The Palmares “Republic” of Pernambuco: Its Final Destruction, 1697

TO STUDY SEPARATELY each of those elements which the Portuguese, with instinctive genius, used for their expansion throughout the world, is a task to which every student of the Portuguese colonization-effort must devote his attention if he is to make any contribution, how small soever, to that history. Convinced that the negro was among the most telling and effective elements which were used for the colonization of Brazil, we propose here to study him in one of his most significant revolts against his masters. That revolt, on the part of some, stemmed from the desire of freeing themselves from slavery and domination; on the part of others, from the wish of civilizing, colonizing and taking part in the march of progress.

Frustrated in their dream for the Indies, the Portuguese saw the necessity of returning to their agricultural tradition which they had abandoned for the spice-trade. The example of Madeira and of the Azores, which the cultivation of sugar cane had raised to a quick development and prosperity, was certainly the stimulus which led the Portuguese, confronted with an immense territory, to begin in Brazil the cultivation of this and other tropical products (sugar, tobacco and cotton). Soon, however, it became evident that the European could not stand the sun of the tropics: he grew weak and died. Nor did the Indian submit to the intensive and continuous labor so essential for the progress of these industries. Hence, there was conceived, spontaneously, the idea of using the negro as a work-machine, and it was then that he was first transported to Brazil. From that point on, there was no interruption in the bringing-in of slaves and in the setting-up of sugar mills and plantations (engenhos)–until the agricultural tradition was once again shattered by the discovery of the mines. In this latter manifestation, incidentally, it was the Paulista strain which definitively took the lead, thanks to the heroic and adventurous spirt which they had inherited with their Portuguese background.

The first negroes and the first engenhos date respectively from 1532 and 1533 (1534 in Pernambuco). From that time on, there is no counting the number of negroes imported. In 1630, in Pernambuco alone, there were in the neighborhood of 4,000 brought in each year; and the production of sugar and the establishing of engenhos reached respectively 1,297,500 arrobas and 528.¹

The increase of the negro population must naturally have corresponded with the agricultural development, principally in Pernambuco, for while Rio de Janeiro had not even one engenho producing sugar, Pernambuco had twenty-three and Bahia eighteen. On the other hand, the relative closeness of the vast forests of palm trees, twenty or thirty leagues from the coast, with a most fertile soil and an excellent climate, invited the negro to attempt to free himself from slavery by fleeing the severity and the violent outbursts of the masters. It was thus, presumably, that the first quilombos came into being–those settlements which reproduced with remarkable fidelity the primitive life of the negroes from which the cruelty of the white man, coming in the name of civilization, had snatched him.

The history of the Palmares occupies almost the whole of the seventeenth century. While for some authors, this story is nothing more than a tiresome revolt of slaves, for others it presents the proportions of a strong and well-organized republic. These latter would even see in it the first dawn of the independence of the nation, and perhaps the foundation of a Negro State. It is true, however, that this story–for lack of documents, as Pôrto Seguro, Nina Rodrigues, Oliveira Lima and others have suggested–has been poorly studied both in Portugal and in Brazil. Nevertheless, as the documentation on this subject in the Arquivo Histórico Colonial in Lisbon, is so vast, we were obliged to limit this study to a very short (albeit active) period: the confining limits of one article would not contain the documentary richness which exists in the above-mentioned Arquivo.

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