Elizabeth Bishop - Prose

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During Dom Pedro’s long reign Brazil’s material expansion really began. In 1850 a Commercial Code was issued that has remained in force, with additions, to this day. More banks were established and foreign capital, still mostly British, began to come in. The first railroad started off towards Petrópolis, the Emperor’s favorite place of residence, in 1854—only fifteen kilometres of it to begin with; and gas-lights were put in the streets of Rio. Other short railroads were built, but transportation was, and continues to be, one of the biggest problems of Brazil. Progress was slow partly because of Dom Pedro’s life-long preference for the landed aristocracy, who were usually conservative and indifferent to “progress” and looked down on the new class of merchants and bankers. The towns were still mostly inhabited by artisans and Portuguese merchants, and the aristocracy lived on their estates and much preferred to go to Paris, when they could. Dom Pedro created many titles, mostly Barons, but with one big exception, they were all landed proprietors who had grown rich on sugar or coffee — for by now coffee was the leading crop and Brazil was providing the world with it. The exception was the Baron de Mauá, later Visconde de Mauá, the J. P. Morgan of Brazil. Some of his many activities are reflected in his extraordinary coat of arms that shows a steamship, a locomotive and four lampposts (like the ones he had installed in Rio).

Visconde de Mauá was an associate of the Rothschilds and part-owner of banks in London, New York, Uruguay, and Argentina. He was the figure that marks the change from the purely agricultural economy of the plantation world to the world of modern, expanding capitalism.

However, when ennobled, he, too, took an Indian name, as did almost all the others; it was the period of Indianismo; it was also considered stylish to have an Indian (a chief, preferably) among one’s ancestors. The Counts of Itaboraí, Tamandaré, Barons Maracajú, Paranaguá—it is as if the United States had had Count Massachusetts or Baron Ohio.

There had been two foreign wars, the first undertaken to get rid of the brutal Rosas regime in Argentina, in 1851–52. The second was Brazil’s one real war — against Paraguay, — and it lasted five years, from 1865 to 1870, and is still regarded by Brazilians with aversion, almost shame. Its beginnings were complicated, having to do with Brazilian citizens in Paraguay, and it was urged on the nation by the always more war-like south. Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil were allies; Paraguay was completely ruined by the war, with one man left to every fifteen women in the population, and the war-debt incurred by Brazil hung over Dom Pedro for the rest of his rule. The war also ruined Visconde de Mauá, and one of the harshest criticisms heard of Dom Pedro is that he could have saved Mauá with a government loan, but didn’t.

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The biggest problem of Dom Pedro’s reign, and probably of his life, as well, was slavery. So closely was it bound up with the Empire and the Emperor that the end of the Empire and the death of Dom Pedro both followed soon after the emancipation. He was against slavery; he felt it to be a shameful blot on his beautiful, beloved country (he had liberated all his inherited slaves as early as 1840). But he also thought that emancipation had to come gradually, in order not to upset the country’s economy, dependent almost entirely, in the early years of his reign, on slave-labor. As a result of a bargain of Dom Pedro I with the English, the slave trade was prohibited in 1831, but thousands of slaves continued to be smuggled into the country every year, and this was a constant source of trouble with the English, who searched Brazilian vessels at sea and on occasion even blockaded Brazilian ports or landed marines on Brazilian soil.

Steps towards complete emancipation were taken, usually agitated for by the Liberals and then actually taken when a Conservative government again came into power. The law of the Ventre Livre provided that all children of slaves born after 1871 were free, and all slaves still belonging to the crown or to the states were free. The next step, in 1887, was that all slaves were free upon reaching the age of sixty. São Paulo freed all slaves within the city, various states began freeing theirs, and the army began to refuse to pursue run-away slaves. The institution of slavery was obviously doomed, but the landed proprietors in general did nothing to provide for their futures without slave-labor. There had been sporadic attempts to encourage immigration. Germans and Swiss had settled north of Rio, and later many Italians came to work on the huge São Paulo coffee fazendas. But, as Haring says, it was hard to get workers to come to a country “where agricultural labor was equated with human slavery.”

In 1887 Dom Pedro again went to Europe, leaving Princess Isabel as Regent. He was sick, diabetic, and looked far older than his age. Isabel had always been an Abolitionist, and now, partly by her own wish and partly under pressure from the more liberal Abolitionists, she signed the emancipation proclamation, May 13th, 1888—another national holiday. Actually, out of about 4 million Negroes, only 700,000 still remained to be freed. There was a week of wild celebration. The Emperor lay very sick in Milan. When the news was brought to him he said it was the greatest happiness of his life, and wept, murmuring, “What great people! What great people!”

However, the rich planters had been ruined overnight, and 300 million dollars’ worth of property was wiped out. Naturally, many of the land-owners immediately turned against the monarchy and joined the growing republican movement. It was led by Benjamin Constant (de Botelho de Magalhães), who was inspired by the dry doctrines of Auguste Comte, for the Positivist movement had taken a strong hold on intellectual Brazilians. (One Positivist church still survives in Rio; and one of their slogans, “Order and Progress,” is on the green-and-gold flag, along with the stars of the Southern Cross.)

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The end came very suddenly and was a complete surprise to most of the nation. Benjamin Constant engineered a small army revolt and involved two generals (one of whom had been for the Emperor), and on November 15th, 1889, the Republic was proclaimed. The Emperor left, on a dark and rainy night, with all his family, a few friends, and his doctor. He was offered a large pension, but impeccable and dignifed to the end, he refused it. His Empress died, probably of a broken heart, soon after, and he himself lived on, mostly in France, for two years philosophically studying, as always: Tupi, Hebrew, Arabic, and Sanskrit. He was never heard to say a bitter word against his political enemies.

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In many ways Dom Pedro failed to accomplish much. The country was still almost empty, almost illiterate, and divided between the very rich and the miserably poor. In spite of his respect for education there were still no universities and the enrollments in schools of higher education were very small and the teaching inferior. His personal example of dignity, probity, and self-sacrifice could influence very few — given the conditions of the country, how could it? — but the calibre of the statesmen in the first years of the Republic was still much higher than it was to be ever since. However, Brazil had changed from an 18th-century, monarchial, slave-holding, primitive agricultural country to a republic, growing prosperous from its coffee trade, with equal rights, aware of the outside world (which was also more aware of it). Dom Pedro had achieved a very small part of his dreams for Brazil — but if there had been more monarchs like him, history would certainly make more edifying reading.