South America

° Belem ° Cabedelo ° Manaus ° Paranagua ° Rio de Janeiro ° Rio Grande ° Salvador ° Santos ° Sao Paulo ° Sao Sebastiao ° Tubarao

Brazil

Antique Map North and South America Amerique: Terres Australes Americaines Printed 1880

Brazil's primary resources made its economy, despite its relative lack of development, one of broad international significance. It is one of the world's leading agricultural nations and is especially well known as the world's most prominent coffee-producer.

Brazil has 4,600 miles of coastline, one of the largest river systems in the world with 27,000 navigable miles, millions of acres of soil, adequate water, minerals and hardwood forests. Brazil has one-seventh of the world's total forest area. Hardwoods predominate in the Amazon and Atlantic coastal zone. Rio de Janeiro was an important part of call for ships enroute to the West Coast, Pacific and Australia. Engravings and diaries of the time illustrated its importance as a place of renewal for travellers who'd been at sea for weeks or months before touching land. Its tropical fruits and flowers and spectacular scenery were a welcome sight.

But despite the vastness of its land and the richness of its resources, Brazil's economic history has been affected by boom-and-bust periods. This was the result of being oftentimes heavily dependent on one or two major agricultural products, the markets for which were highly sensitive to fluctuations in the world economy and politics. This cyclical aspect of the economy began with the export of brazilwood in the early colonial times and was continued with the sugar boom of the 16th century, the mineral boom of the 18th century (paced especially by gold and diamond mining), the coffee boom beginning in the mid-19th century, and the rubber boom of the late 19th century.

Whether Brazil was known to Portuguese navigators in the 15th century is unsolved, but the coast was visited by the Spanish sailor Vicente Yez Pinzn before the Portuguese expedition led by Pedro Alvares Cabral in 1500. Cabral claimed the land, which fitted in the Portuguese sphere of influence as defined in the Treaty of Tordesillas (1494).

The United States entered the 19th century as an independent nation, while Brazil, still a colony, was on its way to gaining independence. In 1808, as Napoleon's armies began the invasion of Portugal, the King transferred his court to Rio de Janeiro. In 1815 the status of Brazil was elevated from colony to United Kingdom with Portugal.

March 28, 1857, Atlas, London, United Kingdom

BRAZIL. The Brazilian mail-packet Tamar has arrived with despatches from Buenos Ayres of Feb. 1 and Rio Janeiro of Feb. 25. The great question of the day in Rio is the legality or non-legality of Protestant marriages; and the question was brought about in this wise: A husband and wife, John and Margaret Schopp (Swiss Protestants) quarrelled, and agreed to live separately. Subsequently, Margaret became a convert to the Roman Catholic faith, fell in love with a Brazilian, asked for and obtained a license to marry him from the Bishop of Rio de Janeiro on the ground that her former marriage with Schopp was null and void from the moment that she embraced the Roman Catholic faith. The Protestant community of Rio are furiously indignant at the bishop's conduct. In the eyes of the law, the children born of Protestant parents are all illegitimate. The newspapers, with one single exception, condemn the proceeding of the bishop.

January 27, 1855, Atlas, London, United Kingdom

NAVIGATION OF THE AMAZON.

Nautical Map of South America

On Tuesday the Tapajoz, a new iron vessel, just completed by Mr. Laird, for the Amazon Steam Navigation Company, sailed from Liverpool for Oporto. Portugal to take on board 300 Portuguese emigrants, who are to be located on the banks of the Amazon. The Tapajoz, built expressly for the Amazon navigation, is 200 feet long, 27 feet beam, 12 feet deep, and about 760 tons old measurement. She is fitted by Fawcett and Co. with a pair of engines of 200-horse power, feathering wheels, and all the latest improvements. The company for which the Tapajoz has been built has, it is stated, received a grant from the Brazilian Government of 30,000 pounds a year for the regular and efficient navigation of that river.

In Brazil slavery was abolished gradually. In 1871, six years after U.S. emancipation, children born to Brazilian slaves were no longer considered slaves. In 1888, with Emperor Dom Pedro II away in Europe, his daughter, Princess Isabel, acting as Regent, signed the Golden Law (Lei urea) which finally abolished slavery in Brazil. The Golden Law set off a reaction among Brazilian slave owners which rapidly eroded the political foundations of the monarchy. After a few months of parliamentary crisis, the Emperor was asked to leave the country and a Republic was established.

When the Brazilian Republic was declared in 1889 it was called the United States of Brazil and the new government structure was based on the U.S. structure: a President and Vice President, a bicameral Congress, and an independent judiciary. (In the 1970's Brazil changed its name to the Federative Republic of Brazil.) Brazil has 26 states and a federal district; the U.S. has 50 states and a federal district. State governments in both countries mirror the federal structure. Federal revenue sharing, a subject of much debate in the U.S. Congress, was incorporated into the 1988 Brazilian Constitution. Thus a federal revenue sharing system provides the Brazilian states, just as it does the American states, considerable resources.

As the 19th century ended, the history of aviation was beginning, a story in which Brazilians and Americans each claim the leading role. While in the U.S. the Wright brothers are the undisputed pioneers of aviation, in Brazil, Alberto Santos Dumont is considered the Father of Aviation. In 1898 Dumont was the first to construct and fly a gasoline-powered, lighter-than-air craft. In 1906 in Paris, France, he succeeded in making the world's first, officially-observed, powered flight of a heavier-than-air machine. Orville and Wilbur Wright made several controlled, sustained flights in a power-driven, heavier-than-air craft near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903, but it wasn't until 1908 that their achievement was recognized in the United States.

March 16, 1885, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

Slavery In Brazil.

The Brazilian law of 1871 provides that all children born to slave mothers can not obtain their freedom until they are 21 years old, and must serve their mother's owner until that time. A traveler says there " never was a nation on the globe in which slaves were treated with more diabolical cruelty than they are to-day in the coffee-producing provinces of Brazil. The punishments practiced are simply barbarous." There are still 1,200,000 slaves in the empire.

June 22, 1889, Daily Alta Califonia, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

The Condition of Brazil.

New York Sun.

One of the most attractive countries for immigrants in these times is Brazil. When the Emperor opened the legislative bodies a short time ago, he delivered a speech in which he reviewed the condition of Brazil; and, in referring to the growth of the population, he spoke proudly of the fact that 131,000 immigrants had entered its ports last year, and said that this influx of population was favored by his Government. He told of the prosperity of Brazil, and of its industrial development, and of its educational advancement, and of the soundness of its finances. Altogether it is a hopeful state of things which the Emperor of Brazil describes without boasting, and he says that the Government will continue to promote the economic and social transformation now in progress there.

In 1889 American poet Walt Whitman wrote a poem welcoming the birth of the Brazilian Republic:

Welcome, Brazilian Brother - thy ample place is ready;
A Loving Hand - a Smile from the North -
A Sunny Instant Hail!
(Let the Future Care for itself, where it reveals
its Troubles, Impediments,
Ours, Ours, the Present Throe, the Democratic Aim,
the Acceptance and Faith);
To Thee To-day our Reaching Arm, our Turning Neck -
To thee from Us the Expectant Eye,
Thou Cluster Free! Thou Brilliant Lustrous One!
Thou, Learning Well,
The True Lesson of a Nation's Light in the Sky,
(More Shining than the Cross, more than the Crown),
The Height to Be Superb Humanity.

Rio Grande

The Port of Rio Grande, located on the Rio Grande River in southern Brazil about eight miles from the mouth of the river, is the state's oldest city and one of the most important ports in Brazil. Built on a low-lying peninsula, it is little more than 1.5 meters above sea level. The mouth of the river was dredged to allow ocean-going vessels to dock in the Port of Rio Grande.

Its exports go primarily to other parts of Brazil and include beef jerky, hides, wool, tobacco, lard, wheat, rice, beans, and fish and shrimp. The city s industries include fisheries, canneries, meat-processing plants, textile mills, and a petroleum refinery and oil terminal.

It was the state capital for a time in the mid-1800s. Being the second busiest port in Brazil, it has become one of the richest cities in the state of Rio Grade do Sul.

Portuguese sailors first explored the area in search of places to fortify the coast against the French. The city was founded in 1737 by Brigadier General Jose da Silva Pais who build a fort there on what would become the site of the Port of Rio Grande. Colonists arrived from the Azores and Madeira during the 1750s, and the colony was granted village status in 1751. In 1760, the village of Rio Grande de Sao Pedro became its own captaincy. Spain occupied the village in 1763, forcing many families to flee. The Portuguese re-took the Port of Rio Grande in 1776, though there were fewer people there. The Port of Rio Grande became a city and capital of the Portuguese Province during the War of Tatters, and it continued in that role until the revolution ended in 1845.

Salvador

Salvador, also Bahia, city, major port, and capital (since 1889) of Bahia estado (state), northeastern Brazil. It is the country s third largest city. Salvador is situated at the southern tip of a picturesque, bluff-formed peninsula that separates Todos os Santos (All Saints) Bay, a deep natural harbour, from the Atlantic Ocean.

One of the country's oldest cities, Salvador was founded in 1549 as the capital of the Portuguese colony of Brazil by Tom de Sousa, the first governor-general. As the entrepot of the thriving sugar trade that developed along the bay shores, the city soon became a tempting prize for pirates and enemies of Portugal. It was captured by Dutch forces in 1624 but was retaken the following year. It remained under Portuguese control for the next two centuries. Salvador was the last Portuguese stronghold during the war for Brazilian independence, holding out until July 1823, when the last Portuguese troops were expelled. A monument commemorating the Brazilian victory is in a plaza in the Campo Grande district.

Salvador was a major centre for the African slave trade in the colonial period. Muslim African slaves in the city staged a widespread revolt there in 1835. Salvador still has one of the largest concentrations of black and mulatto populations in Brazil. Those groups have contributed many of the folkways, costumes, and distinctive foods for which the city is noted.

In 1763, following the transfer of the colonial seat of government to Rio de Janeiro, Salvador lost political preeminence and entered a long period of economic decline from which it did not emerge until after 1900.

March 22, 1871, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

"The Last Relic of Slavery in America, and the Last Step Toward Emancipation."

It may seem strange that Brazil, which was discovered as early as the year 1500, and was the first to introduce slavery in this continent, has not yet wiped out that stain of the dark ages. It is well known that her first conquerors, tho Portuguese, like the Spaniards, made the aborigines of their new colonies slaves. Columbus himself, though noted for his piety, had no scruples in carrying off several aborigines from San Salvador and selling them into slavery in Europe. When slavery was first introduced into the American colonies in 1620, it had been already a well established institution in Brazil for nearly a century. And now that slavery has been abolished in every Republic of North and South America, and even in the West Indies, Brazil alone keeps her slaves unfettered.

How can this be explained? In one way chiefly. Brazil has been under monarchical rule ever since her discovery in the year 1600 by Alvarez de Cabral. Monarchy and slavery are not conflicting institutions. Under the theory of the one-man rule, they are homogeneous elements of the same civil body. Indeed slavery may be considered as the highest perfection of the Monarchical theory, whereby with the exception of one man, all others are only fit to serve in some subordinate capacity or degree. Hence when servitude is carried so far as to comprise not only submission of the will, but also service of the body without remuneration, the theory of the one-man supremacy has attained its highest perfection. It is true that monarchists, feeling a natural abhorrence to human slavery, have tried to avoid this extreme, but such is nevertheless the logical conclusion of their theory. Against this abominable and degrading doctrine has Republicanism risen in our times, whose principles and conclusions are directly contrary to the above; hence where true Republicanism is established, slavery cannot exist.

1886 Fazenda, De Sao Sebastiao, Brazil

But Brazil having, as before stated, been under monarchical rule for centuries, slavery has become an old domestic institution there, which is very difficult to abolish. The Brazilian slaves have, as it were, been encompassed with a high wall, and no intercourse has been allowed them with foreign countries. The light of instruction has been removed from them, and they have been left in a dark night. Nevertheless, such was the brilliancy of Lincoln's Emancipation Act, and of its effects in this country, that, like the first grey streaks, of dawn, it tore up the veil of darkness from the Brazilian slave. He even heard the clang of the chains, when they fell from the unfettered limbs of the slaves in this country; and heard their shouts of joy and hurrahs for Lincoln, and the brave boys in blue who freed them.

Could they resist the impulse for liberty which nature has forced even into the brutes of creation?

But how to recover their lost rights? To beseech with tears their masters, it was useless. Slave-holders have no human hearts, or at least they are not accessible to human pleadings on that subject. Some of the most daring slaves concluded that the only means of recovering their liberty was by force. Accordingly, three hundred slaves belonging to some Faliendas in the provinces of Minas Gera, made a combination. They endeavored to induce other slaves employed in the mines of English companies, to join them, hoping that if the first attempt was successful in their provinces, it would rapidly spread throughout the Empire, and bring about a general slave insurrection. But, alas for their premature hopes. The plot was discovered in time, and thirty of the ringleaders were arrested, who will probably be subjected to torture in order to find other accomplices, and finally will be executed.

But will this attempt for liberty fail altogether? Or rather, will it not be the beginning of a series of attempts, until the slaves obtain their freedom? On this point the Anglo-Brazilian Times well remarks: "It is to be feared that the intended insurrection is, though aborted, too ominous an indication that the end is rapidly approaching to us; for it has, in truth, been impossible to conceal from the slaves of the Empire that only in Brazil, on the American continent, are there human beings held in bondage." The disaffected slaves who have now failed in their plot, have at least learned their mistakes in making up and carrying out their plan; these they will avoid next time. They will have then better leaders, better means, and better supporters. From the north and from the south, from the east and from the west, they will be joined by friends of the same cause. No, it is not possible that the American soil, upon which the starry banner of Liberty now floats, will long be defiled by this last stain of barbarism. This must and shall be, throughout its length and breadth, "the land of the free and the home of the brave."

November 25, 1889, Daily Alta California, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.

The Coffee Market.

E. Hochkofler, the Broker, in speaking of the condition of the local Coffee markets, says: During the first twelve days of the month business was stagnant, the low and irregular prices in the New York market causing such a feeling of uncertainty in regard to future values as to deter dealers from buying at almost any price. Sales did not exceed 1500 bags and consisted mainly of small parcels of Costa Rica and Guatemala needed for immediate wants; good unwashed Salvador was freely offered at 18-1/2 c without finding purchasers and some sales were made at 18-1/4 c. Prices, in fact, were entirely nominal.

Under the stimulus of smaller receipts in Brazilian crops and of reduced estimates of the 1890-91 Brazil crops, a reaction set in last week and culminated on Friday (18th) on receipt of the news of the revolution in Brazil. The fear of imminent lower prices being dispelled, there ensued a strong demand from the interior, to meet which dealers were obliged to buy largely of all kinds and prices advanced proportionally. Since the 13th instant the total sales from first hands aggregate 1309 bags Costa Rica, 9 Nicaragua, 6352 Salvador and 2614 Guatemala in all 10,284 bags, at prices reaching at the close the following quotations: 19@20c for good washed Guatemala and Costa Rica, 17-1/2@18-3/4c for fair washed Guatemala and Costa Rica, 15@17c for medium Guatemala, 13@14-1/4c for ordinary Guatemala, 8!12-1/2c for very inferior to common Guatemala and 19c for good unwashed Salvador.

Stocks in first hands have been materially reduced by the large sales and are poorly assorted. Guatemalas consist almost wholly of inferior and ordinary qualities, which continue neglected. The stock consists of 1104 bags Costa Rica, 63 Nicaragua, 9725 Salvador and 3726 Guatemala in all 14,618 bags. The steamer Acapulco arrived from Central American ports with 479 bags Guatemala Coffee.

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1899. World's Fleet. Boston Daily Globe

Lloyds Register of Shipping gives the entire fleet of the world as 28,180 steamers and sailing vessels, with a total tonnage of 27,673,628, of which 39 perent are British.

Great Britain	10,990 vessels, total tonnage of 10,792,714
United States	3,010 vessels, total tonnage of 2,405,887
Norway	2,528 vessels, tonnage of 1,604,230
Germany	1,676 vessels, with a tonnage of 2,453,334, in which are included her particularly large ships.
Sweden	1,408 vessels with a tonnage of 643, 527
Italy	1,150 vessels
France	1,182 vessels

For Historical Comparison
Top 10 Maritime Nations Ranked by Value (2017)

	Country	# of Vessels	Gross Tonnage (m)	Total Value (USDbn)
1	Greece	4,453	206.47	$88.0
2	Japan	4,317	150.26	$79.8
3	China	4,938	159.71	$71.7
4	USA	2,399	55.92	$46.5
5	Singapore	2,662	64.03	$41.7
6	Norway	1,668	39.68	$41.1
7	Germany	2,923	81.17	$30.3
8	UK	883	28.78	$24.3
9	Denmark	1,040	36.17	$23.4
10	South Korea	1,484	49.88	$20.1
Total		26,767	87.21	$466.9