1808: The Flight of the Emperor (21 page)

Rio de Janeiro had hundreds of manumitted or freed slaves, called forros. Luccock estimated their number at around one thousand in 1808. A slave could gain his freedom in many ways. He could purchase it at a previously negotiated amount, generally equal to what the owner had paid for him. The slave accumulated this money himself, earned it by doing piecemeal work for others, or received it through the help of family members or a brotherhood. Owners could grant freedom outright, and some manumissions had deadlines. For example, a slave might have to remain captive and in service until the owner's death, after which he was legally free, as stipulated in his owner's will. The government could also intervene in cases of abandonment, illness, or maltreatment.
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The law also outlined special conditions that authorized manumission. A slave who found a diamond of twenty carats or more, for example, gained his freedom, and in this case the owner received an indemnity of 400,000 réis, enough to buy four more slaves. Englishman John Mawe describes this system of manumission by reward in the diamond mines of Cerro Frio in Minas Gerais, which he visited in 1810:

 

When a negro is so fortunate as to find a diamond of the weight of an octavo (17½ carats), much ceremony takes place; he is crowned with a wreath of flowers and carried in procession to the administrator, who gives him his freedom, by paying his owner for it. He also receives a present of new clothes, and is permitted to work on his own account. When a stone of eight or ten carats is found, the negro receives two new shirts, a complete new suit, with a hat and a handsome knife.
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A slave who denounced his master for smuggling also legally received his freedom. In this case, the slave himself received a reward of 200,000 réis.
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Many forros, having become rich enough to acquire land and other property, became slave owners themselves. These cases were rare, but they add a surprising element to the landscape of slavery in Brazil. The most famous case concerns the mulatta Francisca da Silva de Oliveira, known as Chica da Silva, of the Tijuco diamond district in Minas Gerais. Chica was born a slave but gained her liberty in 1753, granted by the diamond miner João Fernandes de Oliveira who bought her from Manuel Pires Sardinha, a Portuguese doctor. While they never legally married, she and de Oliveira had a seventeen-year relationship during which they had thirteen children. Among Chica da Silva's possessions was a “sizeable pack of slaves,” according to historian Ronaldo Vainfas.
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The power brokers of Brazil, who considered slavery an economic institution to be preserved, didn't view manumission kindly. Historian Leila Mezan Algranti cites the case of the forra Clara Maria de Jesus, who requested of Dom João the freeing of her son Jorge Pardo, slave of the priest João da Cruz Moura e Camara. She claimed that Jorge was the son of a free man, the lieutenant colonel of the line troops in Angola, conceived while
she was still in captivity. Clara Maria was willing to pay 200,000 réis for the manumission of her son, but the priest refused the deal. The superintendent general of police, Paulo Fernandes Viana, denied her request. According to him, “nobody should be forced to sell their property” because “a good slave is a good find, and precious property.” Viana advised against manumission because the country couldn't afford the risk of a large population of freed blacks. “The evils that we await from blacks are even greater when they are free than when captive,” he warned, concluding ominously that he couldn't grant Clara Maria's request because “there are more powerful political motives at large in this country.”
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Freedom didn't always mean a better quality of life, however. With a certain degree of rigor, the law regulated the possession and maintenance of slaves. Masters had to feed, house, and provide minimum requirements for the survival of their slaves. Legislation maintained that, in the case of proven maltreatment, the slave master could lose his property, thereby causing financial detriment. Once freed, however, the forros were on their own, completely marginalized from any system of legal or social protection. In many cases, manumission meant plunging into the ocean of poverty composed of forros, mulattos, and mestizos pushed to the margins of opportunities such as education, health, housing, and public safety—problems that, 125 years after the official abolition of slavery, Brazil still hasn't fully resolved.

XXI

The Travelers

T
hanks to João VI, foreigners discovered Brazil—albeit after a delay of three centuries. Researcher Rubens Borba de Moraes catalogued a total of 266 travelers who had written about the people, geography, and riches of Brazil as of 1949. The vast majority visited the country in the decades immediately following the opening of the ports.
1
These travelers recorded their impressions in letters, official reports, and books, making this one of the best-documented periods in Brazilian history. Their work includes descriptions of cities, landscapes, people, customs, and scientific discoveries. Their reports register astonishment, all of them surprised by the beauties of an idyllic, untouched land. “In Rio I encountered an entirely new world, compelling me to reproduce what I saw day and night, until I was exhausted,” recounted Austrian painter Thomas Ender, who arrived in Brazil in 1817 along with the scientific mission accompanying Princess Leopoldina.
2
“Every object of nature is here on the boldest and most magnificent scale,” noted American Naval official Henry Brackenridge the following year on entering Guanabara Bay.
3

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Brazilian colony remained the last major tropical part of the planet left unexplored by non-Portuguese Europeans. The English, Dutch, and Spanish already knew Africa, India, and China well, after intense commercial rivalry had established direct contact
with these regions by the sixteenth century. The same was happening with the rest of North America, including America, Canada, and the Spanish colonies, but the Spanish didn't impose significant restrictions on the entry of foreigners into their territories. Japan and Oceania of course remained remote points of difficult access, with Australia being the last major landmass colonized by Europeans. But nothing compared to Brazil, until then kept closed and isolated from the rest of the world. The Dutch and French had occupied swaths along the coast of Pernambuco and Rio de Janeiro respectively for short periods, but the interior of the country remained a vast terra incognita. The prohibition of access imposed by the Portuguese made the colony even more mysterious, prompting rumors in Europe of immense hidden underground mineral deposits, boundless tropical forests teeming with exotic flora and fauna, and natives still living as they had in the Stone Age. The arrival of the court and the opening of the ports suddenly changed all this, resulting in a foreign invasion without precedent.

The first travel reporter of the era, English mineralogist John Mawe, wrote
Travels in the Interior of Brazil,
published in London in 1812 to instant success. In the following years, nine more editions followed, published in different languages, including Russian, German, Italian, and Swedish.
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Born in Derbyshire, Mawe was forty-one years old in 1805 when he departed from Cádiz to Montevideo, where officials arrested him on suspicions of being a spy. He languished in jail there for a year. In 1806, after General William Beresford took the South American city, Mawe was released, then passed through Buenos Aires, chartered a boat, and set sail for Brazil. After he visited Santa Catarina, Paraná and São Paulo, Prince Regent João welcomed him in Rio de Janeiro. Over little more than two years, he traversed almost every region in Brazil, becoming the first foreigner authorized to visit the diamond mines of Minas Gerais.

Mawe had an insatiable curiosity. He described gold and diamond prospecting, plants, fruits, insects, snails, landscapes, people, clothing, dietary habits, and architecture. He noted everything that entered his gaze in meticulous and riveting detail. He also played a part in an episode involving a false diamond that an ex-slave from Minas Gerais had given to Prince João as a present. After a voyage of twenty-eight days, the freed slave, escorted by two
soldiers, personally delivered the stone to the prince. An inch and a half in diameter, it weighed a full pound. João believed it the largest diamond on earth and ordered it stored in a safe in Rio de Janeiro. Mawe, a specialist in precious minerals, knocked the wind out of everyone's sails, though, after identifying the stone as a simple quartz rock with no commercial value. The former slave, who had hoped to receive a reward, had to return home empty-handed and on foot—a distance of nine hundred miles from Rio de Janeiro.

View of Negroes Washing for Diamonds at Mandango on the River Jequitinhonha in Cerro do Frio, Brazil,
engraving from
Travels in Interior of Brazil, Particularly in the Gold and Diamond Districts
by John Mawe, London, Lucia M. Loeb/Biblioteca Guita e José Mindlin

Travelers in Brazil at the time of the Portuguese court fall into five classifications: The first, of merchants, miners, and businessmen, included John Mawe and John Luccock. The second consisted of noblemen, diplomats, military men, and government officials who resided in or passed through the country on official missions, as was the case of Henry Brackenridge and the British consuls James Henderson and Henry Chamberlain. Scientists—part of the countless expeditions traveling the country—comprised the third category, the most famous of their number being botanists Augustin de Saint-Hilaire, Karl von Martius, and Johann Baptist von Spix. The fourth group included painters and landscape artists, such as Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Debret and Austrian Johann Moritz Rugendas. The fifth and final group consisted of adventurers, onlookers, and people who arrived in the country almost by accident. This last category, a curious group, included two women, Rose de Freycinet from France and Maria Graham from England.

Rose de Freycinet ended up in Brazil through a life of romance and adventure straight out of the movies. In 1817—at twenty-five years old and married to naturalist and French navy official Louis de Soulces de Freycinet—she learned that her husband had been sent on a mission that would take him away from home for two years. Commanding the corvette
Uranie,
de Soulces de Freycinet was to travel around the world, leading a scientific mission to explore South America, the South Pacific islands, India, and the coast of Africa. Unhappy with the news, Rose made a bold move: She cut her hair, bound her breasts, and clandestinely boarded the ship on the eve of its departure disguised as a man. It was a very risky decision.

At the time, women were forbidden on French navy ships, so she ran the risk of arrest and deportation at the ship's first docking. Luckily for her, all turned out well in the end. The next day, already at high sea, she revealed
herself to her husband, who had no choice but to summon the ship's commanders and communicate her presence. Instead of being chastised, however, she was roundly greeted and welcomed. She and her husband arrived in Rio de Janeiro in December of that year. They found the city very beautiful and the climate agreeable—despite the blistering summer heat—but recorded devastating comments about the Portuguese and Brazilians in their diaries. “It is a pity that such a beautiful country was not colonized by an active and intelligent nation,” she wrote, referring to Portugal, and in another passage: “Brazilians emphasize abundance much more than they do elegance in service.”
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The de Freycinets left Brazil in 1818 and returned in 1820, after a trip around the world. On July 16, King João and the entire royal family welcomed them with a feast at São Cristovão Palace. Rose's notes depict a court that, despite all efforts to the contrary, continued to behave as inelegant bumpkins. “The King is likeable, though of little majesty,” she observed. “The Prince (future Emperor Pedro I) has a handsome figure, but his manners are quite bad and his air is common. He wears a brown jacket and nankeen trousers, which seem to me a little ridiculous at eight in the evening during a great feast given to the public.” She also criticized Princess Leopoldina, Pedro's wife:

 

I could not see in the manners of the royal Princess the noble and ceremonious appearance of a lady from the court of Austria. Here she does not care for her toilette nor for the natural elegance of her figure. For this feast . . . our poor Austrian dressed in a gray riding suit, made of ordinary cloth, wearing a pleated blouse, her hair in disarray and held up by a tortoiseshell comb. She is not ugly. I think that if well dressed she could be quite nice. The other princesses wore satin clothes, with flowers and plumes in their hair.
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Maria Graham also visited Brazil in the company of her husband aboard a naval ship, but in her case the journey ended tragically. Born in a village in the English countryside near the Scottish border, the daughter of Vice-Admiral George Dundas, commissioner of the British admiralty, she had a
first-rate education, specialized in arts and literature, and wrote and drew quite well. She had already visited India and Italy when she arrived in Brazil in 1821 aboard the frigate
Doris
, commanded by her husband, Captain Thomas Graham. They went to Olinda, Recife, and Salvador, arriving in Rio de Janeiro a short while after the Portuguese court had returned to Lisbon, landing in time to witness the famous Dia do Fico (“The day that I stay”) on January 9, 1822, during which King João's son Pedro, then prince regent, decided to remain in Brazil, refusing to comply with the orders of the Portuguese Cortes to return to Lisbon. In the region of Pernambuco, Graham witnessed a rebellion in which her husband had to negotiate with insurgents in the city of Goiania. From Brazil, the couple proceeded to Chile, but Captain Graham died shortly after passing through the Straits of Magellan. Widowed at thirty-six years old, Maria continued alone to Santiago, where destiny carried her to Admiral Thomas Cochrane, a fascinating character.

A Scottish lord, member of Parliament, and a hero of the Napoleonic Wars, Cochrane at forty-nine years old had become a legend of the seas. Contracted as a mercenary in South America, he helped the independence movements of Chile, Peru, and Brazil, fighting against the Spanish and Portuguese naval forces. Graham met Cochrane when he was commander-in-chief of the Chilean navy. Shortly thereafter, Emperor Pedro I invited him to organize the Brazilian navy. While Cochrane and Graham never admitted publicly to an amorous relationship, some biographies of the admiral argue that this was the case.
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In any event, the relationship between the two was profound and long-lasting. Maria returned to Rio de Janeiro with him, where she befriended and became the confidante of Empress Leopoldina and tutor to Princess Maria da Gloria. After returning to England, Graham married a renowned painter, Sir Augustus Callcott, and wrote books on art history. Her accounts of Brazil appeared in 1824 under the title
Journal of a Voyage to Brazil, and Residence There, during Parts of the Years 1821, 1822, 1823.
Historians consider it one of the most valuable documents from this period.
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Born in Portugal to an English family, the traveler Henry Koster arrived in Brazil in 1809 and journeyed through the cities and backlands of the Northeast for eleven years, dying in Recife in 1820. Brazilian folklorist Luis da Camara Cascudo translated into Portuguese Koster's account of his
journey,
Travels in Brazil,
originally published in London in 1816. “Koster's testimony is the first, chronologically, to deal with the traditional ethnography and psychology of the Northeast, the Backlanders in their setting,” writes da Camara Cascudo. “Before him, no foreigner had ever crossed the backlands of the Northeast, from Recife to Fortaleza in the dry season, traveling by convoy, drinking water from a rubber flask, eating roasted meat, and sleeping under the trees, so completely adapted to the world in which he chose to live.”
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Koster adored living among the Northeastern people and participating in their festivals and religious celebrations. “I missed no festivals,” he wrote proudly in his diary. “Amongst others, I went to that of St. Amaro, the healer of wounds, at whose chapel are sold bits of ribbon as charms, which many individuals of the lower orders of people tie round their naked ankles or their wrists, and preserve until they wear out, and drop off.” In the interior of Rio Grande do Norte, he noted the isolation of the Backlanders there. They had outside contact only with the priests who traveled the region performing masses, weddings, and baptisms in exchange for offerings and contributions from its inhabitants.

“Certain priests obtain a license from the Bishop of Pernambuco and travel through these regions with a small altar constructed for the purpose; of a size to be placed upon one side of a pack-saddle, and they have with them all their apparatus for saying mass,” wrote Koster.

 

These men make in the course of the year between 150 and 200 pounds—a large income in Brazil, but hardly earned, if the inconveniences and privations which they must undergo to obtain it are taken into consideration. They stop and erect the altar wherever a sufficient number of persons who are willing to pay for the mass is collected. This will sometimes be said for three or four shillings, but at other times, if a rich man takes a fancy to a priest, or has a fit of extreme devotion upon him, he will give eight or ten mil réis, two or three pounds, and it does happen, that one hundred mil réis are received for saying a mass, but this is very rare—at times an ox or an horse, or two or three, are given.