Political practices and Enlightenment ideas in Portuguese America (when mutinies became inconfidências – 1640-1817)

10th International Congress on the Enlightenment, Dublin, July 25-31, 1999, Session “At the margins of the Enlightenment: Brazil and Portugal during the second half of the 18th and early 19th century” “Political Practices and ideas of the Enlightenment in Portuguese America […]”

Political practices and Enlightenment ideas in Portuguese America (when mutinies became inconfidências – 1640-1817) Luciano Raposo de Almeida Figueiredo Department of History, Fluminense Federal University Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Until Enlightenment ideas spread among learned Portuguese-Brazilians in the second half of the 18th century, filling the bookshops of Vila Rica, Tijuco, Salvador, Recife and Rio de Janeiro with copies of the Encyclopedia, the works of Montesquieu, Rosseau, Mably, Raynal and many other abominable writings, to condense in conspiracies that were to attack decisively the foundations of the Portuguese empire, its Brazilian subjects’ political practices retained their quite peculiar properties. In order to discuss the impact of Enlightenment ideas on the political struggles waged in Portuguese America I shall endeavour, in this essay, to underline certain continuities between the Inconfidências and the political experimentation undertaken by the colonists in movements of mutiny and revolt since the 17th century. Relations between Portugal and its dominions in America were marked, in the political dimension, by moments of extreme hostility. The economic orientations of the metropolis did not always meet with natural agreement from the overseas subjects given over to producing the wealth. Despite the extensive legislation that set up administrative structures at various levels and fixed jurisdictions, powers and instruments of control, confrontations, mutinies and revolts erupted against the Portuguese authorities in various regions of Brazil, revealing the agitated undercurrents of the colonial political order. There was great diversity to these conflicts – which were also diverse in how radically and to what extent they contested the regime – ever since the dawning of the 16th century, when even the most timid settlements confronted the first governors-general, who arrived bearing

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orders from the metropolis. The history of three centuries of rebellion in Portuguese America, up to the decisive radicalization towards the end of the “century of light”, is one of fragmentation: soldiers opposed captains-generals, governors confronted local oligarchies, slaves were set against slave-owners, slave-owners against tradesmen, tradesmen against traders, priests against plantation owners, in addition to the other social groups and authorities who did battle. Particularly conspicuous within this extended setting of conflicts are those instances of resistance and protest originating in complaints of a financial and fiscal nature. They were, to borrow Laura de Mello e Souza’s expression, “the salt of the earth”. Protests against the royal fondness for taxation appear in appraisals from Portuguese men of letters and colonial officials, in consultations from overseas councillors, entreaties from traders at American customs offices, and reproachful representations from chambers throughout the land, all of which bring out not only the dramatization that pervaded the discourse of these subjects in distant lands, but also different forms of resistance and contestation. These included tax evasion and embezzlement, embargoes imposed by magistrates, falsification of tax documents, shady deals and claims pleading poverty (taken always to the point of paroxysm) until finally reaching the dreaded (and dreadful) form of revolution; or, to continue using terms current since the 17th century, inconfidências. One of the ingredients that catalysed these collective movements seems to have been an inability to negotiate tax debts on the part of governors and senior administrators of the royal revenues. Not infrequently, these officials seem to have exercised despotic power, with scant regard for the wishes of the just, benevolent sovereign, thus fuelling the myth of the “king betrayed” present in the revolts of the old regime. This enhancement of the image of the sovereign and of the succour he should vouchsafe his vassals, figures as one of the rituals adopted in these revolts. The cries of “Long live the king” were a prior public declaration of loyalty which, from these settlers’ point of view, along with the outcry against the usurpation of the traditional rights of loyal subjects, legitimated the resort to rebellion. Popular mobilization seems to have constituted one indispensable element in these protests. However, even though crowds played a fundamental role in all of them, the presence of the urban mob, of slaves and retainers did not mean that popular demands were being pressed. Far from it: bound into complex networks of dependence, hierarchies and estate-related values, this broad mobilization served to evidence the breadth of dissatisfaction and to create a situation where control of political stability was apparently lost. Nonetheless, even though contemporary discourses stressed waves of rioting, violence and disorder, also present is a surprising “legalistic discourse”, according to the category of A. M. Hespanha. This essential feature is also evident in the invasions of legislative chambers or the constraints imposed on their activities, which habitually formed the overture to such mutinies. Officials identified with the despotic regime were removed, forms of

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representation were occasionally broadened, and legislation was enacted to ensure that the demands that motivated the revolt were met – but local decision-making mechanisms were not altered. The changes and reforms were pursued within the legal order, on a recognition of the pre-eminent seat of political activity according to the most proper Portuguese tradition. Even a certain political pragmatism ran through the way these insubordinations were operated, when the rebel leaders sought backing in neighbouring areas to attempt to break out of their isolation. In addition to seeking support in the vicinity of the colony, they went further afield, knowingly leaving rumours in the air that they had also contacted other European nations with which they would establish new bonds of servitude. When Rio de Janeiro or Minas Gerais threatened to resort to Spanish sovereignty, when Bahians claimed to be in contact with the English, or Pernambucans to be reaching agreements with the French, they were seizing upon one of the most fragile aspects of colonial politics. Actually, however, this sense of opportunity appeared more in political discourse than in practical breakaway measures. The enlightened colonial policies of the first Marquis of Pombal brought a new relationship to the handling of financial matters. The result, in addition to modernizing administrative practices, had direct repercussions in improving the degree of dissatisfaction among the overseas subjects, in a trend that Maxwell called “accommodation”. Taking Minas Gerais as the paradigm, the assertion is easy to understand. While the first half of the century witnessed a volume of day-to-day contestation, the decades that followed saw a cooling in direct political action, a situation doubtless related to the ending of practices that excluded local elites from decision-making mechanisms and from the pro rata division of the colonial surplus. Under Dom José I, the pattern of relationships between colony and metropolis in the field of tax-related tensions changed substantially. The Royal Exchequer, set up under Pombal in 1761, had brought greater rationality to the collection and administration of royal revenues by introducing a centralized system. In the colonies, the reform set up juntas de fazenda (revenue boards) subordinated to the various contadorias (accounts departments) into which the Exchequer came to be divided. In the captaincies of Brazil, the new boards co-opted into their service “prudent men of means” from the locality who would lend their business experience to managing public finances. These boards also came to accumulate a series of powers of taxation in the territory under their jurisdiction, becoming responsible for managing both expenditure and tax collection, in addition to administering contracts. The unambiguous nature of these reworkings of colonial policy were confirmed by the withdrawal of attributions from the Overseas Council and its eventual dismantling. The neo-mercantilism introduced after the death of Dom José was to reopen ancient wounds in relations with Portugal, once again spurring the colonists to direct action against the metropolis. Although the reforms enacted by the Marquis of Pombal had soothed one

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of the habitual sources of discontent, signs of a return to neo-mercantilism after 1777 were once again to rouse the dormant repertoire of political practices. Now, however, a systematized body of political ideas and new paradigms was to collaborate powerfully in this process. In the inconfidências of the late 18th century, a grasp of the principles of political liberalism brought new content and new forms to the protests. Revolts and mutinies, as we have just seen, were political means for pressing demands. Enlightenment ideas metamorphosed the mutinies into a weapon for political change. It will be possible to pursue the interpretation set out above if, from this point on, we return to a longer-term view of the political activities that the colonists had engaged in to vent their revolt since the Restoration. After all, if we were able to affirm the conservative, reactive content of that accumulation of experiences, then this, allied to the various ways in which the colonial identity was constituted, would equip the subjects with the awareness of their situation as colonists. This fluid awareness of the conditions of colonial exploitation, whose potential for producing change had been blocked by the ancient relations of subordination between subjects and sovereign, was now to be channelled by the liberalism and political ideas of the Enlightenment into hitherto unthinkable proposals. The change in the paradigm of political relations caused by the Enlightenment was to unleash the revolutionary potential of colonial dissatisfaction. While it is a commonplace that, without liberal ideas, there would be no inconfidências, we should remember also that, without the tradition of rebellion fostered by the limitations of the colonial system, the dissatisfactions that emerged in the late 18th century would not have found the support deriving from the political identity of the colonists. In this way alone, recovering a historicity forgotten by the nativism that is taking up historiography, does one arrive at the origins that turn loyal subjects into faithless colonists. There is however a deep-rooted – albeit little acknowledged – relationship of continuity between the mutinies and the inconfidências of the 18th century that goes beyond confrontation. Even when restricted to the reformist scheme of ideas, this accumulated experience served to nourish a sense of otherness and a recognition of the limits imposed under the colonial system. The construction of colonial identities accompanied, and was linked to, the accumulation of political experience. In the long run, the common memory precipitated a store of regionally defined experiences that guaranteed a certain notion of rights. The political movements of the inconfidências return to the rites of rebellion, the motivating factors, the role of rumour, and the social composition of the revolts of the Old Regime (as well as the tendency to exclude popular demands), but they are defined by a different kind of political criticism. This time, the criticism aimed at the very core of the monarchies, in accusations against the kings and their tyrannical colonial arm, in proposals

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to sever the colonial pact and, more occasionally, in criticism of slavery. From here onwards the scope of treason would extend to kings. Up to the mid-18th century, the distinguishing feature of political criticism had been the colonists’ ability to make the fragilities of overseas policy their instrument, while balancing this with trust in the sovereign; by the late 18th century, the struggle would be actually to diminish his sovereignty. The political notions of the inconfidências began where those of the mutinies ended.

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