hist artigo arruda decadence (x)

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Comments, Cr i t ic ism, and Debate

Decadence or Crisis in the Luso-Brazilian

Empire: A New Model of Colonization

in the Eighteenth Century

Jos Jobson de Andrade Arruda

Decadence and crisis are terms that are used interchangeably in everydayspeech, but they really encapsulate essential differences in historians theoreti-cal positions toward their object of study. Does decadence exist in history, or isit merely a judgment of the past made a posteriori? Does the definition of ahistorical period as decadent presuppose the presence of contemporary con-sciousness about that condition?1 Scholars have differed on this point; forexample, Fernand Braudel did not attribute any value to the notion of deca-dence; and Pierre Chaunnu argued that decadence was an objective reality sig-naled by a significant decline in the demographic rate and an even moreimpressive retreat in the cultural sphere.2The core of the idea of decadence isdefined in the consciousness of the past and in the emergence of a new phase.In some ways, the idea of decadence is antithetical to a belief in an irreversible

movement towards modernity, and the principle of eternal progress. To assumedecadence is to negate a societys health.Decadence has had a cyclical presence in history. Along with its sym-

bolic dimension, its strong appeal to emotions and sensibilities has trans-formed decadence into a recurrent issue in Portuguese, and consequently,in Brazilian historiography. It has been in the field of literature that thetheme of decadence has had its principal admirers. In Thomas Manns Buden-brook, the symbolism of ascension implies a decline, which then points to a

Translated by Stuart B. Schwartz and Jos Celso de Castro Alves.1.Maria Arminda do Nascimento Arruda,Mitologia da Mineiridade: O imaginrio

Mineiro na vida poltica e cultural do Brasil(So Paulo: Ed. Brasiliense, 1990), 157.

2. Fernand Braudel,Lidentit de la France, 2vols. (Paris: Arthaud-Flammarion, 1986),vol. 1; Pierre Chaunu,Histoire et dcadence (Paris: Librairie acadmique Perrin, 1981), 154.

Hispanic American Historical Review 80:4

Copyright2000 by Duke University Press

HAHR 80.4_10 Jobson 1/4/01 2:25 PM Page 865


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new beginning or restoration. Thus decadence appears as a vital moment, asthe precursor of a new cycle.3

We face a kind of uncontrollable and undeniable naturalization of the his-torical process in which the seasons of history proceed implacably, much likegenerations. For every rise there will be a corresponding high point followedby a low point, which creates the space for a new recuperation. In other words,periods of decadence are as normal and predictable as those of growth, resur-gence, and apogee. In Portuguese historiography, the concept of decadencehas greatly influenced historians perceptions and studies of the past.

Inevitably, the theme of decadence reiterates the continuity of history. Inthe nineteenth century positivists and scientific evolutionists in various fieldsincluded the concept of decadence in their interpretations and found it to be a

natural part of social evolution; however, their interpretive framework waspushed into the background by the theme of revolutions in the twentieth cen-tury. Revolution brought with it a sensation of the compression of historicaltime and the concept of a new age. It was seen as the driving force of history.Within these epistemological parameters the dynamic social force of revolu-tion was more attractive than the monotony of decadences, and thus deca-dence lost it historiographical appeal.

The idea of the naturalness of the bourgeois revolution was destroyed bythe emergence of proletarian revolutions of a socialist character. The theme ofrevolutions was born in an era of extremes.4The 1917 Communist Revolutionin Russia not only polarized the world, but also History, historians, and histori-ography. Until the collapse of the Soviet empire, the revolution nurtured utopias

and mobilized illusions.5 For many people, a history without revolutions meantan uninteresting history, without soul, without a raison dtre. For others, theword revolution carried a negative connotation, excluding it from the eco-nomic approaches then perceived as appropriate for the studies of the industrialrevolutions; however, there were isolated voices of resistance.6 French intellectu-als especially leaned towards the concept of revolutions, real or imagined.

866 HAHR / November / de Andrade Arruda

3. Philippe Aries, Lhistoire des mentalits, in La Nouvelle Histoire, ed. JacquesLe Goff, Roger Chartier, and Jacques Revel (Paris: Retz, 1978), 420.

4. The expression age of extremes is from Eric J. Hobsbawm, Age of Extremes:The Short Twentieth Century, 19141991 (London: Michael Joseph, 1994).

5. Franois Furet,Le pass dune illusion: Essai sur lide comuniste au XXe sicle (Paris:

R. Laffont: Calmann-Lvy, 1995), 12.6. Alexander Gerschenkron, Reflections on the Concept of Prerequisites of ModernIndustrialization, LIndustria 42 (1957), 362; Hugh Lancelot Beales, The IndustrialRevolution, 17501850: An Introductory Essay (New York: Kelley & Millman, 1958), 2.



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A different perspective of the theme of decadence can be found in studiesof failed revolutions, ideas, actions, or political and social movements whichfell short because they did not succeed and thus lost their place in the writingof history. In Brazil, examples of this historiographical debate can be seen inthe studies of the 1930 Revolution, considered by revisionists as a creation ofthe winners, more a promise than a reality.7At the other extreme, in the areaof economic revolutions when the process of industrialization was blocked, itcreated an impression that history was marching backwards, leading not toindustrialization but to deindustrialization.8 In these specific cases, there hasbeen the impression that the natural movement of history has been reversed.The march of history towards the future has been interrupted, and this prob-lematizes the classic concept of linear time.

The theme of imperial decadence has been recurrent in Portuguese histo-riography. Without attempting to present a comprehensive view of that histo-riography, I will focus on those authors who have made the most significantcontribution to this idea. Certainly, pride of place should be given to VitorinoMagalhes Godinho, who suggested that economic stagnation occurred at thebeginning of the nineteenth century, caused by the contraction of capitalism aspart of a longer economic cycle made clear by a general decline of world priceswhich reached its low point in 1810. He believed that the economic difficultiesthat emerged between 1806 and 1808were responsible for a serious depres-sion, which was reversed after 181314 by a new industrializing impulse (umnovo esforo industrializador).9

In more specific terms, this depression can be explained by an innate

mechanism of Portuguese economic history in the modern era in which com-mercial crises are frequently followed by momentary public policies of indus-trialization, which disappear in proportion to mercantile recovery. Thusindustrializing movements occurred following deep commercial crises andwith them a prolonged fall of prices,10 making it impossible for industry tosink its roots. Undoubtedly, these explanations correspond to the scene gener-

Decadence or Crisis 867

7. See Edgar Salvadori de Decca, O silncio dos vencidos(So Paulo: Ed. Brasiliense, 1980).8. See Franois Caron,Le rsistible dclin des socits industrielles(Paris: Lib.

Acadmique Perrin, 1985).9. Vitorino Magalhes Godinho,Prix et monnaies au Portugal, 17501850 (Paris:

A. Colin, 1955), 279; and Godinho,A estrutura na antiga sociedade portuguesa (Lisbon,:

Ed. Arcdia, 1975), 118.10. For Godinho the rise in prices in Portugal began from 1770 on, with new risesaround 1782, and more between 1787 and 1790, reaching its highest point in 1810followed by a decline in prices. See Godinho, Prix et monnaies au Portugal, 208, 279.



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ated by the general crisis of the seventeenth century, which in Portugal resultedin the failed attempt of industrialization by the Count of Ericeira and the Mar-quis of Fronteira. By affirming that the same thing happened with Pombalinepolicy in the third quarter of the eighteenth century,11 Godinho homogenizesthe explanation, making for the second half of the eighteenth century the samediagnosis made for the economic crisis of the second half of the seventeenth cen-tury,12 and by doing so he reinforces the idea of a cyclical crisis of capitalism.

From all the evidence, the crisis of the eighteenth century differed from thecrisis of the seventeenth century, above all in the industrializing policies put inplace to meet these situations. First, Pombaline policies continued after the crisisand presented an integrated character. Industry, agriculture, and commerce wereobjects of unified governmental actions. Pombal rightly believed that mines

were a kind of fictitious wealth and he made agriculture one of the pillars ofhis administration. The mid-range effects of this were not long in coming andwere manifest in the agricultural diversification of the colonial economy, withsurprising results in Brazil. Products for reexportation by Portugal, foodstuff forthe metropolitan population, and raw materials for manufacturing tied industryto agriculture, and transformed the path to industrialization into a reality.

Agricultural development of Brazil fed Portuguese factories and linkedthe two economies. The third element of this integrated policy of economicdevelopment was the creation of commercial companies whose objective wasexactly to unite the agricultural and industrial sectors separated by an ocean,thereby closing the economic circuit within the Luso-Brazilian empire duringthe second half of the eighteenth century. This industrial policy did not result

from a temporary change of a conjunctural nature, but effectively representeda structural shift in a Portugal which came, tragically, to depend on the main-tenance of the colony. The crisis of the eighteenth century and the industrialpolicy that followed was not merely part of a temporary commercial crisis. Itssignificance both for Portugal and Brazil was far more profound.

Jorge Borges de Macedo set his explanation of decadence on other paths.Rejecting a cyclical explanation, he denied the importance of the commercialtreaties signed with England, and reduced the importance of the materialdestruction cause by the Peninsula War. He turned instead to an explanationbased on an English industrial and mercantile offensive realized under excep-tionally favorable military and political conditions which became an increas-ingly destructive competition.13 In his eagerness to reinforce this interpreta-


11. Godinho,A estrutura na antiga sociedade portuguesa, 118.12. Godinho,A estrutura na antiga sociedade portuguesa, 118.13. Jorge Borges Macedo,Problemas de histria da indstria portuguesa no sculo XVIII

(Lisbon: Associao Industrial Portuguesa, 1963), 23537.



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tion, Macedo sought to minimize the loss of the monopolized colonial Brazil-ian market, affirming that, the opening of the ports of Brazil was much lesstroubling since it did not affect the trans-shipping nature of the port of Lis-bon. Moreover, he minimized the importance of Portuguese factories by stat-ing that many of the articles shipped were simply reexports.14

If we consider only the income generated by imports received from Braziland reexported, the indices reach 60.6 percent of the total of Portugueseexports that could be translated into monetary resources, credit, letters ofexchange, and the payments for imports. These were not insignificant sumsand they were certainly responsible for the historical shift in Portugals balanceof trade with England which during the eighteenth century had, for the firsttime, become favorable for Portugal. After 1783, and especially after 1788,

English imports of cotton from Brazil increased and came to represent25 per-cent of all the cotton arriving in Lancashire. The result was an equilibrium inPortuguese trade with England from 1785 to 1790. In the following five yearsthe balance turned in favor of Portugal, a situation which alarmed RobertWalpole because of the remission of gold from London to Lisbon to pay forthe deficits.15 Among the reasons put forward by the English to justify thetransference of the Portuguese royal family to Brazil, a project already consid-ered by 1801, was the advantage of trading directly with Brazil, and thusreestablishing an equilibrium in the balance of payments.

These considerations should help us evaluate the impact of the loss of theBrazilian market on Portugal. In more limited terms, thinking only of the rela-tionship between Portuguese factories and the Brazilian consumer market

to say nothing of the strategic importance of the raw materials Brazil suppliedone can say that the monopolized Brazilian market was fundamental for theindustrial growth of Portugal. Slaves were adequate for the developmentalstage of these incipient industries whose products of inferior quality and highprices found captive and less demanding consumers. In this way, Portugueseindustry could compete with the technically more advanced industry of Eng-land. In reality, the technological disparity between the two industries wouldonly become disastrous for Portugal if it lost its exclusive control of the Brazil-ian colonial market. Given this situation, it would not be unreasonable tobelieve that had the colonial exclusion been maintained, the obstacles to acomplete transformation of the productive system might have been overcome.Admittedly this is a hypothesis, but one based on concrete historical circum-


14. Macedo,Problemas de histria da indstria portuguesa no sculo XVIII, 23537.15. See Kenneth Maxwell, The Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century: A Southern

Perspective on the Need to Return to the Big Picture, Transactions of the Royal HistoricalSociety 6, no. 3 (1993): 229.



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stances. It is, in fact, no more hypothetical than one that affirms that theIndustrial Revolution would not have occurred in Portugal even if it had main-tained control of Brazil.

Rather than being caught up in our academic skirmishes, perhaps it is bestto allow those contemporary to the events to have a word. Many times, it isthey who can set matters in their place with clarity. I turn to the valuable testi-mony of historian Acursio de Neves: The document which I find best able toshed some light on the progress and decadence of our manufactures is thetable of exports to Brazil and other overseas establishments . . . the loss of theexclusive market for the production of our industry which was principallyBrazil, our industry cold not sustain itself in Portugal in competition with for-eign manufactures.16 Having lost the Brazilian market, Portuguese industry

was incapable of surviving in a competitive market. Would it be too much tosay that the maintenance of the colonial system might have provided the nec-essary technical impulse to Portuguese industry or that its impulse up to thispoint had been due to a strengthening of relations with Brazil?

If the colony provided to the metropolis conditions that made it possibleto face economic competition, and despite all difficulties, to construct anindustrial base, it was more difficult for Portugal to resist political pressuresbrought to bear diplomatically and militarily by the English. In the eighteenthcentury the process of the Great English Revolution was being completed,having begun in the Puritan Revolution of 1640 and consummated in theIndustrial Revolution of1780.17 One of the fundamental reasons for this qual-itative leap in the productive structure of England lay in the development of a

powerful fleet that gave it control of world markets. To the Continental block-ade, the English responded with a maritime exclusion; what they lost inEurope, they could regain in world markets. An excellent example of Englishaggressiveness was its actions toward Portugal. In 1801, when internationalrelations were becoming strained, Lord Hawkesbury gave instructions to hisrepresentative in Lisbon to impress upon the Portuguese authorities that theCourt should depart for Brazil in case of a French invasion. Beyond guaran-teeing the security of the voyage, he suggested that the most efficient means ofconsolidating and expanding Englands dominion (seu dominio) in South Amer-ica would be through collaboration with the Portuguese government.18


16. Jos Acrcio das Neves,Memrias sobre os meios de melhorar a indstria Portuguesa

considerada nos seus differentes ramos(Lisbon: Imp. Nacional, 1820), 3, 10, 13.17. See Jos Jobson de Andrade Arruda, A grande Revoluo Inglesa, 16401780

(So Paulo: Ed. Hucitec, 1996).18. Maxwell, The Atlantic in the Eighteenth Century, 230.



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Contraband trade was an illegal but efficient way of forcing the Por-tuguese to open their ports to English goods. An analyses of the commercialbalances (Balanas do commercio) introduced by treasury official Mauricio JosTeixeira de Moraes shows that there was a rapid execution of the plans elabo-rated in London. In 1802 he expressed his hopes that the abundance of con-traband would not continue in future years. His own words predicted thefuture. In 1805 he lamented that the reduced exports are definitely the resultof much contraband whose entry is almost freely allowed in those ports as amost scandalous abuse; and if to the contrary the imports have not diminished,it follows that the said contraband is all sold in exchange for currency whichresults in the pernicious loss of circulating coin from which follow manyruinous consequences to the nation. The aggression of the smugglers was

supported by the inhabitants of the colony and even by the connivance of Por-tuguese merchants in Brazil. Thus in 1806 it was said that, the stagnation ofcommerce derives from the destructive principle of the clandestine introduc-tion of prohibited goods in this and in that continent because of the lack ofpatriotism of some merchants, who forgetful of the laws that govern us, seekonly their own interests by means of this illicit and ruinous commerce thatfavors foreign industry and impedes national industry with so much scandal;and this can be seen last year by the great seizures made at sea, one of themalone being worth 500,000 cruzados. The final consummation of the tragedywas made clear in the comments made about the year 1807when he stated,there is little to consider about the state of our commerce in this last yearwhich is not a repetition of the years 1805 and 1806 which is leading us to

decadence and ruin.19The British international policies stipulated in Lord Hawkesburys

instructions of 1801 became effective only in 1808, when the Portuguesecrown arrived in Brazil. The formalized opening of the ports validated thecontraband then carried on publicly in Brazilian ports. The commercialtreaties of1810were a coup de grace for the Portuguese industry. The figuresof import and export commerce to the principal Brazilian port, Rio de Janeiro,are eloquent witnesses to this assertion. Rio de Janeiro handled 40 percent ofall the commercial transactions within the colony. The colonys imports,adding up the indices of items such as woolen goods, linens, silk, and metals ofindustrial nature, bought by the Portuguese and reexported to the colony, con-


19. For a prologue of the commercial balances from 1802, 1805, 1806, and 1807, seeMaurcio Jos Moraes, Balana geral do commrcio do reyno de Portugal com os seus domnios(Lisbon: Instituto Nacional de Estatstica, 1807).



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stituted 35.4 percent of the total during the period from 1796 to 1811. Duringthose years, the industrialized goods in Portugal, which were represented asfactory products, reached 32.3 percent, of which 50 percent were foreign goodsand the other 50 percent were Portuguese. Between 1796 and 1805, the num-bers turned to be even more eloquent, reaching 35 percent. During the specificyears of1803 and 1798, the numbers were 40.5 percent and 42.2 percent.20

These numbers were fixed in the balance of trade. They were elaborated byaccountant Mauricio Jos, whose data may have been imprecise and are takenhere as the point of departure to understand a specific historical phenomenonand not as a point of arrival of knowledge. I emphasize here their tenuousnature. The numbers are illusions, constructions like literary texts. Obviously, adetailed analysis of each category of this data is worthwhile and an essential exer-

cise, but it does not alter the final conclusion that the Brazilian market played acrucial role in the rise and economic, and especially industrial, development ofPortugal at the end of the eighteenth and beginning of the nineteenth century.

In light of these considerations, I wish to refer to the extensive research ofValentim Alexandre, who analyzes the content of each category of the Balanado comercio. In the specific case of manufactured goods, it is clear that if the gew-gaws and iron goods produced in northern Portugal and acquired by foreignmerchants appeared in the Balana as reexports, although they were producedin Portuguese factories, this only reinforces the argument in favor of thestrength of that activity and of the consequent importance of the colonial mar-ket as the main consumer of these goods. Similarly, if linens classified under thecategory of linen goods (linificios) were produced in Porto to be sold in Brazil,

that reiterates the argument. Conversely, to discover that much of the textileswere not produced in Portugal, but were woven in Asia and printed in themetropole, weakens the argument but allows us a glimpse of the game of com-pensation whose result is that which we already know and which we can arriveat through the absolute numbers of the Balana or by a close analysis of the cat-egories used in them. One needs only to look at final conclusions of my doc-toral dissertation written in 1972 and published in 1980, in comparison to theconclusions of Valetim Alexandre, to see the similarities despite the lapse oftime between the writing of the two studies.21


20. Jos Jobson de Andrade Arruda, O Brasil no comrcio colonial(So Paulo: Ed. tica,1980), 176.

21. Put aside the differences in style, Valentim Alexandres conclusions in Os sentidosdo imprio (Lisbon: Ed. Afrontamento, 1993), 29092, do not differ in any aspectfrom my own in O Brasil no comrcio colonial(see pp. 67578). If in some cases I have statedclearly that my calculus are estimatesfor example, the measurement of contraband it doesnot happen less so in the work of Alexandre (see esp. pp. 30, 31 from Os sentidos do imprio).



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The numbers do not negate but reinforce what we already know. Perhaps,the biggest difference lies in the way in which the Balanas do comercio are per-ceived. I consider that they are a balance of payments that include monetaryremissions. To exclude the monetary remittances of the colony is a question-able procedure because it perceptively obliterates the results. Part of the mon-etary remittance certainly constituted compensatory payments, that is, remit-tances of resources resulting from the payments of importations made by thecolony. But these remittances had at least as their partial counterpart, themonetary remittances made by the metropolis to the colony. In addition, itwould be necessary to present the monetary resources in the form ofpatacas,hard currency, obtained in the contraband trade with the Platine region inwhich Portuguese and Brazilian merchants were involved using both goods

arriving from Portugal as well as Brazilian products.We cannot exclude monetary transfers as if they were only payments, weak-ening in this way the argument according to which the significant deficits ofPortugal with its colony were illusory. The mechanism by which the deficitswith the colony were compensated by metropolitan reexports to foreign nationsaptly demonstrated by Fernando Novais continues to be valid. Therefore, theramifications related to the importance of the economic diversification of thecolony, including the indirect calculations suggesting the importance of contra-band remain, on the basis of qualitative analysis, unquestionable.22

Details aside, what is essential is that I basically agree with the central thesisof Valentim Alexandre concerning the decisive importance that the loss of Brazilrepresented to the late economic development of Portugal. Alexandre consid-

ered this to be the crucial moment in Portuguese underdevelopment,23 a positionwhich was based on the fact that mercantile prosperity at the close of the eigh-teenth and beginning of the nineteenth century was sustained by the rise ofindustrial exports. Portuguese industry was responsible for 42.7 percent ofexports to the colonies if we exclude those goods coming from Asia.24


22. See Fernando Antonio Novais, Portugal e Brasil na crise do antigo sistema colonial,17771808 (So Paulo: Ed. Hucitec, 1979); Jos Jobson de Andrade Arruda, O Brasil nocomrcio colonial(So Paulo: Ed. Atica, 1980).

23. The polemic around this issue can be seen in the following texts: Pedro Lains,Foi a perda do Imprio Brasileiro um momento crucial do subdesenvolvimentoportugus?Penlope 3 (1989): 92102; Valentim Alexandre, Um passo em frente, vrios

retaguarda: resposta nota crtica de Pedro Lains,Penlope 3 (1989): 10310.24. These percentages were established by Valentim Alexandre (see pp. 44, 45), and

were also used by Jorge Miguel Pedreira, who attributes the failure of Portugueseindustrialization to the social and economic structures. According to Pedreira, thetraditional agriculture, the reduced internal market, the difficulties of integrating



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If between 1796 and 1806 manufactures made up 35.6 percent of Portugueseexports to Brazil, after the opening of the ports between 1816 and 1822, thatfigure declined to 21.6 percent and then to 16.8 percent from 182531. The riseof English products in the same period corroborates my previous assertionsabout the British onslaught.

Following the excellent research of Valentin Alexandre, Jorge Pedreiracenters his attention on the specific relation between the Brazilian market andPortuguese industrial production from 1780 to 1830, resuscitating a themewhose importance had been long recognized but which only now because ofresearch done in the last20years could be consolidated into a extensive andcreative study. Agreements and disagreements apart, the impact of the loss ofBrazil on the process of industrialization in Portugal is once again taken up. In

spite of a recognition that the growth of commerce pulled along the indus-trial sector which developed into a manufacturing surge, Jorge Pedreiraattributes this dynamism to a peculiar conjuncture.25 He denies characterizingas counterfactual the rational by which the preservation of the Brazilian mar-ket could have led Portugal to the edge of the Industrial Revolution. In thiscase, I have tried to show at least in my published worka position whichAlexandre reaches by other approaches the relative importance of the colo-nial market in the crisis of Portuguese industry, rejecting therefore the argu-ments of Jorge Borges de Macedo who had downplayed the role of the colonyand looked instead to English competition as the cause of the crisis. It is fromthis position that rhetorically it follows that had Portugal not lost Brazil, itcould have completed its process of industrialization.

To affirm in any way that the growth of colonial commerce would haveled Portugal to perfect its industrialization, as Jorge Pedreira does, is also acounterfactual argument. Moreover, this argument does not seek to relate thegrowth of colonial commerce to industrialization, but rather to relate the lossof the privileged market in the colony with the interruption of industrial devel-


the national within the international economy, the scarcity of capital, the inadequacyof political structures, the lack of technicians and industrialists, and the high rateof illiteracy, are the causes of the Portuguese economic underdevelopment. See Pedreira,La economa portuguesa y el fin del imperio luso-brasileo (18001860),inLa independencia americana: Consecuencias econmicas, eds. Leandro Prados de la Escosura

and Samuel Amaral (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1993), 253. Similar argument is found inPedreira,Estrutura industrial e mercado colonial. Portugal e Brasil, 17801830 (Lisbon:Difel, 1994).

25. Pedreira,Estrutura industrial e mercado colonial, 370.



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opment. To say that, despite mercantile prosperity, the conditions inscribed inthe social and economic structure were far from being propitious for a move-ment toward industrialization26 is to deny the evidence at hand. We recognizethat structural obstacles permeated the Portuguese state; the lack of urbanconcentrations, poor education, little technological development, entrenchedmercantile interests of the elites, a backward agriculture, and a authoritarianand prodigal state. Still, the continuity of the manufacturing process in its sit-uation prior to the crisis of the colonial system could have forced it towardtransformations that were indispensable for its continued growth. A notableexample of such a process was the transformation of Brazilian agriculture atthe end of the eighteenth century during which the measures related to agri-cultural policy destroyed one of the props of the old colonial structure, the

relation between monoculture, large landholdings, and slavery. Small andmedium sized properties emerged, agriculture diversified, free and semi-freeforms of work converged and at the extreme African slaves were utilized in amercantilist subsistence economy. Therefore, when we think of the obstaclesthat Portuguese agriculture represented as blocks to the development of theindustrial process it is necessary to remember that Brazil and Portugal wereseparated by an ocean but part of the same political and economic entity. Thatis to say, the industrializing wave that crossed Portugal cannot be separatedfrom the transformations taking place in Brazil. In this context, the meaning ofthe words decadence and crisis need to be historically situated, not only inrelation to the specific historical moments in which they happened but also inrelation to specific historical contexts in which the analyses and interpretations

were produced.Is it possible to speak of a decadence in Portugal at the end of the eigh-

teenth century? Certainly not. We are dealing here with a period of economicprosperity despite difficulties in the political sphere, especially in relation toextremely tense international relations in the midst of which Portuguese diplo-macy succeeded by maximizing its neutrality. The positive commercial balanceis a sound indicator of the healthy state of the kingdoms finances. The heightof gold production in Brazil corresponded to the highest deficits in Portugalstrade balance with other nations, especially with England. How can we explainthat at a moment of a global retreat in the absolute value of colonial exportsthat their economic prosperity was greater than it had been. Undoubtedly, theanswer lies in the new ties that united colony and metropole, a arrangement of

the old colonial system in which without the principle of monopoly, the


26. Pedreira,Estrutura industrial e mercado colonial, 375.



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metropolis established a new type of bilateral relationship. In it the coloniesbecome consumer markets for metropolitan industrial production and suppli-ers of raw materials and foodstuff as the primacy of so-called tropical productsdeclined. Here we are very far from the classic model of colonization createdin the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries within the frameworks of mercan-tilist policy and that of commercial capitalism in which colonies were the pro-ductive centers of exotic products in great international demand and the con-sumers of goods reexported by metropolitan merchants.

The new model did not break the old colonial system. On the contrary, itstrengthened the ties between metropole and colony, previewing the arrange-ment that would become predominant in the second half of the nineteenthcentury in the neocolonial age in which the principal actors were the industri-

alized countries and the Afro-Asian colonies. It is significant therefore that weare observing the historical birth of a new model of colonization whichemerged from the essence of the old system, a fact which explains to someextent the structural obstacles to its full development. It is certainly preco-cious not because it was born before its time but because it represents a pre-cursor, an original creation much as the plantation system created by the Por-tuguese in Brazil had been. We are confronting a vital transformation. Themetropole advances creating its factories; the colony diversifies its agriculturalproduction, markets become internally and externally integrated. Theincomes generated by export are smaller in both Brazil and in Portugal ifcompared to the height of gold production, but the wealth created is moreintensely distributed thus created higher per capita indices. There was eco-

nomic growth in Brazil and in Portugal. The conjuncture was one of prosper-ity not depression. Moments like these as is well known have a great potentialfor transformation.

When can we speak of a new model of accumulation? Eric Hobsbawmbelieved that the general crisis of the seventeenth century is the dividingline. At first, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth centuries metropolitanmonopolies predominated in relation to their colonies. In the case of thePortuguese, their monopoly of sugar production, but after the expulsion ofthe Dutch and transfer of sugar to the Caribbean islands, the monopoly inproduction was ended thus inaugurating a phase of rapidly growing competi-tion between the metropoles and their colonies. The colonies grew inimportance within metropolitan mercantile policy and at the same time

there was an acceleration in the internationalization of mercantile capitalismas it sought out profits regardless of national or imperial boundaries. Theproduction system grew, enlarging consumption by the lowering of prices.




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At the same time, the colonies were transformed into consumer markets forEuropean goods.27 The English Revolution of1640 represents the turningpoint in British foreign policy. Up to then, England had been satisfied withthe gains appropriated by piracy, Britain moved quickly toward the develop-ment of manufactures, agriculture, and naval construction. This redirectionin mercantile policy within a different pattern of accumulation has led Cainand Hopkins to call the period beginning in 1688, the old colonial system.28

In eighteenth-century Brazil, when gold mining predominated, the typicalpractices of Spanish mercantilism of the sixteenth and seventeenth centurieswere reinforced and reproduced within the old model of colonization.29

The role of the Dutch in the making of a new step in the process of earlymodern colonization is undeniable, and it has led Peter Emmer to speak of

two Atlantic systems: the first, created by the Spanish and Portuguese, andthe second, by the Dutch, English, and French. These two systems were dif-ferentiated by their centers of economic gravity, the demographic and racialcomposition, the organization of commerce and investment, and by theirsocial structures. In the second Atlantic system, there emerged the originaltype of the plantation colony, with its specialization, the expansion and con-traction of productive units determined by profit, closely tied to the eco-nomic laws of the market, minimal interference of the state, and a maximiza-tion of profits by the best use of the factors of production, and by populationmovements determined by the market and by investment. In sum, the secondAtlantic system was defined by its rigid orientation towards the internationalmarket.30

Despite recognizing significant differences in the various colonizationattempts in the Caribbean in the seventeenth century, the differences are morethose of degree rather than type. The essence of the productive system wasstill monoculture, latifundio, and slavery, with a high degree of specialization,


27. Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Crisis of the Seventeenth Century, in Crisis in Europe15601660, ed. Trevor Aston (New York: Basic Books, 1965), 51.

28. P. J. Cain and A. G. Hopkins, The Political Economy of British ExpansionOverseas, 17501914, The Economy History Review 33 (1980).

29. I have formulated the idea of a new pattern of colonization in the contextof the old colonial system in the essay Colonies as Mercantile Investments,

in The Political Economy of Merchant Empires, ed. James D. Tracy (Cambridge: Cambridge

Univ. Press, 1991), 382.30. P. C. Emmer, The Dutch and the Making of the Second Atlantic Systems,in Slavery and the Rise of the Atlantic System, ed. Barbara Solow (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991).



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but in keeping with the old patters of colonization.31What made this new stagedifferent? Precisely, the interrelationship between the metropole and thecolony under the aegis of industrialization.

If we cannot speak of decadence, can we speak of a crisis in the old colo-nial system? Contemporary Brazilian historians, especially the generation ofthe 1960s, had a penchant for crises. They perceived Brazil at that time of thecrisis of capitalism from which there seemed to be two possible outcomes; thefinal crisis of Brazilian peripheral capitalism and the coming of a socialist rev-olution, or the crisis of capitalism itself leading to the decadence of Braziliansociety, socioeconomic stagnation, and ultimately, barbarism. A third possibil-ity, one that history would later confirm, and which was certainly a possibility,was not considered. This was the possible continued development of a capital-

ism that softened its social transgressions by democratic or democratizingreforms. As a result, the view of the crises of the old colonial system revealedin large measure a projection of the present on the past. The old colonial sys-tem was symbolically identified with peripheral capitalism and the revolution-ary alternative with the rupture of the colonial pact and the movement forindependence. Stagnation without remedy was seen as the situation of Portu-gal after the loss of Brazil.

In Portugal what we have is a crisis of growth which was transformed intoa crisis of retreat. This lead to a nostalgic reification of the myth of decadenceaccompanied by a feeling of a missed opportunity or a lost historical moment.In Brazil the crisis of growth led to a breaking of the colonial relationship andthe gradual transformation of the political situation, leading eventually to the

construction of the nation state.


31. I have formulated for the first time the idea of a new model of colonizationin the old colonial system in Colonies as Mercantile Investments, in The Political Economyof Merchant Empire, ed. James D. Tray (Cambridge: Univ. Cambridge Press, 1991), 382.


hist artigo arruda decadence (x)

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