on the side of the Anti-Bourbon league, real conflict begun later that month when the Exército do Douro[1] left the city of Porto and into Spanish Galicia, there they met a token Spanish force which was no match for the modernized Portuguese, on their way the Portuguese also received quite a bit of local support as many wished to separate Galicia from Madrid, Portuguese forces reached La Coruña by June, after that they would spend some more time clearing the province of Spanish troops, in the center the center, the Exército do Tejo[2] marched east and towards Madrid, at first they made good progress but after a while were met by a large Spanish army outside of Oropesa, the ensuing battle was a Portuguese Pyrrhic victory as the Spaniards were driven from the battlefield tough at a great cost of men and material, the Portuguese decided then to retreat back to Portugal so as to recover from this battle, in the south the Portuguese were doing better as the Exército de Algarves[3] left Fejo in June and moved eastwards towards Seville, they managed to capture the city by August while running into heavy Spanish resistance, they would overcome the Spaniards tough and move north capturing Cordoba soon after.

Things wouldn’t stay nice forever, the Spanish reorganized and planned to drive the Portuguese away from their homeland, they successfully defeated the Portuguese garrisons left in Extremadura and soon moved southernly towards Cordoba, they would recapture the city by 1705 and rapidly move towards Seville, there the Portuguese army faced the Spanish at the battle of Seville, the battle was a Spanish victory and the beleaguered Portuguese retreated back to Portugal, only Galicia remained in Portuguese hands as the Spaniards were unable to recapture the region.

Just as tough it would appear that the Spanish would seize the south of Portugal a massive rebellion of Charles’s supporters occurred in the lands of the Crown of Aragon, so despite being able to the Spanish did not invade Portugal proper and chose to fight the rebellious Aragonese who were now threatening Madrid, this allowed Portugal to recover and plan for their next fight, after years of struggle a peace treaty was hatched between both sides, Philip would be recognized as king of Spain but would promised not to ally with France, Spain however also had to made some territorial concessions, namely Gibraltar which was given to the British but also Galicia which was given to Portugal, in the Americas Spain also had to renounce all claims to the Amazon basin as well as recognize Portuguese ownership of the northern parts of the Pampas. And just like this one of the most bloody European conflicts comes to an end



[1] The Amry of the Douro which was stationed at the all important city of Porto
[2] The Army of the Tagus which was stationed at Lisbon
[3] The Army of Algarves stationed at the southernmost Portuguese province

 

[CobraFumante]

Chapter XIX - Boringness

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With the end of the Spanish War of Succession Portugal found itself in a stronger position then before, having acquired territories in Europe with the incorporation of Galicia as well as the acquisition of further territories in South America Lisbon sat at an enviable position. However they new this wouldn’t last and Spain would come for revenge sooner or later, so they decided to prepare for the inevitable and begun the construction of a series of forts along the Spanish border, these forts would be known as the Linha Lusitana[1] and managed to keep the Spanish at bay for decades, to complement this the Portuguese decided it was time for a new round of reforms in Brazil.

For starters the Brazilians needed to be ready to invade Spanish America at the first moments of war, to accomplish this goal several gunpowder-mills were created across Brazil, iron forges also sprung across the country with a heavy emphasis on the southernmost Captaincies which would be the first to react in case of hostilities, not satisfied the Portuguese also constructed several forts all over the colony, costal cities were also reinforced with costal artillery so as to sink any enemy vessel and this was all paid locally as the gold of Brazil was put to its defense, the production gold is also at its peak specially after the founding of further mining towns like Nova Braganza and São João del-Rei, this came alongside the last major shipment of Flemish and Basques before the 1840’s, with the numbers including 6,000 Flemish and 2,000 Basques.

Administratively Brazil also changed, since the Coronelismo created such a decentralized mess that made contradictory laws and obligations the Portuguese decided to reshuffle the system, in 1748 the Câmaras Municipais assumed total control over any settlement above 50 people, the Catholic Church which so far had few obligations (all they needed to do was to keep records, educate the people and hold religious services) now needed to cooperate with the Câmaras for the construction of bridges and fortifications. Another definitive change would come in 1750 when the powers of the Iberian Peninsula finally decided to formalize the borders between Brazil and Spanish America leading to the Treaty of Madrid (1750), accompanied by this was also the abolishment of hereditary Captaincies and the creation of Royal Provinces whose governors were chosen by Lisbon itself, these reforms greatly centralized administration in Brazil leading to a far more efficient system.

Back in Lisbon things were not alright as the city was hit by an earthquake on the 1st of November 1755, thankfully the first tremors were interpreted as a bad sign and ordered the evacuation of the city, the people as well as the city’s valuables (gold, silver, books) managed to leave Lisbon before the worst could come, when the tremor did indeed hit it the damage was not as bad as it could have been, however some houses who had candles light at the time of the earthquake ended up burned and later a flooding hit the lower parts of the city, in the aftermath the city had sustained a lot of damage tough through the efforts of the crown the damage was very minimized both in human and material terms.



[1] The Lusitanian Line
[2] the towns of Belo Horizonte and well… São João del-Rei respectively

 

[CobraFumante]

Provinces - Capitals and OTL names (unless they are already how they are in OTL)
Grão-Pará : Belém

Mearim : Santa’Anna - São Luís

Guanabara - São Sebastião - Rio de Janeiro

Tieté : Tieté - São Paulo

Aurélia : Nova Braganza - Belo Horizonte

Nova Beira : Diamantina

Novo Minho : Páscoa - Natal

Pernambuco : Olinda

Parnahyba : Therezina - Teresina

Ceará : Assunção - Fortaleza

Vera Cruz : Nova Brugos - Vitória

Araucária : Curityba - Curitiba

São Pedro : Remanso

Caatinga : Petrolina

Mato Grosso - Unorganized Territory

Goyaz : Unorganized Territory

Bandeira : São Miguel - Uberlândia

Paraná : Araçatuba

Uruguay : Bom Jesus

Alagoas: Novo Porto - Maceió