the Palace in the Quinta da Boa Vista park in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was inhabited by one King of Portugal and the two Brazilian Emperors?
water privatization in Brazil began under Brazil's post-colonial Empire Pedro II of Brazil?
The Empire of Brazil was a political entity that comprised present-day Brazil under the rule of Emperors Pedro I and his son Pedro II. Founded in 1822, it was replaced by a republic in 1889.
As a result of the Napoleonic occupation of Portugal, the Portuguese royal family, the Braganzas (Portuguese: os Braganças), went into exile in Brazil, the most important of the Portuguese colonies. What followed was a period when Brazil actually became the capital of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves, a whole new status, and enjoyed self-government under the Braganza dynasty, with no reference to the authorities in Lisbon. This nurtured a distaste for the idea of returning to status quo ante upon the overthrow of Napoleon's influence over Portugal. Therefore, Brazil came to be independent of Portugal, albeit under the rule of a member of the Portuguese royal family.
After its independence from the Portuguese on September 7, 1822 Brazil became a monarchy, the Empire of Brazil, which lasted until the establishment of a republican government on November 15, 1889. Two emperors occupied the throne in that period: Pedro I, from 1822 to 1831; and Pedro II, from 1831 to 1889. King João VI of Portugal also held the title of Emperor of Brazil as stipulated by the treaty recognizing Brazilian independence.
The end of the Empire in 1889 and the foundation of the republic was a reactionary development following the abolition of slavery in 1888, which had created a serious threat to the interests of the economic and political oligarchy.
In September 1821, the Portuguese Assembly, with only a portion of the Brazilian delegates present, voted to abolish the Kingdom of Brazil and the royal agencies in Rio de Janeiro, thus subordinating all provinces of Brazil directly to Lisbon. In January 1822, tension between Portuguese troops and the Luso-Brazilians (Brazilians of Portuguese ancestry) turned violent when Pedro, regent of the Kingdom of Brazil and heir-apparent to João VI, who had been ordered by the Assembly to return to Lisbon, refused to comply and vowed to stay, forming a new government headed by José Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva.
After Pedro's decision to defy the Côrtes, the "lead feet", as the Brazilians called the Portuguese troops, rioted before concentrating on Cerro Castello, which was soon surrounded by thousands of armed Brazilians. Dom Pedro then "dismissed" the Portuguese commanding general and ordered him to remove his soldiers across the bay to Niterói, where they would await transport to Portugal. Blood had been shed in Recife in the Province of Pernambuco, when the Portuguese garrison there had been forced to depart in November 1821.
In Rio de Janeiro, on May 13, Pedro was proclaimed the "Perpetual Defender of Brazil" by the São Paulo legislative assembly and shortly thereafter called a Constituent Assembly (Assembléia Constituinte) for the next year. To deepen his base of support, he joined the Freemasons, who, led by Andrada e Silva, were pressing for parliamentary government and independence.
By that time, relations between Portugal and Brazil were so bad that Prince Pedro had already issued two manifestos, the "Letter to the Peoples of Brazil" and the "Letter to the Friendly Nations", that read like a declaration of independence. On 12 October 1822, his 24th birthday, Dom Pedro was acclaimed as the first Emperor of Brazil. He was crowned on December 1, 1822.
To consolidate his claim, Pedro — now Emperor Pedro I of Brazil — hired Admiral Thomas Cochrane, one of Britain's most successful naval commanders in the Napoleonic Wars and the South American wars of independence, and the French General Pierre Labatut, who had fought in Colombia. These men were to lead the fight to drive the Portuguese out of Bahia, Maranhão, and Pará, and to force those areas to replace Lisbon's rule with that of Rio de Janeiro. The much-feared Cochrane secured Maranhão with a single warship, despite the Portuguese military's attempt to disrupt the economy and society with a scorched-earth campaign and with promises of freedom for the slaves. By mid-1823 the contending forces numbered between 10,000 and 20,000 Portuguese, some of whom were veterans of the Napoleonic Wars, versus 12,000 to 14,000 Brazilians, mostly in militia units from the Northeast. There is little information on casualties for both sides.
The United Kingdom and Portugal eventually recognized Brazilian independence by signing a treaty on August 29, 1825. Until then, the Brazilians feared that Portugal would resume its attack. Portuguese retribution, however, came in a financial form. Secret codicils of the treaty with Portugal required that Brazil assume payment of 1.4 million pounds sterling owed to Britain and indemnify Dom João VI and other Portuguese for losses totaling 600,000 pounds sterling. Brazil also renounced future annexation of Portuguese African colonies, and in a side treaty with Britain, promised to end the slave trade. Neither of these measures pleased the slave-holding planters.
Pedro returned to Rio de Janeiro in September 14 and in the following days the freemasons had spread pamphlets (written by Joaquin Gonçalves Ledo) that suggested the idea that the Prince should be acclaimed Constitutional Emperor. The official separation would only occur in September 22, 1822 in a letter written by Pedro to Dom João VI. In it, Pedro still calls himself Prince Regent and his father is considered the King of independent Brazil.
The animosity between the Bonifacians and the Liberals only grew after the formal declaration of Independence. Both groups had conflicting interests and perceived each other as an inevitable threat. The Bonifacians defended the existence of a strong, constitutional and centralized monarchy and intended to abolish slavery. The Liberals, on the other hand, desired exactly the opposite: they wanted a democracy which only they could be part of and a federal country where they could rule their provinces without interference.
In October 12, 1822, in the Field of Santana (later known as Field of the Acclamation) Pedro was acclaimed Constitutional Emperor and Perpetual Defender of Brazil, marking the beginning of the Brazilian Empire.
After a failed attempt by the Liberals to oust him from the cabinet, José Bonifácio initiated a judicial inquiry (that would be known as “Bonifácia”) against the Liberals, who were accused of “conspiracy, plotting and demagogy”, and all of whom were imprisoned with the exception of Gonçalves Ledo, João Soares Lisboa and a few others who escaped to Buenos Aires.
In March 3, 1823, the Constituent and Legislative General Assembly of the Empire of Brazil initiated its legislature with the intention to promulgate the first political Constitution of the country. The project of the Constitution of 1823 was written by Antônio Carlos de Andrada and exhibited strong influence from the French and Norwegian charters.
The Emperor appointed the Liberal José Joaquim Carneiro de Campos to preside over a new Cabinet. Consequently the Bonifacians became the opposition and created newspapers to attack their enemies in the cabinet and also in the Assembly.
The crisis became more serious when a Brazilian apothecary suffered physical aggressions from two Portuguese officers who served in the Brazilian Army who erroneously believed that he had been the author of an injurious article about them. The Bonifacians used this incident to allege that the aggression suffered by the apothecary was in fact an attempt against the honor of Brazil and the Brazilian people.
The military officers felt attacked by the insults directed at them, and the monarch, fearing that Portuguese officers (the majority in the officer staff) would cause problems, ordered the troops to leave Rio de Janeiro. Some Bonifacian deputies cried out demanding that Peter I should be declared an outlaw. After the Emperor heard about it he signed a decree dissolving the Assembly[14 ] (which he had authority to do).[14 ] The Liberals who were persecuted during the "Bonifácia" were pardoned and Gonçalves Ledo, João Soares Lisboa and others returned to Brazil.
In November 13, 1823, Pedro I, who had no desire to reign as an absolute monarch, put the newly established State Council in charge of writing a new Constitution, which was finished in only fifteen days. The State Council was formed by ten famous Brazilian-born jurists, including José Joaquim Carneiro de Campos (later Marquis of Caravelas and the main author of the new Charter), Francisco Vilela Barbosa (later the first Marquis of Paranaguá), João Severiano Maciel da Costa (the ex-president of the dissolved Constituent Assembly), Manuel Jacinto Nogueira da Gama (later the Marquis of Baependi), and Luís José de Carvalho e Melo (later the Viscount of Cachoeira).
The first Brazilian Constitution was then promulgated by Peter I and solemnly sworn in the Cathedral of the Empire in March 25, 1824.
In Pernambuco the promulgation of the Constitution in 1824, with its highly centralized regime, divided the province into two political factions: one monarchist, led by Francisco Paes Barreto, and the other one republican, led by Manuel de Carvalho Pais de Andrade.[20 ] In December 13, 1823, local governor Paes Barreto resigned under pressure from the Liberals, who illegally elected in his place Paes de Andrade.
In August 2 the Emperor sent a naval division commanded by the Admiral Thomas Cochrane to Maceió, capital of Alagoas, from where they travelled by land towards Pernambuco. Along the way, the army was strengthened by militias that increased their numbers to 3,500 soldiers.
Manuel Paes de Andrade, who had sworn to fight to the death, ran away secretly with José da Natividade Saldanha without informing his companions, and departed in a British ship.[28 ] The rebels, without leadership and unmotivated, were completely defeated five days later in Olinda. The rebels in Paraíba did not fare better and were quickly overwhelmed by troops of the province without the aid of the central government. Of the hundreds who participated in the three provinces rebellion only fifteen were condemned to death, amongst them Friar Mug.[28 ] All the others were pardoned by Pedro I in March 7, 1825.
In 1825, war flared again over Argentina's determination to annex the Cisplatine Province (present-day Uruguay, on the East bank of the Plata River). The empire could little afford the troops, some of whom were recruited in Ireland and Germany, or the sixty warships needed to blockade the Río de la Plata. A loan from London bankers was expended by 1826, and Pedro had to call the General Assembly to finance the war. The blockade raised objections from the United States and Britain, and defeats on land in 1827 made it necessary to negotiate an end to the US$30 million Argentina-Brazil War. The war at least left Uruguay independent instead of an Argentine province. That was possible because, following the wars led by José Gervasio Artigas against the centralist government of Buenos Aires, many people neither wanted to submit to Buenos Aires nor to Brazil. In June 1828, harsh discipline and xenophobia provoked a mutiny of mercenary troops in Río de Janeiro; the Irish were shipped home and the Germans sent to the South. The army was reduced to 15,000 members, and the anti-slavery Pedro, now without military muscle, faced a Parliament controlled by slaveowners and their allies.
As coffee exports rose steadily, so did the numbers of imported slaves; in Río de Janeiro alone, they soared from 26,254 in 1825 to 43,555 in 1828. In 1822, about 30%, or one million, of Brazil's population consisted of African-born or -descended slaves.
Pedro wanted to abolish slavery, but the constitution gave the law-making authority to the pro-slavery Parliament. Led by Bernardo Pereira de Vasconcelos of Minas Gerais in the assembly, supporters of slavery argued that it was not demoralizing, that foreign capital and technology would not help Brazil, and that railroads would only rust. Others, such as Nicolau de Campos Vergueiro of São Paulo, argued in favor of replacing slavery with free European immigrants. In the end, the Parliament established a contract system that was little better than slavery. Laws and decrees unacceptable to slavery's supporters simply would not take effect, such as the order in 1829 forbidding slave ships to sail for Africa. These items of the slave agenda were the roots of the regional rebellions of the nineteenth century.
After Dom João's death (1826), despite Pedro's renunciation of his right to the Portuguese throne in favor of his daughter, Brazilian nativist radicals falsely accused the emperor of plotting to overthrow the constitution and to proclaim himself the ruler of a reunited Brazil and Portugal. They raised tensions by provoking street violence against the Portuguese of Río de Janeiro and agitated for a federalist monarchy that would give the provinces self-government and administrative autonomy. When Pedro dismissed his cabinet in April 1831, street and military demonstrators demanded its reinstatement in violation of his constitutional prerogatives. He refused, saying: "I will do anything for the people but nothing [forced] by the people." With military units assembled on the Campo de Sant'Anna, an assembly ground in Río de Janeiro, and people in the streets shouting "death to the tyrant", he backed down. Failing to form a new cabinet, he abdicated in favor of his five-year-old son Pedro (who thus became Emperor Pedro II of Brazil), and left Brazil as he had arrived — on a British warship.
From 1831 to 1840, the country was ruled by three appointed regents, in the young Emperor's name. This was a period of turmoil as local factions struggled to gain control of their provinces and to keep the masses in line. Brazil took on the appearance of a federation of local pátrias (autonomous centers of regional power) with loose allegiance to the Río de Janeiro government, whose function was to defend them from external attack and to maintain order and balance among them. The government's ability to carry out that function was impaired, however, by the low budgets allowed the army and navy, and by the creation of a National Guard, whose officers were local notables determined to protect their private and regional interests. The rebellions, riots, and popular movements that marked the next years did not spring as much from economic misery as from attempts to share in the prosperity resulting from North Atlantic demand for Brazil's exports.
Pedro I's death from tuberculosis in 1834 had sapped the restorationist impulse and removed the glue that held uneasy political allies together. With the regency attempting to suppress simultaneous revolts in the South and North, it could not easily reassert its supremacy over the remaining provinces. The elites, longing for a focus of loyalty, identity, and authority, rallied around the boy-Emperor to raise him to power in 1840. The boy-Emperor was declared of age at fourteen instead of the constitutionally specified age of eighteen, beginning the personal rule of Pedro II. He was subsequently crowned on July 18, 1841.
The "moderating power" granted to the emperor by the constitution of 1824 — to balance the traditional executive, legislative, and judicial branches — gave him the right to name senators, to dismiss the legislature, and to shift control of the government from one party to the other. In theory, he was to act as the political balance wheel. The political system had an artificial aspect to it; it did not relate openly to the real power structure of the country—the senhores da terra ("landowners") who ran local affairs.
In 1850, British and domestic pressure finally forced the Brazilian government to outlaw the African slave trade. Ending the slave trade had a number of consequences. Parliament passed both laws encouraging European immigration, and the Land Law of 1850. Ending the slave trade also freed capital that could then be used for investment in transport and industrial enterprises and it ensured that Britain did not interfere in Brazil's military intervention to end the rule in Buenos Aires of Juan Manuel de Rosas (who was governor of Buenos Aires province, 1829-33, 1835-52).
In the mid-1860s, the imperial government conspired with Buenos Aires authorities to replace the Blanco regime in Montevideo with a Colorado one. The Blancos appealed to Paraguayan dictator Francisco Solano López (president, 1862-70), who harbored his own fears of the two larger countries and who regarded a threat to Uruguay as a menace to Paraguay. In 1864, Empire of Brazil and Argentina agreed to act together should Solano López attempt to save the Blancos. In September 1864 the Brazilians sent troops into Uruguay to put the Colorados in power. Paraguay reacted by seizing Brazilian vessels on the Rio Paraguai and by attacking the province of Mato Grosso. Solano López, mistakenly expecting help from anti-Buenos Aires caudillos, sent his forces into Corrientes to get at Rio Grande do Sul and Uruguay, and found himself at war with both Argentina and Brazil. The Guaraní speaking Paraguayans defeated the allies at Curupaity in September 1866. The Argentine president, General Bartolomé Mitre (1861-68), took the bulk of his troops home to quell opposition to his war policy, leaving the Brazilians to soldier on. The famed General Lima e Silva, Marquis and later Duke of Caxias, took command of the allied forces and led them until the fall of Asunción in early 1869. With stubborn determination, the Brazilians pursued Solano López until they cornered and killed him. They then occupied Paraguay until 1878.
The war had left Brazil and Argentina facing each other over a prostrate Paraguay and a dependent Uruguay, a situation that soon turned into a tense rivalry that repeatedly assumed warlike postures. In Brazil, the war contributed to the growth of manufacturing, to the professionalization of the armed forces and their concentration in Rio Grande do Sul, to the building of roads and the settling of European immigrants in the southern provinces, and to the increased power of the central government.
The 1867 collapse of the French-sponsored Second Mexican Empire left Brazil as the only Latin American monarchical regime. The republican ideology spread in urban areas and in provinces, such as São Paulo and Rio Grande do Sul, where the people did not believe they benefited from imperial economic policies.
The republicans embraced the abolition of slavery to remove the stigma of Brazil's being the only remaining slaveholding country (save for Spanish Cuba) in the hemisphere. Indeed, their arguments against slavery were weighted toward efficiency rather than morality. Once in power, the republicans looked to discipline the legally free work force with various systems of social control.
Attitudes toward slavery had shifted gradually. Pedro II favored abolition, and, during the War of the Triple Alliance, slaves serving in the military were emancipated. In 1871, the Rio Branco cabinet approved a law freeing newborns and requiring masters to care for them until age eight, at which time they would either be turned over to the government for compensation or the owner would have use of their labor until age twenty-one. The Law of 1871 also liberated state-owned slaves, codified the right of slaves to purchase their own freedom, established an Emancipation Fund to facilitate manumission by individual initiative and declared the need for a register (matricula) of all Brazil's existing slaves." (Bethell p. 80) In 1885, a law freed slaves over sixty years of age.
The so-called Golden Law of May 13, 1888 abolished slavery. The country's economy revived rapidly after a few lost harvests, and only a small number of planters went bankrupt. Slavery ended, but the plantation survived and so did the basic attitudes of a class society. Many former slaves stayed on the plantations in the same quarters, receiving paltry wages. They were joined by waves of immigrants, who often found conditions so unbearable that they soon moved to the cities or returned to Europe. No freedmen's bureaus or schools were established to improve the lives of the former slaves; they were left at the bottom of the socioeconomic scale, where some of their descendants remain.
After the abolition of slavery, the economic system of the north led to serious economic problems. Widespread famine soon resulted in the death of many former slaves in the northern states with slave-based economies. The elite responded to the liberalizing tendencies of the imperial government by supporting the creation of an oligarchical republic, with local elites being able to control their areas through a decentralized federal system.
In the early republic, the oligarchies quickly accumulated the power and skills to control the new governmental system. Taking advantage of cabinet crises in 1888 and 1889 and of rising frustration among military officers, republicans favoring change by revolution rather than by evolution drew military officers, led by Field Marshal Fonseca, into a conspiracy to replace the cabinet in November 1889. What started as an armed demonstration demanding replacement of a cabinet turned within hours into a coup d'état deposing Emperor Pedro II.
In 1823, there were 4 million inhabitants (71% free and 29% slave).
In 1854, there were 7,700,000 (76% free and 24% slave).
In 1872 there were 9,930,478 inhabitants (84.8% free and 15.2% slave). According to the national census made in this year, among the free inhabitants (8,419,672 people), 38% were white, 39% mulattoes (white and black mix), 11% black and 5% caboclos (white and Indian mix). Could read and write: 23.4% of the free men and 13.4% of the free women.
In 1887 there were 14,500,000 inhabitants (95% free and 5% slaves). In 1889, 20% of the total population could read and write.
Upon gaining independence from Portugal in 1822, the Brazilian nation as a whole was almost entirely in favor of a monarchical form of government. There were a variety of reasons for this political choice. There was fear among various social groups of the possibility that Brazil would fall into the same political, social, and economic chaos experienced by most of the former Spanish American colonies: territorial dismemberment, coups, dictatorships and the rise of caudillos. The perceived necessity was for a political structure that would permit the Brazilian people not merely to enjoy the advantages of liberty, but also that would guarantee the country's stability, in conformance with the liberalism of the time. Only a neutral entity, completely independent of parties, groups or opposing ideologies, could achieve this end. And there was "always a powerful ideological element remaining from independence as the result of a great national union over particular interests." The Brazilian monarchy was a "a form of government that assured a Brazil that would include the whole of the old Portuguese dominion, in a climate of order, peace, and freedom."
The Constitution of 1824 was rather less parliamentary than the draft prepared by the Constituent Assembly. In fact, it was to all intents and purposes a peculiar and unique regime: a presidential monarchy. That did not at all mean that the Brazilian monarch had prerogatives resembling those of a tyrant or dictator. Guarantees of human liberty and dignity were inserted into the articles of the Charter and were respected. The Emperor would not act in areas reserved to the legislative branch and the judiciary, such as to create laws or to judge and sentence. Still, the creation of the Moderating Power (Portuguese: Poder Moderador) and natural evolution of Brazilian representative system enabled a transition from presidential to the parliamentary model, which "would give the Empire a position of illustrious companion next to the British lion" [the United Kingdom]. It was unnecessary to modify the letter of the law in order to transmute one system of government into another: the Constitution itself in its elasticity (in terms of legal interpretation of the Charter) enabled this.
The imperial Constitution of 1824 made Brazil a unitary country, aiming to facilitate control by the central government over the provinces and thereby impede eventual territorial dismemberment. Nonetheless, the reality was more of a semi-unitarianism, because municipal assemblies elected by the population had their own prerogatives. This framework would be changed when the Act in 1834 created additional Provincial Assemblies to legislate on issues related to local administration. The Act also created an "economic and municipal government" that made it possible for cities to "neutralize in a certain way the absolute power exercised over the provinces by their presidents".
Following the standard dictated by liberalism of the nineteenth century, the Constitution of 1824 granted the monarchy protection under a representative system and protected by the most important, innovative and original item in the constitutional text: the Moderating Power (Portuguese: Poder Moderador). This fourth power was personal to the Emperor, acting as a "mechanism to absorb friction between the legislative and executive powers" and his role as the one who would maintain the balance between both powers would allow Pedro II throughout his reign the "worthy position that he exercised with so much pleasure and peace."
According to the Constitution of 1824, one of the most liberal of its time, voting was obligatory and elections occurred in two steps: in the first phase, voters chose Electors. The Electors then chose senators (members of the upper house), deputies (members of the lower house), provincial deputies (members of the province's assembly) and councilmen (members of the town's assembly).[51 ] All men 25 or older with an income of at least Rs 100$000 per year or more could vote in the first phase, with some exceptions; married men 21 years of age or older could vote as well. To be an Elector, it was necessary to have an income of at least Rs 200$000 per year.[51 ] The income requirement was much higher in the United Kingdom even after the 1832 reform. The only countries at the time that did not require a certain income to vote were France and Switzerland (where universal manhood suffrage was introduced only in 1848), and certain states of the United States (where property qualifications were gradually abolished between 1812 and 1860, with most states having eliminated the qualification by 1840). It is probable that no European country at the time had such liberal legislation as Brazil.
When Brazil became independent in 1822, its economy centered on the export of raw materials. The domestic market was small, due to lack of credit and the almost complete self-sustainability of the cities, villages and farms that dedicated themselves to food production and cattle herding. During the first half of the 19th century, the imperial State invested heavily in the improvement of roads while retaining an excellent memorable system of ports. The former facilitated better commercial exchange and communication between the country's distant regions; the latter did the same for foreign trade. The economy of Brazil was extremely diversified in the after-Independence period, but a great effort was required of the monarchical government to carry through the change from a purely colonial economic system based on slavery to a modern capitalist system. Until its end, the monarchy continued the notable economic growth that began with the arrival of Prince Regent João in 1808. This was possible, in part, thanks to the liberalism adopted by the monarchic regime, which favored private initiative.
The Emperor, as the head of the Executive Power, was Commander-in-Chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces. He was aided by the Minister of War and the Minister of Navy in regard to matters concerning the Army and the Armada, respectively. Traditionally, the holders of the office of Ministers of War and Navy were civilians but there were some exceptions. Members of the military were allowed to run for and serve in political offices while staying on active duty. However, they did not represent the Army or the Armada but instead the population of the city or province that they were elected by. Pedro I chose nine military men as Senators and appointed five (out of fourteen) to the State Council. During the Regency, two were chosen for the Senate and none for the State Council as there was none at the time. Pedro II chose four military men to become Senators during the 1840s, two in the 1850s and three until the end of his reign. He also chose seven military men to be State Counselors during the 1840s and 1850s and three after that.
^ Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de. O Brasil Monárquico: o processo de emancipação, 4. ed. São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1976, p.403: "... o que sabemos é que a idéia republicana no percurso da independência, pelo menos depois de 1821, foi um devaneio de poucos."
^ Holanda, Sérgio Buarque de. O Brasil Monárquico: o processo de emancipação, 4. ed. São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1976, p. 261: “daria ao Império uma posição de ilustre companhia ao lado do leão britânico”.
^ Lima, Oliveira. O movimento da independência. 6. ed. Rio de Janeiro: Topbooks, 1997, p. 401: "...in Great Britain and also in Brazil, that from all countries in the Ocidental Civilization its imperial regimen was the one most similar to the British parliamentarism".