Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil's Colonial Timber (review)

Fruitless Trees: Portuguese Conservation and Brazil's Colonial Timber. By SHAWN WILLIAM MILLER. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Illustrations. Map. Figure. Appendixes. Notes. Bibliography. Index. xiii, 325 pp. Cloth, $55.00.

As those of us who have been privileged to work in Portuguese and Brazilian archives have long recognized, there exists an abundance of manuscript material concerning the development of the timber industry in colonial Brazil and its relationship to shipbuilding in both the colony and the kingdom. I salute the author of this industriously crafted monograph for having endeavored to meet this challenge in a highly informative, albeit flawed monograph.

Effectively, the book begins with the promulgation of the 1652 law reserving certain types of timber exclusively for the crown's use--madeiras de lei--and extends to Brazil's independence, but emphasizes the years 1750-1822 for which the sources are most abundant. Miller reminds us that timber was the fundamental source for both construction material and fuel. His thesis seems to be that both the unbending crown and defiant private land users bore responsibility for the partial destruction of the remarkably fecund and diverse Brazilian forests; plans to conserve or to replant depleted districts remained stillborn. The third of the book's seven chapters (supplemented by a very helpful appendix) illuminates the exceptional specie diversity of Brazilian hardwoods and explains their merits and shortcomings for ship construction. Despite the existence of shipyards in Brazil since the sixteenth century, reputedly fewer than a hundred vessels were built there for Portugal's overseas needs, though far more were constructed to serve the colony's requirements. A preponderance of timber exports from Brazil to Portugal between 1796 and 1819 came from Rio de Janeiro, followed by Pernambuco, Bahia, Pará, and Maranhão. Surprisingly, however, during those years Brazil provided only 9.5 percent of Portugal's timber imports, less than those that came from Prussia. Other chapters consider ethnic origins of those who labored in the tree-felling and shipbuilding industries, the technological problems of the cutting and removal of selected trees, haulage problems caused by the scarcity of oxen, the paucity of roads, and a river system that often did not flow seaward.

The study relies substantially upon archival sources in Brazil, principally those in Rio de Janeiro, and in some, though not all, of Lisbon's archives. The author also draws upon many published sources, naturally including those of both Warren Dean and F. W. O. Morton, both of whom he customarily cites negatively. (He apparently overlooked Morton's very fine Oxford dissertation on the crown's timber operations in Bahia.) He makes effective use of the Balança geral series of Portugal's imports and exports but is quite wrong in asserting that it began only in 1796. There are additional codexes scattered in Portuguese archives dating back to 1776. Miller's contention that forest-derived extractive industries were "of little economic consequence" (p. 43) is untrue of the eighteenth-century Amazon. He assertions that the Jesuits possessed a "near monopoly" on Amerindian labor there and that Jesuits who were wood craftsmen had never taken "vows of poverty" (p. 79) are without factual foundation but are typical of an anti-Jesuit animus that pervades the book. Contrary to his contention, most returning East Indiamen that entered Brazilian ports left in the company of convoys rather than sailing separately (p. 93). Members of Lisbon's British factory were by no means "expatriates" (p. 53). While both the illustrations and the tables are helpful, the book would have benefited from additional maps and a more conscientious editor. It is, nevertheless, an important addition to the literature concerning the economic history of colonial Brazil.

DAURIL ALDEN, University of Washington

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