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  Spain was also undergoing a process of colonial expansion. The Spanish kingdom, which had been unified as the National State in 1492, had set out to discover a new route to the East by travelling west. To prevent further battles in a Europe perpetually embroiled in conflict, on 7 June 1494 the Treaty of Tordesillas was signed, dividing ‘discovered or yet-to-be discovered’ territories between the crowns of Portugal and Spain. The agreement was the immediate response to the Portuguese Crown’s challenge to a claim made by the Spanish Crown. A year and a half earlier the Spanish had arrived at what they believed to be the Indies, but was in fact the New World, officially laying claim to it for the Catholic Queen Isabella. Although no one yet knew where these lands would lead, through the Treaty of Tordesillas they now had an owner and a certificate of origin.9

  There was a forerunner to the Treaty of Tordesillas: the papal bull Inter Caetera, signed by Pope Alexander VI on 4 May 1493, which divided the New World between Portugal and Spain. In practice, this meant that all lands situated up to 100 leagues to the west of the Cape Verde Islands would belong to Portugal, and those further than 100 leagues to Spain. Fearing it could lose potential conquests, Portugal proposed a revision of the bull and managed to have it amended. The Treaty of Tordesillas, signed by both monarchies, defined the dividing line as the meridian located 370 leagues to the west of an unspecified island in the Cape Verde archipelago (a Portuguese domain), at the halfway mark between Cape Verde and the Caraíbas, discovered by Columbus. The treaty also stipulated that all territories east of the meridian would belong to Portugal, and all those to the west, to Spain. It was signed by Spain on 2 June and by Portugal on 5 September 1494, as if the world – real, or as they imagined it to be – could simply be divided into two, with no further dispute.

  Brazil, for example, which did not yet appear on any world map, was already included in the agreement: the line established in the treaty cut vertically down the country from approximately the present-day location of Belém, the capital of the northern state of Pará, to the town of Laguna in the southern state of Santa Catarina. However, at the time Portugal showed little interest in exploring this putative territory, mainly because the profits from its trade with the East were sufficient to meet its needs. Nevertheless, a further expedition was organized in 1500, this time under the command of Captain-General Pedro Álvares de Gouveia, a member of the minor aristocracy who had inherited his name from the family of his mother, Dona Isabel de Gouveia. He later changed his name to Pedro Álvares Cabral, adopting the surname of his father, Fernão Cabral, commander of the fortress in the town of Belmonte. As is the case with the other major explorers, very little is known about him. In 1479, at the age of about twelve, he had been sent to the court of the Portuguese king, Dom Afonso V.10 He was educated in Lisbon, where he studied humanities, and was brought up to fight for his country.

  On 30 June 1484, when he was about seventeen, Cabral received the title of junior cavalier of the first order of nobility at the court of Dom João II11 – a title of no great significance that was generally conferred on young aristocrats – and received an annuity from the Crown of 26,000 réis in recognition of his services. In 1494 he was promoted to Knight of the Order of Christ, Portugal’s most prestigious chivalric order. He received a further annuity of 40,000 réis, probably, as in the case of other young members of the aristocracy, as remuneration for the journeys he undertook to North Africa. Although no pictures of him have survived, Cabral is known to have been a man of sturdy build and tall, almost six feet three inches in height (the same as his father). There are accounts that describe him as learned, courteous, tolerant with his enemies and also vain, as was often the case with nobles who achieved such high-ranking posts. He was generally thought to be wise and canny, and despite his lack of experience, he was placed in command of the largest fleet that had ever set sail from Portugal, to lands that were as distant as they were unknown.

  Very few documents survive that shed light on the criteria for choosing who was to command the expedition to the Indies. The decree appointing Cabral as captain-general mentions only his ‘merits and services’. But it is known that the king was well acquainted with the members of his court, and that the Cabral family was famous for its loyalty to the Portuguese Crown. Cabral was also a member of the King’s Council, and his appointment may have helped to resolve a complex political intrigue. There are those who see it as a deliberate manoeuvre to balance two factions of the nobility, because, despite his personal qualities, Cabral lacked the experience to command such an important expedition. It is interesting to note that more experienced Portuguese navigators, such as Bartolomeu Dias, Diogo Dias and Nicolau Coelho, were appointed as ship captains and sailed under Cabral’s command.

  The captain-general’s salary was high: Cabral received 10,000 cruzados (the equivalent of 35 kilos of gold) and the right to buy 30 tons of pepper and ten crates of any other spice, at his own expense, and to resell them in Europe free of taxes. Thus, although the journey was extremely hazardous, it would ensure that on his return Cabral would be a very rich man, as, despite the high demand, the spices were extremely rare.12 The captains received a thousand cruzados for every hundred barrels of storage space aboard, as well as six ‘unencumbered’13 crates and fifty ‘quintais’14 of pepper.15 Sailors earned ten cruzados a month and ten ‘quintais’ of pepper, cabin-boys half of this, and swabbers a third. In addition there were the boatswain and the ship’s guardian, who received the wages of ‘one and a half sailors’. There were also priests aboard, who acted not only as spiritual guides but also as doctors – as well as the inevitable prostitutes, often concealed among the crew. This very masculine world was not inclined to dispense with its women of ‘dubious repute’ who sometimes got pregnant on the high seas and gave birth to their children on-board.

  The expedition crew was made up of around a thousand men. Seven hundred of these were designated as soldiers, although in fact they were untrained men from peasant families, many of whom had been press-ganged. And there was no lack of problems on this veritable floating citadel. A priest, Fernando Oliveira, who travelled on many such expeditions, gave the following cautious advice: ‘On the sea there are no shops, no comfortable lodgings on enemy territory; for this reason each man brings provisions from his home.’16 Only the captain was allowed to bring chickens aboard – which were mostly used for feeding the sick – as well as goats, pigs and even cows. But the livestock was never shared with the crew, who generally went hungry.

  On a journey without incident, the food on-board was barely enough to satisfy the sailors’ basic needs. The situation worsened considerably during the calms, or when, due to the ineptitude of the steersman, the ship sailed off course, unexpectedly prolonging the journey. Dry biscuits, present from the earliest days of navigation, were the main food item on-board. There was also a good supply of wine. The daily ration was a quarter of a litre, the same amount as for the water used for drinking and cooking. However, the water was often stored in unhygienic casks, which led to a proliferation of bacteria and outbreaks of diarrhea and other infections among the crew. The distribution of meat was highly controlled, handed out every other day; on the alternate days meals consisted of cheese or fish with rice, when available. Storage also presented a frequent problem. Since most of the food came on-board with the crew, infestations of rats, cockroaches and beetles were a common occurrence, all competing for the food with equal voracity. There were no bathrooms on these ships – small seats were suspended over the side, causing a permanent stench on deck.

  With so many hygiene problems, illnesses were frequent during the crossings. Scurvy, caused by a lack of vitamin C (later known as gum or Luanda sickness), was among the most common, along with pleural and pulmonary diseases. As deaths occurred almost daily, the only solution was to lay the bodies out on deck, summon the priest to say a quick prayer, and cast them overboard.

  During these journeys across unchartered waters, violence, theft, and every conceivable
type of corruption abounded. Crimes, assaults and fights tended to increase in direct proportion to the degree of general uncertainty on-board ship. There were very few activities to alleviate the tension: card games, collective theatre, reading profane and religious books, and processions around the deck.

  Strictly speaking, maritime exploration was a private enterprise. But it was also entirely financed by the royal family and closely supervised by the king himself. It required massive investment as well as representing enormous personal risk, which had to be highly remunerated to make it worthwhile. In return the monarchy reserved the right to control all territories conquered, to distribute lands and monopolize the profits. Thus the departure of such an expedition demanded a ritual commemoration.

  The fleet that sailed from the Tagus at midday on 9 March 1500 was a very fine sight – thirteen vessels, probably ten sailing ships and three caravels. The year, marking the turn of the century, was promising, and the season was a good one for crossing the South Atlantic. The previous day the crew had received a resounding send-off with public celebrations and a Mass in the presence of the king. Ever since Bartolomeu Dias in 1488 had rounded the Horn of Africa, which he named the Cape of Torments in a deprecative reference to St Cosmas’ disease17 (fetid rains had stained the sailors’ clothes and provoked abscesses on their skin) – and especially since Dom João II had changed the name to the Cape of Good Hope – the Portuguese saw themselves as the Lords of the Seas, protected by the blessings of Fortune.

  After all, whatever its name, this cape offered the only route that connected the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. The world had never appeared so navigable to the Portuguese, or so small. Nevertheless, the Atlantic was ‘an unknown sea’, concealing every conceivable type of danger: monsters, torments, seas that ended in massive waterfalls. As described by Valentim Fernandes in an official statement dated 20 May 1503, the Atlantic was an ‘unknown ocean’.18 But the mysteries of the oceans were constantly being probed: during the nine years between Bartolomeu Dias’s rounding of the Horn of Africa and the departure of Vasco da Gama’s fleet in 1497, the ocean had become a laboratory for experimentation and lessons had been learnt. And so, although there were no certainties, things were not entirely left to chance. Cabral’s fleet headed straight for the Cape Verde Islands, avoiding the African coast to escape being trapped in the equatorial calms. Everything points to precision and the notion that the commander was following a recognized route.

  On the morning of 14 March 1500 the fleet sailed past the Canary Islands and headed towards Cape Verde, a Portuguese colony off the West African coast, where they arrived on 22 March. The following day, one of the ships, with 150 men on-board and under the command of the experienced captain Vasco de Ataíde, simply disappeared without a trace. A pall of gloom descended on the crews, who now began to dread these unknown, virtually unchartered waters. In general the men knew very little about the purpose of the expedition. With only scanty information about these parts of the world, they developed inordinately fanciful notions about treasure and mountains of gold awaiting the explorers, but also about terrible monsters – any large fish assumed mythical proportions – and every sort of nameless danger.

  In fact such losses were commonplace. According to Crown data, between 1497 and 1612, 381 of the 620 ships that sailed from the Tagus did not return to Portugal; of these, 285 remained in the East, 66 were shipwrecked, 20 were driven off course, 6 caught fire and 4 were seized by enemies.19 Storms, excess cargo, bad conditions for navigation, the poor quality of the wood used for building the caravels – most of which could only withstand one long journey – were largely responsible for this litany of woes.

  But despite setbacks, the Portuguese fleet, sailing southwest away from the African continent, crossed the equator on 9 April. They used a Portuguese sailing technique that consisted of describing a large arc, skirting the central area of the calms and thus taking advantage of the favourable currents and winds. The manoeuvre was a success. As early as 21 April, Pêro Vaz de Caminha20 recorded ‘signs of land’: seaweed and debris in the sea. On 22 April, Cabral’s fleet sighted land to the west. At first they saw birds, probably petrels, then a large, rounded hill of considerable altitude, which they named ‘Monte Pascoal’ as it happened to be Easter week. They called the new land ‘Terra de Vera Cruz’.21 The initial reaction was both wonder at this ‘new world, which this expedition has found’, and the desire to take possession, with the Portuguese creating names for everything they had ‘discovered’.

  We have two surviving early descriptions of this new land, located in what we now know as the state of Bahia.22 They were both written between 26 April and 1 May. The Spanish astronomer João Faras, more commonly known as Mestre João, was the first person to describe the sky and the stars of the New World. He considered the stars to be entirely new, ‘especially those of the Cross’. This was the first recorded European observation of the Southern Cross, the constellation that would become the symbol of Brazil. The other extant document is the famous ‘Letter’ addressed to the King of Portugal, which is regarded as a kind of ‘birth certificate’ for Brazil: the founding document that marks the origin of Brazil’s history. The author was Pêro Vaz de Caminha, who had travelled with the fleet to record events. Already fifty years old when he was appointed for the task, Vaz de Caminha was a trusted servant of the Crown, having served as a knight in the courts of Dom Afonso V, João II and Manuel I.23 He gave an exultant witness report of ‘the discovery of Your New World which this expedition has found’. In the eyes of the crew and their spokesman there was no doubt that this was a new land that had just been ‘discovered’. As a case of ‘finders keepers’, the idea was to register the property at once, even though they had no clear notion of what it was that they had actually found.

  And what they ‘found’ was a supposedly ‘new’ human race. A number of bizarre theories began to circulate about the origin of the Indians. In 1520, Paracelsus24 expressed his belief that they were not descended from Adam, but were akin to giants, nymphs, gnomes and pigmies. In 1547, Gerolamo Cardano25 stated that they were a spontaneous generation that had emerged from decomposing matter, like worms or mushrooms. Vaz de Caminha reported what he saw:

  And Nicolau Coelho signalled to them to put down their bows. They laid them down. But it was not possible to hear them or understand anything of use, as the waves were breaking on the shore. He only gave them a biretta, a linen skullcap that he wore on his head, and a black straw hat. And one of them gave him a headband made of birds’ feathers, very long, with a crown of red and brown feathers, like a parrot’s.

  The exchange described here remains widely debated in Brazil: what was the tone of this seminal moment of conquest? Was it perceived as a ‘friendly encounter’, a case of give-and-take, despite the political, cultural and linguistic differences?

  Vaz de Caminha was fascinated by these new people:

  They are brown skinned, with a reddish complexion, with handsome faces and well-formed noses. They go about naked, without clothing. They feel no need to cover their private parts, which they show as readily as they show their faces. In this matter they are of great innocence.26

  He was amazed by their ‘red skin and silky hair’, and by their beauty, both of body and of soul. This was the origin of the somewhat overused cliché of the Brazilian ‘noble savage’, a trope frequently used by French explorers, and later adopted by Rousseau in the eighteenth century. But whereas for the Enlightenment philosopher the concept served as a useful foil in criticizing Europe and its civilization – and bore no relation to any direct observation – for the first arrivals in Brazil the perception was real. Here were good heathens who could be catechized and converted to the true faith. Thus, on Easter Sunday 1500 a wooden altar was erected for the priests to celebrate Mass. The captain-general displayed the flag of Christ – linking the prowess of men to the powers of the divine – ‘and a solemn, salutary sermon was given, narrating the story of Christ; and at the end, the
story of our arrival and the discovery of this land, in the name of the Cross.’

  Next, on the Friday, the first day of May, they searched upriver for the best place to raise a cross so that it could be seen from all around. Once the cross and the royal crest had been erected, the priest, Friar Henrique, celebrated Mass, which, according to Vaz de Caminha, ‘was attended by fifty or sixty of them, all on their knees’, in addition to the other members of the fleet. At the moment when the Gospel was read and everyone stood and raised their hands, Vaz de Caminha noted that the Indians followed suit. He was amazed when they actually took communion: ‘One of them, a man of about fifty-five, stood among those who were taking communion […] and walking among them, speaking to them, pointed a finger at the altar and then up at the sky, as if they were a portent of good things to come: and so we took them to be!’

  Vaz de Caminha was clearly entranced by what he saw, and his report became the source of another recurrent myth – that of a peaceful conquest, a communion of hearts united in religion. It was the start of a curious process by which Brazil came to be seen as a country without conflict, as if the tropics – by some miracle or by divine intervention – could melt tensions and avert war. While Europe was divided by wars and immersed in bloodshed, in the New World, according to the Europeans, if wars existed they were only small internal ones. The first encounter was supposed to have been unequalled and between equals, however much time proved the opposite: a story of genocide and conquest.

  By this time the Portuguese already saw themselves as the owners of the new land and the lords of its destiny, frontiers and names. Nevertheless, the discovery did not initially redirect the interests of the Portuguese, who only had eyes for the East. Thus, for some time, the vast new area was reserved for the future. But international competition, the menace of other nations and quarrels over the bilateral Treaty of Tordesillas did not permit this state of affairs to last for long. The Spanish were already occupying the northeastern coast of South America, while the British and the French, who rejected the division of the globe between Spain and Portugal, made incursions at various points along the coast. Francis I of France27 commented tersely: ‘I’d like to see the clause of Adam’s will that divided the world between Portugal and Spain and denied me my share.’