A WHOLE WORLD IN PERNAMBUCO: THE CIRCULATION OF IDEAS IN THE

BEGINNING OF 19TH CENTURY

BrenoGontijo Andrade
Henry Koster was one among many British and French men who arrived in Recife in
the year 1809;in addition, he was also one of the few travelers who left his memoirs
about the captaincy of Pernambuco.Perhaps for not being a merchant, as many others
foreigners were, as soon as he landed he tried to better understand the local residents
way of life, andfor that he sauntered through the captaincies of Pernambuco, Paraba,
Rio Grande do Norte, Cear, Maranho. On his reports itis not uncommon to observe
Henry Koster fascination with the local inhabitantsculture: how they treatedtheir wom-
en, thefriars importance in the hinterland, the country mans life, the sugar mill owners
power, as well as howthe newest fashion trends from Europe werereceived.All those lo-
cal life niceties would not go unnoticed on this travelers remarks.
The traveler also noticed the urban men interest for news from Europe. They wanted to
receive the most recentupdates about Napoleon, the current situation in the Kingdom of
Portugal, as well as what was happening in many other countries, and themost recent
books published. It was through the harbor of Recife that that those informations ar-
rived; whether from oral sources, thru letters, journals or books. The crown, on the other
hand, tried to control this information, particularly the onesfrom newspapers and books.
In order to receive the proper licenses, prior to leave Portugal, all this type of material
should be sent to the Desembargo do Pao, only after thatthey couldbe shipped to the
Portuguese America. The Portuguese Crown sought to apprehend thematerialthat they
thought to be harmful to Christian morality and to the Portuguese monarchy. This im-
posed censorship hindered the circulation of books and ideas in Pernambuco, but could
not stop it, this barrier could be trespassed. There were several cases of smuggling of
books. However, the censorship, allied to theprohibition of printersoperation in Per-
nambuco, contributed to stifle the book sales market in the region; there were no men
who lived solely from books sales in Pernambuco, as there was in Lisbon and Rio de
Janeiro.In the case of profane books; when not ordered directly from booksellers of Lis-
bon, it seems that they were sold by merchants who sold a bit of everything. The reli-
gious books, however, were sold on a large scale, both by peddlers, and by the convent
of Madre de Deus, in the heart of Recife.The reasons for the sales success of those
books was a combination of: low prices; the usage of those books as a sacred object,
what enhanced their access from illiterate people; andthe priestsencouragement for the
acquisition of those worksby its followers.
The hinterland men had the same curiosity about what was happening, butdifferently
from the urban men, they had little interest for news of distant lands; the center of their
world was Recife. The means for them to gather informationregardingthe capitalP-
ernambuco was through travelers who roamed the countryside. However, travelers like
Koster were rare; the most common visitors weremen on convoys, tropeiros, and al-
mocreves, who lived of commerce.Nonetheless, although those were the most common
types messengers,according tothe English traveler they were not the only ones;his re-
ports point outthatlandlords and their aggregates performing business, priests walking
through the hinterland trying to bring faith to distant lands, and even Indians, served as
emissaries as well.This transit evidences that hinterland men were not immune to the
ideas that arrived at the Norths main port, located in Recife.Travelers made them take
some knowledge of what was going on, especially the priests who roamed the country-
side. Koster said that these wandering clerics were the bond that connecting all the peo-
ple and sustained them, the twine of ideas received, along with the larger populations of
other districts1.Both Henry Koster and Louis Franois Tollenare, a french dealer who ar-
rived latter in Recife, in 1816, were unanimous in recognizing the lights of the clergy.
Tollenare, for example, said that when he arrived in Pernambuco he wanted to talk
about the interior of the country, but the priests were only interested in discussing Euro-
pean politics, which caused an embarrassing situation, because even being French, Tol-
lenare knew less than the padres regarding that matter2.
Wouldn't it be a coincidence that the clergy would participate in the Pernambucan
Revolution of 1817. From the highest authority of the bishopric, the Dean Bernardo
Luiz Ferreira of Portugal, until students from the seminar OlindaPernambuco, they all
embraced the revolution. With the clergy support, the revolutionaries expelled the Gov-
ernor Caetano Pinto de Miranda Montenegro, taking control of the captaincy.They in-
stalled a provisional Government, composed of five members, inspired by the French
Directory model. Among the five governors where, a priest, a professor from the Olin-
das seminar, and the responsible for the Hospital do Paraso, named JooRibeiro Pes-
soa de Mello.
The Provisional Government first measurestried to consolidate the revolution. As there
were rivalries between Pernambucans and Portugueses, the provisional Government de-
fended the idea that they were all brothers, professed the same religion, and had a com-
monorigin. In this way, they used the term patriot todissolve those two identities into

1
KOSTER, Henry. Viagens ao Nordeste do Brasil. Traduo e Notas de Luiz da Camara Cascudo. So
Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 1942, p. 131.
2
TOLLENARE, L. F. Notas Dominicais.Recife: Secretaria de Educao e Cultura, 1978 , p. 26.
one. What really mattered for the provisional Government was the acceptance of the
revolutionary cause, the defense of that Republic in opposition to the Portuguese mon-
archy, regardless of place of birth. At the same time, they sought to increase the militar-
ies pay, after all, they were the ones responsible for the war effort. The Provisional
Government also sought to lower some taxes to obtain support from the people; for ex-
ample, the end of a tribute on the meat.
Nevertheless, in addition to consolidating the revolution in Recife and on its neighbor-
ing villages, it was necessary to expand the movement to other captaincies. The revolu-
tionaries used the strategy of sending emissaries to the most important men they knew
in the surrounding areas; trying to convince them through letters and proclamations, by
urging them to help the homeland.These men were generally sugar mill owners, actual
royal staff, or even priests with great influence among the population. As soon as these
men where conquered, the Provisional Government's strategy was to spread proclama-
tions amongst general people, so that they would also support that Government. In this
manner, Paraba and Rio Grande do Norte joined the Pernambucan Revolution. Yet, the
Republican Government faced resistance too: not all of the revolutionarys friends sup-
ported the uprising, nor all population accepted another authority that was not from the
King. When trying to conquest the captaincy of Cear and Bahia, the revolutionaries
were frustrated and had its emissaries arrested.
The revolution was not limited to thatspecific portion of land from the Portuguese Em-
pire. In the early days of the provisional Government, a ship was sent to Mozambique
with the Mission of sending letters, likely, to attractanother part of the Portuguese Em-
pire to the revolutionary cause. The reasons were sufficient: a great friend of the revolu-
tionaries and also brother of ne of the other two participants in the Revolution ruled that
captaincy. It was Jos Francisco de Paula Cavalcanti de Albuquerque, brother of two
generals of the revolution. All three accused in 1801 of conspiring against the Portu-
guese monarchy, but that ended up being consideredinnocent. However, it is not known
whether the ship arrived with the good news in Mozambique and what the reaction it
had there.
Externally, the revolutionaries still sought support of two anglophone countries: United
States of America and England. For the second, a ship was dispatched with letters to
Hiplito Jos da Costa, founder, publisher and editor of the CorreioBraziliense, asking
him to intermediatein favor of the Revolution with Lord Castlereagh. However, Hippol-
ytus refused to exercise such a role. To the United States of America, at the time ruled
by James Monroe, was sent the revolutionary Antonio Gonalves da Cruz,an im-
portantman known as Cabug. There, he sought support for the movement of 1817, of-
fering several advantages including commercial. He could not a meet with the U.S.
president, but was welcomed in particular by their secretaries. The United States has not
publicly supported the Revolution in Recife, for its relations with Portugal were good,
but allowed the emissary of the revolution to buy weapons without any impediment.
Yet, all these goods would not be used by the revolutionaries, when the ship arrived in
Pernambuco with the weapons, the revolution had been quelled.
To organize the provisional government, the revolutionaries created a sort of pre-
constitution, called Leis Orgnicas. It is clear in it some appropriations of the U.S. Con-
stitution of 1787 and also of the French Constitutions, 1791, 1793 and 1795. In fact,
there are reports that these Constitutions circulated among the governors of Provisional
Government.
Is noteworthy the enthusiasm of one of the Provisional Governmentgovernors: the priest
Joao Ribeiro. It is known that the priest was an enthusiastic reader of the French philos-
opher Condorcet. Some of the ideas of Condorcet came to be appropriate in Pernambu-
co Revolution, probably under the direction of Father JooRibeiro. One was that the
Human Spirit could only fully develop after the use of typography, increasing the circu-
lation of print and therefore ideas. In the Revolution, one of the first measures adopted
by the Provisional Government was to rescue a lost typography kept in a basement due
to the prohibitions of its operation, used to give birth to revolutionary proclamations,
and to inflame the neighboring areas.
Lastly, a question regarding the Revolution of 1817 should be asked: why a movement
that went beyond the stage of ideas; materialize; was able to raise several villages and
three states to support a project of the Republic; was able to separatefrom the Portu-
guese Empire in about two months; managed to contact the United States and England,
receiving indirect support of United States; created a Constitution based on pre-foreign
constitutions; had hundreds of the prisoners; did all those things that the Inconfidnci-
aMineira could not do, is so little studied? Will the Brazilian historiography ever be sat-
isfied with this overly analyzed topic called InconfidnciaMineira?
Historians, I invite you to study the Revolution of 1817, thisdense movement, however
abandoned. The Pernambuco Revolution needs more scholars, more ink to write it as its
importance calls for!