MASTERS AND SLAVES 131
activities. Many were planters; others carried on a
variety of businesses. One high-ranking crown offi -
cial summed up his impressions of the clergy in the
statement “All they want is money, and they care
not a jot for their good name.”
Yet the church and the clergy made their own
contributions to the life of colonial Brazil. The
clergy provided such educational and humanitar-
ian establishments as existed in the colony. From
its ranks—which were open to talent and even ad-
mitted individuals of mixed blood despite the formal
requirement of a special dispensation—came most
of the few distinguished names in Brazilian colonial
science, learning, and literature. Among them, Je-
suit writers again occupy a prominent place. But
the cultural poverty of colonial Brazil is suggested
by its lack of a university or printing press.
Masters and Slaves
Race mixture played a decisive role in the for-
mation of the Brazilian people. The scarcity of
Portuguese women in the colony, the absence of
puritanical attitudes, and the despotic power of the
great planters over their indigenous and black
slave women all gave impetus to miscegenation.
Of the three possible race combinations—white-
black, white-native, black-native—the fi rst was
the most common. The immense majority of these
unions were outside wedlock. In 1755 the mar-
quis de Pombal, pursuing the goals of population
growth and strengthening Brazil’s borders, issued
an order encouraging marriages between Portu-
guese men and native women and proclaiming the
descendants of such unions eligible to positions of
honor and dignity. This favor was not extended to
other interracial unions, however.
COLOR, CLASS,AND SLAVERY
In principle, color lines were strictly drawn. A
“pure” white wife or husband, for example, was
indispensable to a member of the upper class. But
the enormous number of mixed unions outside
wedlock and the resulting large progeny, some of
whom, at least, were regarded with affection by
Portuguese fathers and provided with some edu-
cation and property, inevitably led to the blurring
of color lines and the fairly frequent phenomenon
of “passing.” There was a tendency to classify in-
dividuals racially, if their color was not too dark,
on the basis of social and economic position rather
than on their physical appearance. The English
traveler Henry Koster alludes to this “polite fi ction”
in his anecdote concerning a certain great per-
sonage, a capitão mor, whom Koster suspected of
being a mulatto. In response to his question, his
servant replied, “He was, but is not now.” Asked to
explain, the servant continued, “Can a capitão mor
be a mulatto man?”
Slavery played as important a role in the social
organization of Brazil as race mixture did in its eth-
nic makeup. The social consequences of the system
were entirely negative. Slavery brutalized enslaved
Africans, corrupted both master and slave, fostered
harmful attitudes with respect to the dignity of la-
bor, and distorted the economic development of
Brazil. The tendency to identify labor with slavery
sharply limited the number of socially acceptable
occupations in which Portuguese or free mixed-
bloods could engage. This gave rise to a populous
class of vagrants, beggars, “poor whites,” and other
degraded or disorderly elements who would not or
could not compete with slaves in agriculture and
industry. Inevitably, given the almost total ab-
sence of incentive to work on the part of the slave,
the level of effi ciency and productivity of his or her
labor was very low.
Much older historical writing fostered the idea
that Brazilian slavery was mild by comparison
with slavery in other colonies. In part, this tradi-
tion owed its popularity to the writings of the Bra-
zilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre, who emphasized
the patriarchal relations existing between masters
and slaves in the sugar plantation society of the
northeast. But the slaves described by Freyre were
usually house slaves who occupied a privileged
position. Their situation was very different from
that of the great majority of slaves, who worked
on the sugar and tobacco plantations of Bahia and
Pernambuco. During harvest time and when the
mills were grinding the cane, says Charles Boxer,
the slaves sometimes worked around the clock and
often at least from dawn to dusk. In the off-season,