126 CHAPTER 6 COLONIAL BRAZIL
and black slaves. Yet there can be no doubt that
the condition of natives in the Jesuit mission vil-
lages was superior to that of the slaves in the Portu-
guese towns and plantations. A stronger argument
against Jesuit practices is the fact that the system
of segregation, however benevolent in intent, rep-
resented an arbitrary and mechanical imposition
of alien cultural patterns on the native population
and hindered rather than facilitated true social
integration.
The crown, generally sympathetic to the Jes-
uit position but under strong pressure from the
planter class, pursued for two centuries a policy
of compromise that satisfi ed neither Jesuits nor
planters. A decisive turn came during the reform
ministry of the marquis de Pombal (1750–1777),
who expelled the Jesuits from Portugal and Brazil
and secularized their missions. His legislation, for-
bidding enslavement, accepted the Jesuit thesis of
indigenous rights; he also accepted the need for
preparing the natives for civilized life and even the
principle of concentrating them in communities
under the care of administrators responsible for
their education and welfare. But his policy did not
segregate them from the Portuguese community;
it made them available for use as paid workers by
the colonists and actually encouraged contact and
mingling between the two races, including inter-
racial marriage. Meanwhile, the growth of the
African slave trade, also encouraged by Pombal,
diminished the demand for native labor. Whether
Pombal’s reform legislation signifi cantly improved
the material condition of indigenous peoples is
doubtful, but it contributed to their absorption into
the colonial population and ultimately into the
Brazilian nation. The decisive factor here was race
mixture, which increased as a result of the passing
of the Jesuit temporal power.
THE FRENCH AND DUTCH CHALLENGES
The dyewood, the sugar, and the tobacco of Brazil
early attracted the attention of foreign powers. The
French were the fi rst to challenge Portuguese con-
trol of the colony. With the aid of indigenous allies,
they made sporadic efforts to entrench themselves
on the coast and in 1555 founded Rio de Janeiro
as the capital of what they called Antarctic France.
One cultural by-product of French contact with
natives was the creation of a French image of them
as “noble savages,” immortalized by the sixteenth-
century French philosopher Montaigne in his es-
say “On Cannibals.” But the French offensive in
Brazil was weakened by Catholic-Huguenot strife
at home, and in 1567 the Portuguese commander
Mem de São ousted the French and occupied the
settlement of Rio de Janeiro.
A more serious threat to Portuguese sover-
eignty over Brazil was posed by the Dutch, whose
West India Company seized and occupied for a
quarter of a century (1630–1654) the richest
sugar-growing portions of the Brazilian coast. Un-
der the administration of Prince Maurice of Nassau
(1637–1644), Dutch Brazil, with its capital at Re-
cife, became the site of brilliant scientifi c and ar-
tistic activity. The Portuguese struggle against the
Dutch became an incipient struggle for indepen-
dence, uniting elements of all races from various
parts of Brazil. These motley forces won victories
over the Dutch at the fi rst and second battles of
Guararapes (1648–1649). Weakened by tenacious
Brazilian resistance and a simultaneous war with
England, the Dutch withdrew from Pernambuco
in 1654. But they took with them the lessons they
had learned in the production of sugar and tobacco,
and reestablished themselves in the West Indies.
Soon the plantations and refi neries of Barbados
and other Caribbean islands gave serious competi-
tion to Brazilian sugar in the world market, with
a resulting fall of prices. By the last decade of the
seventeenth century, the Brazilian sugar industry
had entered a long period of stagnation.THE MINERAL CYCLE,THE CATTLE INDUSTRY,
AND THE COMMERCIAL SYSTEM
In this time of gloom, news of the discovery of gold
in the southwestern region later known as Minas
Gerais reached the coast in 1695. This discovery
opened a new economic cycle, led to the fi rst ef-
fective settlement of the interior, and initiated a
major shift in Brazil’s center of economic and po-
litical gravity from north to south. Large numbers
of colonists from Bahia, Pernambuco, and Rio de