15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
a complex process, with advance and backlash, changes and continuities, in relation to earlier sociopolitical orders. Also, the modernisation
of societies does not embrace all the spheres of social life at once.
Dissimilar levels of modernisation can be observed in the different
aspects of a society at any given period.
In this sense, Portugal showed different degrees of modernisation in
the various areas of social life. Already at the end of the medieval age, a
precocious modernisation was in motion in the Portuguese kingdom,
grounded in monarchical centralisation (Falcon, 1982: 149). Later, from
the end of the fifteenth century and throughout most of the sixteenth,
in what became known as the golden age of Portugals history, the
country was, along with Spain, the main maritime power of the occidental world. Its mercantile and colonial enterprises were central to the
development of global trade and modern capitalism. It also generated
new knowledge which challenged the dominant scholastic tradition
(Dias, 1986: 43). Thus, in the age of discovery, Portugal was at the head
of a process which revealed a new world to the Europeans, a revelation
whose importance was felt at all levels of reality (Falcon, 1982: 149).
In spite of Portugals vanguardism and an early modernisation in
the economic and political realms, the cultural and scientific paths that
were opened up with the discoveries did not produce major changes
in Portuguese thought. This was a result of political, ideological and
epistemological obstacles, such as the loss of Portugals independence
between 1580 and 1640, the censorship operated by the Tribunal of the
Holy Office, the triumph of the ideology of the Counter-Reformation,
and the dominance of the monastic scholastic tradition in Portuguese
schools (Dias, 1986; Falcon, 1982).
At the end of the sixteenth century, the Society of Jesus assumed
control of education in Portugal and its colonies, imposing an
AristotelianThomistic orientation to it. Thus, Portugal remained loyal
to the scholastic epistemology, not experiencing the renovation that
occurred elsewhere, under the impact of the Renaissance and the scientific revolution. The identification with the peripatetic scholastic kept
Portuguese society within the epistemological frontier bequeathed by
the Middle Ages. The hegemony of a medieval kind of thought, refractory to humanism, rationalism and empiricism, together with the pedagogical control exercised by the Society of Jesus, represented a major
obstacle to the proliferation of modern thought (Falcon, 1988: 77).
The passing from transcendence to immanence did not occur. The
repudiation of anything associated with another truth and not subor106
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
selective incorporation of the ideas of the eighteenth century, articulating the valorisation of reason and science with a defence of absolute
monarchy, religion, and colonialism (Villalta, 1999: 22). Thus, while the
Enlightenment constituted, on the one hand, a benchmark for reforms,
on the other hand, some of its ideas were opposed, specifically those
that supposedly threatened the absolutist prerogatives of the king,
colonial rule, and Roman Catholicism. To understand this ambiguity, it is necessary to take into account the political project behind the
Portuguese reforms and the broader historical context in which they
were developed.
From the second decade of the eighteenth century onwards, an
economic and political crisis took place within the Portuguese Empire,
with the decline of the infrastructural power of the state and a significant reduction in colonial profits. The result was government inertia,
administrative inefficiency, and an increase in corruption inside the
bureaucratic apparatus. Consequently, state power became the object
of tough disputes between the classes connected to it (Falcon, 1982:
3712).
Against this background, Pombals main objectives were the reorganisation of the economy and the strengthening of the Portuguese
state. To that end, he implemented an ambitious set of reforms,
incorporating political, economic, and societal elements. In the political realm, the main goal was to increase state power by introducing
modifications to the bureaucratic and legal systems, and operating
major changes in the configuration of the blocs of power. In the economic sphere, the aim was to recover control of the national economy,
with a strong emphasis on colonial trade, industrialisation and fiscal
reform. And, at the societal level, he sought to promote secularisation and modernisation and supported the diffusion of doctrines that
justified the unrestrained sovereignty of the king over his subjects and
territories.
The ancien rgime had specific characteristics in Portugal, being
heavily influenced by the medieval corporate tradition grounded in
the organic representation of the sociopolitical body. The king was the
head, having the role of maintaining the established order. But the
notion of pact was central in these theories, implying the interdependence between the monarch and his vassals, and allowing every part of
the sociopolitical body a certain amount of autonomy (Hespanha, 1989;
Villalta, 1999).
In opposition to this configuration, the political project of Pombal
109
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
15/10/2014 10:13
a per capita local tax to make up the difference. In 1788, the governor
of Minas Gerais received orders from Portugal to apply a derrama and
investigate all individuals who had debts to the Crown.
These measures represented an additional threat to the economic
situation of the colonial elite whose members were the main debtors
to the Crown and closely connected with mining activities. It is in
this context that they planned an uprising aiming to secede from
the Portuguese Empire and to install a constitutional republic in the
province.
In their project, a strong influence by some works of the Enlightenment
and by the War of American Independence can be identified. Despite
the censorship of works and authors considered dangerous to the
social and political order, many of the proscribed books were found
in the private libraries of the participants of the conspiracy.8 Several of
the books confiscated were about the War of American Independence,
and various witnesses declared that those involved in the conspiracy
recurrently mentioned the revolutionary events in English America
and passionately debate it, having a natural complaisance in the
success that the American rebels had.9 Other witnesses claimed that
the conspirators asserted that Minas Gerais, with the implementation of the derrama, was in the same circumstances that led English
America to revolt. Finally, many of those indicted for the conspiracy
were writers themselves and, in their works, the influence of the aforementioned authors, ideas and events is clear, abounding as they do
in criticism of tyranny, colonialism and specific aspects of Pombals
enlightened reforms. In addition, they contain plenty of references
to republicanism, and to the War of American Independence, as possible ways of solving the problems and fostering the progress of Minas
Gerais.10
The basic justification for the conspiracy given by its members followed the ideology of enlightened government; the incapacity of rulers
to accomplish necessary reforms, dictated by reason, justified the revolutionary option. The conspirators found in Raynals work a defence of
the legitimacy of popular rebellion against a despotic power. In Histoire
des Deux Indes the author criticises colonial atrocities, and appeals to
revolt and the affirmation of the principle of freedom and independence. Raynal asserts the existence of three kinds of freedom: the natural
freedom associated with man; the civil freedom of the citizen; and the
political freedom of a people. Political freedom is defined by the author
as the state of a people who has not alienated its sovereignty and that
116
15/10/2014 10:13
makes its own laws, or is associated, in part, to its laws. Departing from
this definition, Raynal states that the inhabitants of the colonies, either
slaves or freemen, were not really free, being subject to the captivity of
tyranny and despotism. He also emphasises the absence of a social
contract between the colonies and the metropolis. According to Raynal,
revolt is the name that the oppressor gives to the legitimate exercise
of an inalienable and natural right of the man who is oppressed, and
stated that if the people are happy under the form of their government,
they conserve it. He also signalled the transient character of all governmental forms, stressing that no form of government has the right to be
immutable, and that there is no political authority created yesterday
or a thousand years ago, which cannot be abrogated in ten years time
or tomorrow (Raynal 1781: 756).
Following Raynals ideas, the participants of the Minas conspiracy
claimed that they had the legitimate right to rebel against colonial power
because they were oppressed by an unreasonable sovereign, therefore,
a tyrant. Hence, they were acting in the name of freedom, their slogan
being Libertas Qu Sera Tamen. Nonetheless, their defence of liberty
had its limits: they did not touch on the theme of slavery, some of them
being slave owners. Their conception of a rightful pursuit of freedom
was restricted to white freemen. In addition, they did not broach the
subject of social equality, suggesting that some inequality was necessary
for social order. Thus, as with many enlightened thinkers, they did not
go beyond political equality, thereby condemning social equality.
Once again, as in the case of the Portuguese enlightened reformism, we are facing a selective and eclectic use of the Enlightenment,
according to specific interests and context. Their revolution, in fact,
was a conservative one. The freedom demanded in the economic and
political realms did not apply to the social order which should be
kept as it was. The members of this political and intellectual elite were
reformists, believing that it was possible to live with the basic social
structures of colonial society, provided that they were improved upon,
and that the rulers were rational, enlightened sovereigns. Claiming
that this was not the case with the Luso-Brazilian Empire, and that the
king was a tyrant, they admitted the possibility of political change
defending emancipation with socio-economic structural continuity
preserving the slave-owning order.
The Taylor revolt, organised in Salvador in 1798, was more popular
than the Minas conspiracy. It was a movement organised by people
marked by an inferior racial and social status: free blacks and mixed
117
15/10/2014 10:13
118
15/10/2014 10:13
Conclusion
The conception of the Enlightenment as a homogeneous revolutionary intellectual movement, characterised by the defence of universal
freedom and equality, and an antireligious and anti-absolutist spirit,
led many authors to hold that the Luso-Brazilian Empire did not experience this movement until the first decades of the nineteenth century.
My aim in this chapter has been to show that this perspective is wrong.
Understanding the Enlightenment as a critical and reflexive attitude,
as the courage to use ones own reason [Kant, (1784) 1990], I claim
that this was clearly present in the eighteenth-century Luso-Brazilian
Empire. The crisis of consciousness of the beginning of that century
was a reflection of this, as were the reforms made under Dom Joss
rule and subsequent Brazilian conspiracies.
Some authors add an adjective when characterising the Portuguese
Enlightenment, recognising the presence of the movement while
highlighting its differences in relation to what is considered even if
implicitly as the original version of Enlightenment. The most usual
qualifications are mitigated, eclectic and compromised. These qualifications suggest a coexistence between the Enlightenment and previous traditions of thought. This coexistence is undeniable but it is not
specific to the Portuguese case. In fact, the coexistence of different ways
of thought is not an exception but the rule. All Enlightenments are,
somehow, eclectic, with their substantive content varying, according
to its articulations with different traditions of thought, specific to each
context.
In the Portuguese case, absolutism and Roman Catholicism were
the main ingredients that were blended with it. But the association
between Enlightenment and absolutism also occurred in other polities;
Pombals reforms are closely associated with those of other great figures
of enlightened absolutism, such as Catherine II in Russia, Frederick II
in Prussia and Joseph II in Austria (Maxwell, 1995: 1). The articulation
with religion can also be found in the writings of major enlightened
thinkers in other countries, such as Italy, Spain and Prussia, of whom
many were clergymen.
Finally, I argue that the Enlightenment can lead both to reform and
to revolution. Within the Luso-Brazilian Empire, religious men, absolutist rulers and political elites resorted to reason, objective knowledge,
criticism and reflexivity to defend the ancien rgime and Catholicism,
that is, the very same elements that, in other countries, laid the
119
15/10/2014 10:13
Notes
1. The main representatives of this strand were clergymen, such as the Spanish
Benito Feijoo, the Portuguese Luis Antonio Verney, and the Italians Ludovico
Antonio Muratori and Antonio Genovesi.
2. It is also worth noting, regarding this theme, that the Enlightenment shows plurality, with some authors, such as Morelly, Malby, Spencer and Ogilvie, making a
radical defence of social equality as a necessary feature of a just society.
3. For example, Montesquieu, Helvetius, Voltaire and Holbach. Rousseau and
Raynal go even further, defending the freedom of all subjects to rebel against a
despotic sovereign (Villalta, 1999: 92).
4. Mendelssohn differentiated the civil enlightenment from the human enlightenment, while Kant developed a distinction between the public and private use of
reason (Schmidt, 1996: 45).
5. There was, as with the other main ideas of the Enlightenment, a plurality of
understanding, with some authors, such as Raynal and Kant, explicitly condemning colonialism on the basis of the equality of all human beings and the universal
value of freedom.
6. Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo. Real Mesa Censria, Edital
de 24 de setembro de 1770, caixa 1 (PT/TT/RMC/B-A/1).
7. Instituto dos Arquivos Nacionais da Torre do Tombo. Real Mesa Censria.
Secretaria da Censura 1641/1848. Editais de proibio de livros 1768/1816 (PT/TT/
RMC/B-A/1).
8. AUTOS de devassa, de perguntas, de testemunhas, de confrontao e conciliao
120
15/10/2014 10:13
References
Calafate, Pedro (2001), Histria do Pensamento Filosfico Portugus, vol. 3, Lisboa:
Editorial Caminho.
Camargo, Ta (2005), Colecionismo, cincia e imprio, in CEDOPE: Ata da VI
Jornada Sececentista, Curitiba: Aos Quatro Ventos, 57687.
Carvalho, Flvio Rey de (2008), Um Iluminismo Portugus? A Reforma da Universidade
de Coimbra (1772), So Paulo: Annablume.
Cassirer, Ernst [(1923) 1997], A filosofia do Iluminismo, Campinas: Editora Unicamp.
Cidade, Hernani [(1929) 2005], Ensaio sobre a Crise Mental do Sculo XVIII, Lisboa:
Editorial Presena.
Constant, Benjamin [(1816) 1988], The Liberty of Ancients Compared with that of
Moderns, in The Political Writings of Benjamin Constant, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 30728.
Dias, Jos Sebastio Silva (1986), Cultura e obstculo epistemolgico do Renascimento
ao Iluminismo, in D. Contente and L. F. Barreto (eds), A Abertura do Mundo,
Lisboa: Editorial Presena, pp. 4152.
121
15/10/2014 10:13
122
15/10/2014 10:13