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The Leasing of Brazil, 1502-1515: A Problem Resolved?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2015
Extract
It is generally agreed that a couple of years after Cabral's discovery of Brazil in 1500, the Portuguese Crown leased out the land to a trading consortium for economic exploitation and further exploration. But whether the Crown granted one or two leases, and when the second lease [if there was one] began and for how long it ran, have long been matters of confusion and disagreement.
Evidence of the first lease is clear. A letter of Rondonelli written from Seville and dated the third of October, 1502, speaks of a three-year lease on the following terms: the consortium would have to send six ships to Brazil and “discover” 300 leagues of coast each year and would be obligated to build a fort/factory there. During the first year the lease-holders would pay the Crown nothing, in the second year they would pay a sixth [of the profits?], and in the third year a fourth.
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References
1 The model for this was probably Fernão Gomes’ lease of the Guiné trade in 1469: see Brásio, António, Monumenta Missionária Africana, 2nd ser., 1 (1958), pp. 436–445 Google Scholar and 451–456.
2 The Rondonelli letter was first published by Berchet, Guglielmo, “Fonti italiane per la scoperta del Nuovo Mundo,” Raccolta Colombiana, 3rd ser., 2 (1893), p. 121 Google Scholar (The part concerning the lease is reprinted with a Portuguese translation in História da Colonização Portuguesa no Brasil [HCPB], 3 vols. [Porto, 1921–1924], II, p. 255).
3 This was done in 1504, the last year of the lease. Rolando Laguardia Trias makes a good case for the factory having been located on an island in Guanabara Bay, not at Cabo Frio: see his “Christóvão Jaques e as Armadas Guarda-Costa,” in História Naval Brasileira [hereafter HNB] (Rio de Janeiro, 1975), 1:1, pp. 254–256. Cabo Frio would have been the headland used for guidance by ships sailing to the factory, and therefore the name became attached to it. I would further suggest the possibility—no more—that this island was the same one upon which Villegagnon later constructed his “Fort Coligny” in 1555.
4 Peragallo, Prospero, “Carta de El-Rei D. Manuel ao rei Cathólico,” Centenario da Descoberta da América (Lisbon, 1892), pp. 83–84 Google Scholar; also reprinted with Portuguese translation in HCPB, I. pp. 155–168.
5 For further information on Loronha [Noronha] see, inter alia, de Albuquerque, Luis ed., Dicionário de Históriados Descobrimentos Portugueses (Lisbon?, 1994), 2, pp. 625–626 Google Scholar; and Serrão, Joel ed., Dicionário de História de Portugalf (Lisbon, 1968), 2, pp. 164–165,Google Scholar as well as the Vogt article cited in fn. 8.
6 de Varnhagen, Francisco A., História Geral do Brasil, 4th ed. (São Paulo, 1948), vol. 1, p. 116 Google Scholar. Elsewhere Capistrano de Abreu mentions the first three-year lease, but is silent about a subsequent ten-year lease: Capítulos de História Colonial, 4th ed. (Rio de Janeiro, 1954), pp. 76–77. Earlier historians generally ignore the question of the leases. Frei Vicente do Salvador refers to a post-Cabralian voyage by Gonçalo Coelho but mentions no lease: Históriado Brasil, 5th ed. (São Paulo, 1965), p. 111–112.
7 Baião, António, “O Comércio do Pau Brasil,” HCPB, 2, pp. 325–326 Google Scholar. From the fact that a royal letter of 1503 conferring privileges on foreign traders required their paying the sisa [royal sales tax] on purchases of dyewood brought from Brazil whereas similar privileges granted after 1505 did not, Baião argued that the leasing of Brazil must have ended in 1505. Baião’s line of argument was recapitulated by Vogt, John in his article “Fernão de Loronha and th e Rental of Brazil in 1502: A New Chronology,” The Americas 24:2 (1967), pp.157–158 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. What both these scholars may have overlooked is that collecting the sisa on the sale of a cargo in which the crown had a percentage interest would be a good check on whether the Crown was receiving its share. But when the Crown altered the lease so that it received only a fixed payment instead of a percentage, it had no further need for the sisa to monitor its receipts, and therefore would have no reason to mention these commodities or the sisa on them.
8 Leite, Duarte, “O Mais Antiga Mapa do Brasil,” HCPB, 2, pp. 2781 Google Scholar. Leite may have gotten the idea of a renewal or extension from the Gomes lease of 1469 that was extended for an additional year [see note 1].
9 Cortesão, Jaime, “A Colonização do Brasil,” Obras Completas, 18 (Lisbon, 1969), pp. 42–46.Google Scholar
10 Marchant, Alexander, From Barter to Slavery, 2nd ed. (Gloucester, MA, 1966), p. 29:Google Scholar he seems to think that there were several “contractors” after 1506.
11 See Vogt article cited in fn. 8.
12 Guedes, Max Justo, “As Primeiras Expediçães de Reconhecimento da Costa Brasileira,” HNB, 1:1, p. 239ff.Google Scholar
13 See fn. 3; needless to say, I regard this sequence as completely wrong.
14 Johnson, H. B., “The Settlement of Brazil,” Bethell, Leslie ed. Colonial Brazil (Cambridge, 1987), p. 8.Google Scholar
15 de Carvalho, Filipe Nunes, “Do Descobrimento à União Ibérica,” in Johnson, Harold and da Silva, Maria Beatriz Nizza eds., O Império Luso-Brasileiro, 1500–1620 (Lisbon, 1992), pp. 80–81.Google Scholar
16 Dutra, Francis A., “Brazil: Discovery and Immediate Aftermath,” in Portugal, the Pathfinder, Winius, George D. ed. (Madison: 1995), pp. 145–168 Google Scholar. This article is the best summary in English of the early voyages to Brazil.
17 See footnote 9.
18 Godinho, Vitorino M., Os Descobrimentos e a Economia Mundialro, 4 vols., 2nd ed. (Lisbon, 1981–1983), 3, p. 197.Google Scholar
19 Góis’ exact wording is: “No anno de mil, & quinhentos & treze estando eirei dom Emanuel em Sãctos ho velho, tendo despacho em huma casa de madeira, que alii entã estaua, na ponta do caes, posta sobell aguoa, George lopez bixorda que naquelle tempo tinha ho tratto do pao brasil que trazem desta terra de sancta Cruz, veo a fallar a el Rei, & cõ elle tres homens desta prouinçia, assaz bem dispostos que então vierão em huma nao que de lá hegara, hos quaes vinhã vestidos de pennas …”; [ de Góis, Damião, Crónica do Felicissímo Rei D. Manuel, Lopes, David ed.(Coimbra, 1949), I, p.131 Google Scholar]. Note that Góis’ mention of the brazilwood trade is merely incidental, given as a means to identify Bixorda’s occupation, without any interest in explaining the consortium’s operations.
20 It is tempting to think that the second consortium headed by Loronha also included some or all of the other armadores of the Bretoa in 1511: Bartolomeu Marchione, Benedeto Morelli and Francisco Martins.
21 I would venture the suggestion that the conditions of the first contract hint at why Vespucci stayed on in Lisbon after completing the 1501–02 voyage for King Manuel. Vespucci who had important friends at the Portuguese court [see Bueno, Consuelo Varela, Amerigo Vespucci, un nombre para el Nuevo Mundo (Madrid, 1988), p. 60 Google Scholar] had probably been mentioned by them to the King as an “experienced” cosmographer who had recently returned from the same area [his voyage with Ojeda in 1499–1500]: Formisano, Luciano, Amerigo Vespucci, Cartas de Viaje (Madrid, 1986), p. 127 Google Scholar. Vespuuci says he dutifully wrote up an account of his 1501–02 voyage to Brazil and gave it to the king but that it was never returned. Why then did he stay on in Lisbon? I would suggest a couple of possibilities: (l)In addition to his taste for adventure he may have decided to try his hand at trade with the new land and invested in the second fleet sent out by the consortium that had leased the trade from the king [investors quite often sailed with the ships in which they invested the better to monitor their business]; (2) alternately or additionally, Vespucci may have been engaged by the king to oversee the Crown’s interest in this voyage from which it got a percentage [there was no need for a royal fiscal on the first voyage from which the Crown received nothing]. In any case the voyage of 1503–4 was Vespucci’s last to America, and by the end of 1504 or early 1505 he was back in Seville. Under the new arrangements of the second lease the Crown received a fixed sum and would now have no need to send a representative along with the leasor’s fleet.
22 Alexander Marchant, op. cit., p. 29.
23 This amount fits very nicely with the terms of the first contract. If the profit after costs are deducted totals 14,000 ducats, then 4,000 ducats is 28.6 percent of that, a sum very close to the quarter of the profits taken by the Crown in the last year under the terms of the first lease.
24 Twenty percent is perfectly logical; it was the profit margin generally expected from sea ventures in the early sixteenth century: see de Castro, Eugenio ed., Diário da navegação de Pero Lopes de Sousa,1530–1532 (Rio de Janeiro, 1940), 2, p. 37 Google Scholar. Incidentally, Vogt (op. cit., p. 159) misunderstands Cá Masser’s figures. He takes the profit for the expenses, thus giving the leaseholders a 72 percent return and goes on to impugn the existence of the lease on the ground that the 4000 ducats paid to the Crown is too little to be believed. But if the total profit is correctly computed at 28 percent then the 28.6 percent of that (8 percent of the gross) going to the Crown would be perfectly reasonable.
25 For Jaques’ expedition to Brazil see the definitive study of Laguarda Trias cited in fn. 3.