Misplaced Pages

War of the Mascates

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Sbalfour (talk | contribs) at 20:38, 1 January 2017 (more specific dates). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Revision as of 20:38, 1 January 2017 by Sbalfour (talk | contribs) (more specific dates)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)
This article does not cite any sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed.
Find sources: "War of the Mascates" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
This article may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. The specific problem is: The article is incomprehensible, and much of it is irrelevant. Please help improve this article if you can. (January 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

The Mascate War (Portuguese: Guerra dos Mascates), also known as the War of the Peddlers, was a conflict fought between two rival mercantile groups in colonial Brazil from Oct. 1710 to Aug. 1711. On one side were landowners and sugar mill owners concentrated in Olinda. On the other were Portuguese traders in Recife, pejoratively called peddlers.

Part of a series on the
History of Brazil
Terra Brasilis, Miller Atlas, 1519
Pre-Cabraline
Colonial Brazil
European discovery
Letter of Pero Vaz de Caminha

Brazilwood cycle [pt]
Sugar cycle
Slavery
Slave trade

France Antarctique
Bandeirantes
Jesuit missions
Quilombo dos Palmares
France Equinoxiale
Dutch invasions
Dutch Brazil
Gold cycle
War of the Emboabas
Mascate War
Vila Rica Revolt
Spanish–Portuguese War (1735–1737)
Treaty of Madrid
Guaraní War
Spanish–Portuguese War (1776–1777)
Minas Gerais Conspiracy
Transfer of the Portuguese court to Brazil
Opening of the ports [pt]
Invasion of the Banda Oriental
United Kingdom with Portugal
Independence
Empire of Brazil
1823 Constituent Assembly
Night of Agony
1824 Constitution
Confederation of the Equator
Cisplatine War
Abdication of Pedro I

April Revolt
1834 Additional Act
Malê Revolt
Cabanagem
Ragamuffin War
Balaiada
Declaration of majority of Pedro II

Liberal rebellions of 1842
Praieira revolt
Coffee cycle
Eusébio de Queirós Law
Platine War
Christie Affair
Uruguayan War
Paraguayan War
Religious Issue
Revolt of the Muckers
Grande Seca
Military Question
Abolition of Slavery
Post–abolition of slavery
Old Republic
Encilhamento
Navy Revolts
Federalist Revolution
Vargas Era
Revolution of 1930
Constitutionalist Revolution
1934 Constitution
Communist uprising of 1935

1937 Brazilian coup d'état
1937 Constitution
Integralist Uprising
World War II
Ousting of Getúlio Vargas
Populist Republic
Military dictatorship
New Republic
1988 Constitution
By federative unit
Topics
Research
flag Brazil portal

Background

This article is missing information about dramatic increase in price of slaves. Please expand the article to include this information. Further details may exist on the talk page. (January 2014)
For history 1580-1640, see Iberian Union
For history 1630-1654, see Dutch Brazil

Until the mid-17th century, Olinda was the main city of the Captaincy of Pernambuco in northeast Brazil, where sugar plantations produced Brazil's major export, sugar. A lack of capital to invest in crops, equipment and manpower (slaves), combined with the declining price of sugar due to competition from European powers' investments in the West Indies, caused a crisis. In an effort to resolve this, the sugar planters of Olinda began to borrow money from traders in the settlement of Recife. At that time, Portuguese traders (pejoratively called "mascates," or "peddlers") living in Recife agreed to lend money to the planters in Olinda, but charged very high interest rates, increasing the planters' indebtedness.

Aware of Recife's economic importance, merchants asked king of Portugal that the settlement be elevated to town status. In February 1709, shortly after receiving the Royal Charter which declared it a town, merchants erected the town hall and a pillory. Recife was formally separated from Olinda, the seat of the Captaincy.

Economically dependent on Portuguese merchants, the landowners did not accept the Pernambuco political-administrative emancipation of Recife, before then a settlement subject to Olinda. The emancipation of Recife was seen as an aggravating the situation of local landowners (debtors) before the bourgeoisie Portuguese (creditors), which by this mechanism put them at the level of political equality.

John V of Portugal

The conflict

This section may require cleanup to meet Misplaced Pages's quality standards. The specific problem is: Too many insignificant names of people and places. Please help improve this section if you can. (January 2014) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

As the separation between the two cities was being implemented in 1710, the lords of Olinda revolted, with mill owner Bernardo Vieira de Melo among their leaders. When there was sedition among the peddlers of Recife and the European gentry of Olinda, the sectarians of the hawkers were nicknamed Manoel Gonçalves Tunda-Cumbe, vines and Sebastião Pinheiro Camerão. No condition to resist, the wealthiest merchants of Recife fled to avoid being captured. Having members of the landed aristocracy abandoned Olinda to escape the plantations where they lived, hostilities commenced in Vitória de Santo Antão, led by their Captain General, Pedro Ribeiro da Silva. These forces, thickened in Afogados with reinforcements from São Lourenço de Mata and Olinda, under the leadership of Bernardo Vieira de Melo and his father, Colonel Leonardo Bezerra Cavalcanti, invaded Recife, demolishing the pillory, tearing the Provincial regal, freeing arrested and persecuting people connected to the governor Sebastião de Castro Caldas Barbosa (peddlers). This, in turn, in order to ensure their safety, he withdrew to Bahia, and left the government over the captaincy of Bishop Manuel Álvares da Costa. The crown appointed a new governor Félix José de Mendonça. The peddlers fought back in 1711, invading Olinda and causing fires and destroying villages and plantations in the region.

End

The new governor and the intervention of troops sent from Bahia ended the war. The commercial bourgeoisie was supported by the metropolis, and Recife maintained its autonomy. The city intervened in the region in 1711, arresting the leaders of the rebellion. Finally after much struggling, which included the intervention of colonial authorities, this fact was consummated in 1711: Recife was to be treated like Olinda from that time on.

Legacy

With the victory of the merchants, the war reaffirmed the dominance of merchant capital (trade) on the colonial production. After the victory of the hawkers, traders perceived the predominance of trade in relation to colonial production that had already occurred since the lords of Olinda caught the interest on money borrowed so the peddlers can keep their colonial system.

The autonomist feeling of Pernambuco, which came from the fight against the Dutch, continued to manifest itself in other conflicts such as the Conspiracy of Suassuna, Pernambucan Revolution of 1817 against Portugal and the Confederation of the Equator against Brazil.

See also

Notes

  1. the nobles and their partisans, shaved legs - because when they would take arms, they went barefoot, with less embarrassment for the manning, and so were known as skilful in them, and very valuable, so in the history of Pernambuco, the moniker is synonymous with shaved legs nobility.
  2. Translation arrow iconThis article contains translated text and needs attention from someone fluent in Portuguese and English.
    Please see this article's entry on Pages needing translation into English for discussion.
    If you have just labeled this article as needing attention, please add
    {{subst:Needtrans|pg=War of the Mascates |language=Portuguese |comments= }} ~~~~
    to the bottom of the WP:PNTCU section on Misplaced Pages:Pages needing translation into English.

    In the 19th century, Frei Caneca wrote about it: "When the country lacked the arms and blood of their sons, along with the browns have not given him his arms and blood whites and blacks? When those tears have washed their irons despotism, did not go well with the edge of tears? Before the pernambucanos have suffered more than other major storms in Pernambuco. Sedition in the last century, all entering the fray, only about white people came the plagues and lightning, the dungeons were full of the most respectable people of Pernambuco, others piled on more entrenched in the woods and distant hinterlands, and they were loaded irons and sent to Portugal. ' («Frei Joaquim do Amor Divino Caneca», Coleção Formadores do Brasil, 1994, p. 283).

References

  • Frei Joaquim do Amor Divino Caneca, Coleção Formadores do Brasil (Collection of Brazil Trainers), 1994 Template:Pt icon
  • "The Golden Age of Brazil", Charles Boxer

External links

Portugal articles
History
Timeline
By topic
Geography
Politics
Economy
Society
Culture
Brazil articles
History
Geography
Politics
Economy
Transport
Society
Culture
Religion
History of South America
Sovereign states
Dependencies and
other territories
Categories: