The history of the Northeast begins with the discovery of Brazil, and the Northeast owes its birth and development to the sugar industry.

Point zero of Brazilian history was in the Northeast, the history of the Northeast owes its birth and development to the sugar mill.

Today, the region still bears traces of its colonial past, but it is also forging new paths towards modernisation.

What all Brazilians identify as the Northeast is a relatively recent concept: until the beginning of the republic, this “upper” part of the country was referred to without distinction as the North.

The regional division was born out of efforts to industrialise the territory; over the last century, the region has been divided in different ways and given different names.

Today’s Northeast, made up of nine states, is the result of the division made by the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) in 1970.

In the process, different histories, cultures and trajectories were lumped together under the general name of the Northeast. There are, therefore, many ways of tracing the region’s journey.

The most conventional is to set the starting point at the moment when the Portuguese squadron commanded by Pedro Álvares Cabral landed on the coast of what is now Porto Seguro, in Bahia: it was in the northeastern lands that the first encounter took place – between the Old World and the New – that would give rise to what would one day become the Brazilian nation.

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Much to the disappointment of the conquistadors, the land was lush but poor in the spices and precious metals that fuelled their voyages.

The wealth here was something else: brazilwood, which was used in Europe as a dye for cloth.

The Portuguese did not begin to settle the colony until thirty years after they first landed, although they frequently visited the north-east coast in search of timber, which also attracted smugglers, pirates and adventurers from other countries.

In 1534, the Portuguese occupation effectively began with the division of the colony into large parcels of land, the hereditary captaincies.

The system of captaincies failed – only São Vicente, in São Paulo, and Pernambuco, also called Nova Lusitânia, prospered, where sugar cane farming quickly took hold.

In 1548, the General Government was established and the following year, Tomé de Sousa, the first governor, landed in the village of Pereira – a settlement in the bay of Todos os Santos, where the port of Barra is today – to found the colony’s administrative centre. Salvador was born.

The Tupinambás Indians, former inhabitants of the Recôncavo, were taken to work in the fields and converted to Catholicism; many fled to the interior of the continent.

The colonial enterprise gradually took hold, with the organisation of the export of Brazil wood and the construction of the first mills.

CHRONOLOGY OF THE HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

THE SUGAR SOCIETY OF THE NORTHEAST

It is difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when sugar cane was introduced to Brazil, but by the second half of the 16th century the sugar industry was already established in the northeast – and it would sustain the colony’s economy for centuries to come.

Sugar cane plantations spread along the northeastern coast, with Pernambuco and Bahia emerging as the most important producers; the fertility of their lands combined with their relative proximity to Europe and the presence of good ports (Recife and Salvador).

Sugar production became the most dynamic in the colony, based on large estates, monoculture and slave labour – initially indigenous and later African: Salvador became the main import centre for slaves from Guinea, the Costa da Mina and the Gulf of Benin, a position that only declined in the 18th century, when sugar began to lose ground to gold from Minas Gerais and the centre of the slave trade moved to Rio de Janeiro.

It’s no coincidence that the Northeast is the region with the highest concentration of blacks and the one that best preserves cultural traditions of African origin.

The nucleus of the sugar community was the sugar mill, which consisted of mills and furnaces set amidst vast fields of sugar cane.

The masters and their families lived in the big house, while the slaves lived in the slave quarters. This opposition – or complementarity – between master and slave characterised the whole of colonial society.

THE EUROPEAN INVASIONS OF THE NORTHEAST

Throughout the 16th century, many towns were founded by Portuguese grantees and explorers in the coastal areas north of Bahia.

In some regions, the Portuguese occupation was not consolidated until the following century, hampered by both indigenous resistance and invasions by other Europeans.

From the first years after Cabral’s expedition, the French explored the territories that are now Sergipe, Paraíba, Alagoas and Rio Grande do Norte.

In 1612 they invaded Maranhão and founded São Luís; they were defeated in 1615.

Six years later, the Portuguese government encouraged the arrival of Azorean settlers to populate the region and created the state of Maranhão, which included the so-called Grão-Pará and reported directly to Lisbon. Maranhão and Pará separated in 1774.

Attracted by sugar, the Dutch also invaded Portuguese territory with the support of a company called the West India Company.

In 1624 they attacked Salvador, but were quickly defeated; in 1630 they returned to attack Pernambuco. After conquering Recife, the Dutch invaded Filipéia, now João Pessoa (1637), Fortaleza (1640) and São Luís (1641-44).

DUTCH BRAZIL – HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

The seven years following the Dutch invasion of Pernambuco were marked by wars of resistance; in 1637, with the Portuguese capitulation, Count Maurício de Nassau, governor of the Dutch possession, landed in Recife.

The period of Pernambuco’s Dutch occupation has entered the popular imagination as a kind of golden age, a fabulous and almost mystical time.

Nassau established a policy of religious tolerance – two synagogues operated in Recife – and reconciliation with the Portuguese living there; he encouraged the arrival of scientists who left important studies on topography and tropical diseases, and artists such as Frans Post, Albert Eckhout and Zacharias Wagener, who recorded American nature and scenes of colonial life.

The fall in the international price of sugar and disagreements with the West India Company forced Nassau to return to Europe in 1644, and the following year the Dutch were finally expelled from the Portuguese colony – taking with them sugar cane seedlings to plant in their colonies in the Antilles. Portugal regained Pernambuco, but lost its monopoly on sugar production forever.

BEYOND SUGAR – THE HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

The sugar industry was the economic backbone of the Northeast during the first centuries of colonial Brazil. But other products grown in the region also played an important role in colonial society.

Tobacco, grown mainly in the Recôncavo Baiano, was used as a bargaining chip by slave traders on the African coast, and the best varieties were exported to Europe.

Livestock farming emerged in the shadow of the mills, but eventually moved into the territory.

Cattle ranching encouraged the occupation of the vast and flat northeastern hinterland – including Piauí, the only state to be settled from the interior to the coast by cowboys from Bahia – and led to what many call the “leather society”.

Cotton production, present since the beginning of colonisation, took off at the end of the 18th century, when sugar exports began to decline and the English Industrial Revolution took place; when the War of Secession interrupted North American production, Brazilian production, particularly in Maranhão, was boosted.

WARTIME – HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

In the 18th century, sugar profits fell due to competition from foreign production.

The discovery of gold in Minas Gerais gradually shifted the economic axis to the southeast. Several revolts reflected the unstable situation in the Northeast.

In 1684, in Maranhão, the Beckman revolt was one of the first protests by settlers who disagreed with the Crown’s policies, especially with regard to the obstacles to indigenous slavery and the form of trade imposed by the Companhia de Comércio do Maranhão, the body that monopolised trade in the region.

Between 1710 and 1712, the sugar crisis led to the Mascates War, a conflict between the indebted rural aristocracy, represented by the landowners of Olinda, and the merchants – mascates – of Recife, most of whom were of Portuguese origin.

In the second half of the 18th century, the liberal and republican ideals that would lead to American independence and the French Revolution began to circulate in the colony.

In 1798, the Conjuration of the Tailors broke out in Bahia, a movement that included popular sectors: for the first time, social demands were added to the desire for independence.

In 1817, the Pernambuco Revolution spread from Recife to Rio Grande do Norte, entering the hinterland and uniting groups with different interests, such as landowners, merchants, soldiers, judges and priests, under the banner of the Republic and the independence of the Northeast.

The proclamation of independence was followed by social upheaval. Independence itself was not peaceful in Bahia, where it was not consolidated until 1823, with the defeat of the Portuguese troops still resisting in the Recôncavo.

Even today, the highlight of the state’s civic calendar is Dois de Julho, Victory Day, and not Sete de Setembro, which is celebrated in the rest of the country. In 1824, Dom Pedro I dissolved the Constituent Assembly and promulgated the first Brazilian Constitution, measures that rekindled the republican fervour of 1817 in Pernambuco.

The province joined Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte and Ceará in the Equatorial Confederation, which was defeated after four months of fighting.

Throughout the 19th century, other movements broke out across the country, reflecting Brazil’s political instability and the discontent of various segments of society.

In the north-east, the Cabanas War in Pernambuco (1832-35) brought together small landowners, Indians and slaves in a religious movement demanding the return of the emperor (Dom Pedro I had returned to Portugal in 1830, abdicating the throne in favour of his five-year-old son; the country was ruled by a succession of regents until 1840, when Pedro II came of age).

In Salvador, middle-class merchants and civil servants joined forces in the republican Sabinada movement (1837-38), which was violently suppressed.

In Maranhão, the Balaiada (1838-41) brought together small landowners and mestizos; the Praieira Revolution in Pernambuco (1848) opposed the two parties that were to dominate imperial politics – the Liberals (made up mainly of the urban middle class) and the Conservatives (made up mainly of large landowners).

It is also important to remember the slave revolts that shook the Baiano Recôncavo during this century. The largest of these was the uprising of the Males (Muslims), which took place in Salvador in 1835 and foreshadowed the unsustainable situation towards which the slave system was heading.

The abolitionist movement spread throughout the northeast, and some of the most notable names include Rui Barbosa, Luís Gama and Castro Alves from Bahia, Joaquim Nabuco from Pernambuco, Aimino Manso from Potiguar and Francisco do Nascimento from Ceará – the state that abolished slavery in 1884, four years before the Golden Law.

CORONELISMO AND CANGAÇO

The First Republic saw the emergence of coronelismo, a political practice based on the power of large landowners – the colonels, a name inherited from the National Guard, a civilian militia created during the Empire to guarantee internal order.

Supported by their bodyguards, the jagunços, the colonels imposed their will by force in the interior of the northeast; in a complex network of favours and compromises, they exchanged protection, public offices, schools and medicine for votes for representatives of their interests.

The frequent rivalries between families were settled by violence. A feud with colonels led to the assassination of the governor of Paraíba, João Pessoa, a fact that would become the trigger for the 1930 revolution that brought Getúlio Vargas to power.

If the jagunços were at the service of the colonels, the cangaceiros were independent bandits who for decades – from the early years of the 20th century until the 1940s – spread terror throughout the northeastern interior, invading and looting homes and towns.

Their nomadic lifestyle and defiance of authority gave them a romantic aura. Lampião, the most famous of them, is still regarded as a myth. In 1938, after years of spectacular escapes, he, his companion and his men were ambushed and killed by government troops in Angicos, Sergipe.

Corisco, his successor and the last of the cangaceiros, was captured and killed two years later.

THE CANUDOS WAR – HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

“There were only four of them: an old man, two grown men and a child, in front of whom five thousand soldiers roared with rage”. This is how Euclides da Cunha described the outcome of the Canudos War in Os sertões.

The conflict – the result of a seemingly modest religious movement among peasants and small landowners in the interior of Bahia – took place between 1896 and 1897 and shook the young Brazilian Republic.

Hailing from Ceará, the Blessed Antônio Mendes Maciel, known as Antônio Conselheiro, spent years wandering the countryside preaching the religion and gathering followers.

In 1893, he settled on the banks of the Vaza-Barris River, where the so-called Arraial of Canudos was born, whose population grew rapidly. Rumours that Conselheiro’s followers would invade Juazeiro to collect a debt led to the first attack on the town by government troops – which, surprisingly, were victorious.

Two federal government expeditions, although heavily armed, also failed.

The incredible resistance of Canudos, considered a stronghold of monarchists and fanatics, humiliated the Brazilian army and became a national issue.

Finally, in August 1897, after more than three months of fighting, a force of 8,000 men destroyed the village. The villagers captured alive and those who surrendered were executed.

NEW WAYS – THE HISTORY OF THE NORTHEAST

The sugar plantation has been both the blessing and the curse of the Northeast: on the one hand, it has ensured its economic consolidation and presided over the genesis of its rich culture; on the other, its land structure has determined the serious social imbalances that have persisted throughout its history.

Marked by poverty and very harsh natural conditions – large areas are regularly plagued by long periods of drought – the region experienced a continuous flow of migrants throughout the last century.

The exploitation of rubber in the Amazon attracted many people from the north-east, especially during the great droughts of 1877 and 1915; in the following decades they moved to the centres of the south-east in search of industrial jobs, and to the centre-west with the construction of Brasilia.

The movement is still ongoing. The Northeast, which was the country’s most populous region in the 1870s, is now home to around 30 per cent of Brazil’s population.

In 1959, the Brazilian government created a regional economic planning body, the Superintendency for the Development of the Northeast (Sudene), as part of an effort to reorganise the social order and modernise labour relations in the countryside.

At the time, the region did not include the states of Bahia and Sergipe.

Today, despite its internal imbalances, the Northeast has important industrial centres, such as the petrochemical complex of Camaçari in Bahia, the textile complex of Fortaleza in Ceará and the iron industry of Carajás, which occupies a large part of Maranhão.

In the São Francisco valley, Petrolina has developed a successful irrigated fruit plantation. The population is no longer largely rural, and the cities, especially the coastal capitals, are becoming metropolises.

Northeastern culture – manifested in literature, music, art and cinema – continues to exert an immense influence on the country. Oscillating between poverty and exuberance, the archaic and the modern, the Northeast is meeting its challenges and writing its history.

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