The importance of this volume rests more on what it attempts than on what it actually achieves. No historian has recently ventured a serious reexamination of Brazilian history in the Hapsburg period.
The author does not claim that his hook is exhaustive in research or scope, but despite some interesting detail and some perceptive generalizations he has not advanced in concept, structure, or methodology beyond Lúcio José dos Santos, Francisco de Varnhagen, or even Pedro Calmon. This is unfortunate, because Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão is an able historian who is not allergic to archival dust and one of the few Portuguese scholars who works consistently with Brazilian historical materials.
Since the structure is basically chronological, once again governor-general chases governor-general across the pages, only this time mounted on new footnotes and with more biographical details. Many Spanish and Portuguese archives have been used, none of them exhaustively. The material produced by this research is mostly secondary detail rather than new or startling documentation, and much of it is unnecessary and disruptive to the narrative. The author has been reluctant to discard any piece of information, and his insistence on including obscure data has led him to exaggerate and distort his material.
Veríssimo Serrão emphasizes political and administrative matters, and it is in this area that he is strongest. His description of the Relação (High Court) is the best available to date, and his treatment of the various governors-general is informative. He has not incorporated recent work in social and economic history, however, except in a most cursory way. The works of Frédéric Mauro for example are cited but sparingly used. The emphasis on political and administrative history is paralleled by a concentration on the coastal regions from Rio de Janeiro to the Amazon. São Paulo receives no attention whatsoever during the very period that bandeirante activity becomes important in that region’s history. This is an omission difficult to excuse. In general, we have once again an orientation predominantly toward Bahia and Pernambuco, with much more emphasis on drums and trumpets than on sugar and slaves.
This book differs significantly from most of its predecesssors in that it does not contribute to the usual anti-Spanish diatribe so common among Portuguese and Brazilian authors. Veríssimo Serrão emphasizes that the Spanish period was not wholly one of ruin and damnation for the colony, and that the failure of Spain to protect Brazil was more a matter of inability than of deliberate abandonment. Moreover, he recognizes Brazil’s increasing importance within the imperial structure of Portugal during that period. No other author has so convincingly presented this revisionist view. But, Veríssimo Serrão never goes beyond this thesis. He sees the entire sixty-year period under three monarchs as cut from whole cloth, neither dealing with Spanish policy in Brazil nor considering nuances within that policy. In general, Hapsburg Brazil is treated in essence as not very different from A viz or Bragança Brazil, and the intricacies of Luso-Spanish relations are not a subject of inquiry.
Although not a hispanophobe, Veríssimo Serão is very much a Portuguese nationalist. He spends an inordinate amount of space proving that D. Antônio, pretender to the Portuguese throne in 1580 did not offer Brazil to the French. His pro-Portuguese sentiments also move the author to state that because of the cannibalism of the Indians and their failure to respond to Christianity it was the “obligation of the kings of Portugal to carry out the conquest of that land” (p. 50). Such a statement would not be incongruous in the mouths of the author’s sixteenth-century ancestors, and it indicates clearly that the missionary impulse is not yet dead in Portugal.
The only major error of fact that this reviewer noted was a confused biography of Antão de Mesquita de Oliveira, chancellor of the Relação and early leader against the Dutch attack on Bahia in 1624. According to Veríssimo Serrão, Bishop D. Marcos Teixeira advocated that Mesquita de Oliveira be made interim governor (p. 191). Contemporary sources, however, especially Antônio Vieira’s Carta Anua of 1625, state instead that the bishop displaced Mesquita de Oliveira and that in fact there was bad blood between them. The author is certainly correct in emphasizing the importance of Mesquita de Oliveira, a long neglected figure in the history of colonial Brazil. Unfortunately, he has confused the Brazilian chancellor with another man of the same name (p. 136). Chancellor Antão de Mesquita de Oliveira never served in India, did not leave an account of a voyage in the Indian Ocean, and was never a member of the India Council.
This is not an outstanding book. Nevertheless, it is the best volume to date dealing with Hapsburg Brazil. Despite a few factual errors, it is based on competent though not extensive archival investigations. Mildly revisionist in approach, this book is a point of departure for the study of a complex episode of Brazilian history.
