This intriguing work on eighteenth-century Brazil delves into debates spanning both sides of the Atlantic regarding the governance of its population and the exploitation of its resources. Grounded in meticulous archival research, Kirsten Schultz offers an innovative analysis of the interplay between these debates and Portuguese authorities’ actions, particularly between 1710 and 1780. According to Schultz, the discovery of gold in Brazil’s interior, above all other considerations, shaped the development of royal policy. From this historical fact, on its face so well-known as to appear trivial, Schultz develops a highly original analysis of eighteenth-century Brazil. To begin with, the discovery of gold raised a fundamental question: how could maximal benefit be extracted from the windfall while managing territories with an increasingly diverse and distinct population remotely, from mainland Portugal? The book’s main argument is that, in grappling with this challenge, Portuguese authorities gradually ceased to view Brazil as a “conquest” and began to perceive it as a “colony.” Brazil came to be seen as a space designated for resource extraction and trade that served the interests of European Portugal.
Schultz makes it clear that the new fiscal policies implemented by Portuguese authorities posed tremendous difficulties for local authorities in Brazil and for the ways of life that had evolved in response to colonization. Commencing with an examination of the academies convened in Lisbon and Bahia during the 1720s and 1730s, Schultz argues that these gatherings functioned as crucibles that forged a new generation of royal servants distinguished by both their allegiance to the Crown’s interests and advocacy for a more absolute conception of monarchic power. Schultz subsequently directs attention to the repercussions of gold extraction on the administration of the Brazilian territories and the empire at large. The imperative to tax and control the region not only challenged the traditional political culture rooted in service and reward but also jeopardized the autonomy of Brazil’s town councils. Royal taxation became enmeshed in ideas of sovereignty, discipline, and obedience. It also produced a profound reconfiguration of the dynamics among royal authority, enslaved individuals, and slaveholders: royal authority steadily entered the sphere of relations between slaveholders and the people they enslaved. A subsequent chapter focuses on royal constraints on the emulation and public display of wealth, as well as on the relationship between consumption, the function of the colonies, and taxation. Schultz contends that royal fiscality evolved into a mechanism for regulating individuals’ behavior and the use of their possessions. Particularly noteworthy was the special vigilance authorities exercised with respect to the public display of wealth by Black individuals, which was taken as a challenge to moral and social orders. Also significant was the burgeoning concern about consumption practices (and the legislation this uneasy watchfulness spawned). Such concerns were unavoidably linked to considerations of political economy, reflecting the prioritization of optimal production management and trade that would favor the manufacturing potential of mainland Portugal.
The final chapter addresses the disputes among royal officials regarding the occupation of the vast interior of Brazil in the context of competition with Spain, especially after 1750. These final pages trace matters that would eventually become, for colonial authorities, veritable obsessions: Brazilian settlement and migratory policies; the ratio of white, Indigenous, and Black people; the marriage patterns of women of European origin; and intermarriage with Indigenous and African women. Schultz also provides a pertinent analysis of legislation known as the Diretório dos Índios (Indian Directorate; 1758), highlighting the degree to which royal authorities subjected Indigenous and African or Afro-descendant populations to differential treatment. This becomes evident in the legal (but not de facto) equating of white people and Indigenous people living in colonized areas, or in the incremental emergence of a more favorable opinion toward marriage between natives and Europeans. It was not coincidental that advocacy for even deeper investment in enslaved African labor in Brazil, and laws to bring this about, intensified and proliferated precisely during this period. Schultz likewise presents a cogent evaluation of legislation issued in the 1760s and 1770s related to the abolition of slavery and its trafficking in mainland Portugal, laws that had significant reverberations in Brazil, particularly among the African and Afro-descendant population. Black individuals in Brazil, whether enslaved, freed, or free, protested the fact that they were relegated to an inferior position compared with people of color who were native to or residing in mainland Portugal. By way of an epilogue, the book concludes with a highly suggestive reflection on the discourses that marked the Age of Revolutions concerning political economy and its reformist application in Brazil. Schultz observes that, despite some criticisms of the excessive use of enslaved individuals, full-throated calls for the abolition of slavery were conspicuously absent throughout this epoch.
Fundamentally, Kirsten Schultz shows that eighteenth-century Brazil played host to a more absolutist view of royal authority, one that was particularly inclined to regard Brazil as a “colony.” Schultz’s thorough analysis unravels this process with precision and nuance, making it an excellent contribution to the historiography of Colonial Latin America.
