The prohibition of the slave trade in 1826 greatly turned the planter class against the Crown, a situation which would soon spiral out of control.
When Prince Pedro died back in 1817, this forced King João VI to persecute liberal sympathizers not only in the elites and bureaucracy but also in the military, considering many soldiers were among those who rebelled in Pernambuco. When King Miguel came to the throne after his father’s death in 1821, he continued to pursue his father policy of extreme ideological purity among army officers, a thing which only grew increasingly difficult after his defeat at the Portuguese Civil War in 1825.
Now, Brazil was essentially an independent nation in all but name, surrounded by constitutional republics which loathed the absolutist model espoused by the Rio’s court. Not only that, but the autonomist angles of the Brazilian planter class, eager to achieve it’s particularist aspirations, and fuelled by the ideological teachings of the enlightenment and liberalism, were starting to pressure the central government for a political reform, to no peaceful avail.
Following the end of the slave trade, enforced by the army and the navy, the Brazilian state cracked down hard on those planters and traders who tried to continue bringing slaves from Africa. A minor offence was enough to take away a whole landowner family’s fortune amidst fines, a policy which was pursued by the Crown with the objective of accommodating all the waves of exiles from Portugal, as well veteran soldiers which were promised good lands and bonuses in return for their loyal service for the King.
Even worse, wanting to profit on the increasing inter-province slave commerce, which was starting to see the northeast sugar slaves leak to the coffee plantations on São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro introduced heavy taxes on the internal slave trade. As a result, northeast landowners were forced to keep more of their non-productive slaves instead of selling them to the Paulista Market, a distortion which turned many fortunes to ruin.
In 1831, these contradictions exploded in the Ecuador Republic, following false rumours that the King was getting ready to abolish slavery. A local revolution, led by the slaveowner class, it achieved control over vast swathes of Northeastern Brazil, briefly taking the cities of Natal and Recife. Said revolt was overwhelmed at the coast by an army led by Lieutenant-Colonel Bento Gonçalves, an officer from São Pedro province, which was promoted for his loyalty and competence during the Civil War and during the fight against the Cisplatine rebels. In 1832, Bento Gonçalves took the city of Recife, which prompted King Miguel to grant him the title of Duke of Recife, remembering the circumstances where his older brother died.
Nonetheless, the fight continued viciously in the region, turning into a high-level insurgency which lasted many years. Many northeastern garrisons, callous over the favouritism showed towards Portuguese-born officers, turned against the Crown and sided with a Republic. At the same time, even if despised by the regular troops, quilombos and groups of revolted slaves sided with the Crown over their masters and regions, a manpower source which the King was increasingly open to entertain the more the revolt lasted.
In Rio de Janeiro, the Ecuador Revolt turned the Court to chaos. While Brazil escaped from the genocidal anger against European born that plagued the other Latin American nations during their wars of independence, tension between the Portuguese and the Brazilians started to grow. Resentment towards the lavish Rio de Janeiro court grew even among the court city dwellers, and the local Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo elites were conspiring to fulfil their liberal aspirations. With most of the army gone to quell the stubborn northeast revolt, as well as guarding strategic places like Montevideo, the Rio de Janeiro garrison was extremely reduced in scope.
Taking notice of this, a clique of liberal elites led by the Andrada Brothers initiated a coup attempt against King Miguel. Bribing and convincing the local military officers, many of them Brazilian born and coming from the slaveowner elite, they scheduled to launch the coup in December of 1833, just after the army led by Luis Alves de Lima e Silva departed for Recife with the latest soldiers for the meat grinder.
Still, their plans had to be advanced ahead of time due to a big riot against the Portuguese born which was unleashed in November after a Portuguese noble tried to whip the son of a wealthy Brazilian landowner in a bar at the capital. The bar fight turned into a big battle in the streets of Rio, and the conspirers decided to launch the coup during this auspicious moment.
The King was warned just in time to escape with his family to Niterói, where the loyal troops led by young officer Lima e Silva were mustering to depart. In Rio de Janeiro, the rioters and the revolted troops, led by José Bonifácio de Andrada, took control of the capital, sacking the Court, killing Portuguese indiscriminately and declaring the birth of the Brazilian Republic, which, they said, was the real moment of independence for the Brazilian Nation.
While Bonifácio, like many others, was in favor of the abolition of slavery, the continuous reactionary actions of the Crown, as well as it’s unwillingness to reform, led him side with the slaveowners in a call to dislodge the monarchy from Brazil, the only faction which had enough power to confront the monarch. It was supposedly his intention to lead the Brazilian Republic towards a peaceful abolitionist path after Miguel was deposed, but we will never know the true degree of viability of his plans.
The still-born Brazilian Republic of 1833 lasted less than a week. Supported by loyal troops and ships in Niteroi, King Miguel and Lima e Silva marched to Rio de Janeiro and defeated the republican army just north of the city, in the Battle of Rio de Janeiro, thanks to the support of the navy, which unleashed it’s cannon fire against the revolters. The Andrada Brothers, as well as the military and political leaders behind the coup, were unceremoniously shoot by firing squad close to the city centre.
The next months were sparred taking control over the situation in the core regions of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where many aristocrats and officers were implicated in the conspiracy, and where the troops led by Lima e Silva, now promoted to colonel and granted the title of Count of Niterói, were kept to maintain the peace, specially in São Paulo, which didn’t outright revolt, but experienced serious agitation, being the home province of the Andrada brothers and their clique.
As a result, the campaign led by Bento Gonçalves, the Duke of Recife, in the Northeast became even more manpower starved, which prompted the general to form the Black Lancers battalions to combat the planter rebellion. To fill the battalions, the King bestowed upon the Duke the authority to grant the liberty to any able-bodied slave who joined arms with the loyalist army, even if against the will of his owner, a measure which the now General contained to those landowners of suspicious loyalty.
In 1835, after four years of brutal fight in the Northeast, the Ecuador Republic was finally quelled, and the Treaty of Olinda was signed between the Rio government and the rebels, granting political amnesty for those who surrendered peacefully. The northeastern loyalist politician Pedro de Araújo Lima, a local Pernambucan, managed to dissuade the King from completely partitioning the province and killing all the leaders, instead going for a more moderate approach by merely taking the lands and properties of the revolted, a decision which allowed a peaceful end for the war and granted the statesman a lot of political capital both in the Court and in the Northeast, later being granted the title of Marquess of Olinda. The institution of captivity was greatly weakened by the continuous years of war in the Sugar producing region, which had seen many slaves freed, by themselves or by the hands of the manpower starved Duke of Recife.
Nonetheless, the greatest question still required a solution. The regional elites had revolted against Rio de Janeiro not only out of republican and constitutional aspirations, but due to the desire to protect their economic prerogatives and their way of life. As a punishment for this, and following the British example in 1833, the Golden Law of 1835 created a plan for the gradual abolishment of slavery in all Brazil. Instead of taking immediate effect, like the Banishment of the Slave Trade, the Law stipulated that the slavery would end in 1845, when the government would compensate the slaveowners. The legislation also stipulated that any slaveowner which took part or was suspected to have taken part in seditious activities was open to have their compensation cancelled. A later article was added, adding the cancellation even if a second degree relative of the slaveowner was the suspected seditious one, creating further reasons to not engage or incentivize acts against the Crown even among the inner family. The carrot and the stick approach.
The end of the greatest slave society in the Western Hemisphere was near.
