Pernambuco
| Pernambuco | |
|---|---|
| Republic of Pernambuco | |
| República de Pernambuco | |
 | |
| Capital | Recife |
| Government Type | Federal republic |
| Languages | Portuguese (official) Creole (lingua franca) |
Pernambuco, officially the Republic of Pernambuco (Portuguese: República de Pernambuco) is a country located in northeastern South America. It borders Bahia to the south and Equador to the west. It comprises ten states and a capitol district where Recife, the capital and largest city, is located. Culturally, Pernambuco is a mix of indigenous American, African, and European elements.
Geographically, the country is divided in a hot and rainy coast, a higher altitude hot and semi-arid central region where the Caatinga can be found(biome which only exists in Pernambuco and Bahia), and a west region dominated by the south american savanna and a part of the Amazon.
The Pernambucan economy has diverse sectors, with the export of products such as sugar, cotton, fruits and grains being the most prominent. But chemical and textile industries along with tourism also have a great role in its economy.
History
Early History
The region of South America where today lies Pernambuco, initially was inhabited by diverse tribes of native Americans, such as the Potiguaras, Tabajaras, Catetes and many others. This part of the continent was one of the first to be settled by the Portuguese, and for more than three hundred years was one of the most important parts of the colony of Brazil. The captaincy of Pernambuco produced tons of sugar and was one of the key parts for the Portuguese Empire economy. This importance attracted the eyes of other European powers which raided and looted the region many times during the 16th and 17th century.
Pernambucan Independence
Differently from the other luso-american countries, Pernambuco didn't gain independence from Portugal, but from another south american country, Equador. In the mid 1877 Equador’s army successfully expelled the last Portuguese holding in the continent, now only the island of Fernando de Noronha was under Portuguese control. The new Republic of Equador government was unstable and problematic. Power struggles were common and the government lost trust from the people due to the lack of transparency.
In December 1877 protesters gathered in front of the government palace in Recife. Protests were relatively common, but this one led to a different ending. It's unknown who shot, coming from government orders or not, a bullet was shot from the palace and killed a protester. This outraged the crowd that prior to that fought along them against the Portuguese, to now not having their urges fulfilled and seen as a threat.
The revolt quickly scaled to other levels and confrontations between the national guard and the people started to be fought in the capital, and later in other towns and cities, escalating in a full scale civil war. In 1878, the rebels started to receive aid from Bahia. The Bahian government felt sympathetic to the Pernambucan cause, especially due to cultural similarities between the two nations. Some Bahian politicians even supported the idea to fully annex Pernambuco when free.
South Tussenland also helped the Pernambucans by being one of the first countries to recognize Pernambuco as independent, and sent around three hundred volunteers to aid in the fighting (Also hoping this action would open the new country to Zoekerism). After 5 years of fighting, Pernambuco gained independence from Equador in 1882. Being recognized in the same year. The new country annexed everything east of Grão-Pará and established Recife as its capital. In the aftermath of independence the new republic claimed the island of Fernando de Noronha which was historically connected culturally & politically to the Pernambuco region but was under Portuguese administration.
Pernambuco in the late 19th century and early 20th century
In the first years as an independent nation, Pernambuco faced a myriad of issues. Poverty affected much of the population, the country had little infrastructure, and faced one of the worst droughts in record. The government was initially ruled by a military junta of influential individuals that got recognition during the independence war. In 1885, the first national direct election was held, but without the totality of the adult male population voting. The dispute ends up once again with the military taking control of the executive power.
The Cangaço in the Sertões
The Cangaço was an armed movement involving nomadic groups which invaded and looted towns, villages and large scale plantations in Pernambuco and Bahia. These armed groups took advantage of the political instability of the Pernambucan independence from Equador in the late 1870s and early 1880s to start their activities.
Historians usually disagree on how the Cangaceiros should be seen today. For some, they were a result of the social issues the Sertões faced at the end of the 19th century. At that time, the region was controlled by large landowners, social inequality was strident, and an almost stamental society. Others might say that these people were just bloodthirsty criminals that only left death and destruction anywhere they went.
Modernization of the former colony
After the independence, it was necessary to make Pernambuco have enough resources to rule itself. The former Portuguese colonial policies were harsh, and had the goal to make the colonies never self-sufficient.
To build public buildings, schools, universities and infrastructure, Pernambuco needed to borrow money from foreign nations. In the period of two decades beyond 1882, Pernambuco passed through a series of modernization and development. The country sponsored artistic and scientific expeditions to non-Portuguese scientists and artists (Portuguese law forbade people of other descent enter in the colonies beyond the city ports). The first university was built in Recife, with focus on Law, Medicine and Mathematics.
Politically, the new Pernambucan constitution assured secularity of the State, suffrage for every literate man above 20 years old, and dozens of other articles in the goal to make Pernambuco a modern nation. The president had a mandate of four years with the possibility of a second term.
Economically, Pernambuco for most of its history was an agrarian nation, exporting products such as sugar, cotton, meat and salt. In the early 20th century, Pernambuco made economic deals promoting economic privileges to raw materials in exchange to investments on textile industries in the cotton producing state of Maranhão, mining in the Sertão, railroad construction and many other sectors.
The Oliver Brown Question
1915 marked the beginning of a complete shift on Pernambuco economical and social situation. In this year, the British aspiring writer Oliver Brown's death in the Pernambucan Sertão started a chain of events that changed the country’s fate.
Brown was born in a high middle class family in Manchester, England, in 1878. He started his writer career writing articles for a local newspaper, but although in a comfortable position, Brown craved for more. In 1913, he finally gathered enough money to travel to South America to write about life in different countries of the continent in an informative book. He started his way in Carolina, then Portuguese Brazil and Bahia, but was in Pernambuco where his journey would come to an end.
In June 1915, ignoring recommendations from the British Consulate in Recife, Brown hired two guides/bodyguards and traveled to the interior of the country. The trio arrived days later in the town of Rancho Novo, around two hundred kilometers from Recife. It’s unknown from whom the information about Brown arrival in the town became known by a cangaço group nearby, the best hypothesis is that the group might have had an informer among the town citizens.
In the search of anything valuable in possession of Brown, the group stormed the town the next night, invaded the house where Brown and his two guides were and killed the trio.
After a week of delay on the scheduled return to Recife, the British Consulate became worried of what might have happened, and asked for an investigation by the Pernambucan government. Later on it was discovered that Brown was killed. The news soon arrived in London and outraged Britain as a whole. In December 1915, a Anglo-Pernambucan committee gathered in Recife to discuss what should be made. The British were interested in sending an expeditionary force inside Pernambuco to deal with the bandits, but the Pernambucan government was reluctant to send an army to the Sertão. After days of discussion, it was decided that an expeditionary force would be sent to Pernambuco, and Britain would assist the South American nation in dealing with its problematic countryside, invest in infrastructure, especially railroads and modernize the outdated Pernambucan warfare. In exchange, the Recife-London Partnership Deal was established, tying the Pernambuco economy almost totally to Britain and its allied nations.
In January 1916, an expeditionary force with men from Guyana and Carolina arrived in Pernambuco. Using modern equipment against the outdated cangaço warfare and mapping the region using the advantage of hot air balloons, soon the nomadic groups were either killed, captured or expelled from the country in a time span of five years.
Effects of the Recife-London Partnership Deal
In March 1916, the Recife-London Partnership Deal was signed. From 1916 to 1922, the deal with Britain resulted in a heavy upgrade in Pernambuco infrastructure, especially in the terms of transportation and urbanization.
During this period, the Recife port started to receive tax free imported industrialized British goods. In the interior, the construction of railroads connected towns and cities to the main ports reducing the costs and time spent on travels and cargo transportation between places. With the majority of the interior bandit free by 1920, large landowners started to invest on properties more inland. At the same time, British companies also bought lands to build both plantations and gold, copper, iron and bauxite mines.
On the other hand, the influx of industrialized goods made hundreds of local small businesses close due the inability to compete on the market, therefore forcing workers to move to foreign ruled factories. In the countryside, the arrival of industrialized furniture, textiles, clothes and shoes, made the local manufacture end. Merchants with the sole function of travel from the main cities bringing products to small towns and villages also lost their function due to the expansion of the railroad grid. These now unemployed people had two choices, stay where they were born and work in large sugar, cotton, cocoa and palm tree fiber plantations, or move to the coastline, where the majority of factories could be found.
Thus, the Pernambucan rise of urban population started. Cities such as Recife, Olinda, Fortaleza and São Luís were the ones which had the most expressive population growth. These people for the most part, moved from the countryside to work on the factories opened by Anglo-Pernmabucan companies.
The economic prosperity of the partnership deal ended in 1922 with the arrival of the European Crisis and the drop in GDP of all European countries, therefore directly affecting the exports of Pernambucan agrarian products and the reduction of British investment in the country. Many plantations started to suffer from overproduction and tens of thousands lost their jobs. The arrival of the Great War later in the 1930s also had an effect on Pernambuco.