The history of Paraíba began before the discovery of Brazil, when the coastline of the state's current territory was populated by the Tabajara and Potiguara indigenous peoples. When the Portuguese arrived, the region was established as part of the Captaincy of Itamaracá. However, there were difficulties in implementing the Portuguese occupation fronts in the area, especially due to the resistance of the natives and the influence of French explorers, who used the coast of Paraíba for the illegal extraction of brazilwood.
As a result of the establishment of sugarcane mills, the region experienced high economic and demographic growth and consolidated itself as one of the northeastern centers of colonial Brazil. After spending a period under Dutch rule, Paraíba returned to Portuguese control in 1654. It became a federal captaincy in 1799, a province of the Empire of Brazil in 1882 and a state of the federation of Brazil in 1889.A privateer, or corsair, was not a pirate, but the captain of a ship authorized by a government's mission or charter to plunder the vessels of other nations. Corsairs were a cheap way of weakening the enemy and disrupting their sea routes.
15th and 16th centuries
Maritime expeditions
During the late 15th and early 16th centuries, Europe experienced the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Era, characterized by the maritime expeditions, globalization, mercantilism, colonialism and the expansion of Christianity. The Kingdom of Portugal, with its advanced nautical art, was a pioneer in establishing a colonial empire with the explorations of the Madeira (1419), the Azores (1427), the African coast (1434) and the sea route to India (1498). Between 1492 and 1502, the Kingdom of Castile explored America with Christopher Columbus and made the first circumnavigation of the world, begun by Ferdinand Magellan and completed by Juan Sebastián Elcano between 1519 and 1522.
In 1494, the kingdoms of Portugal and Castile signed the Treaty of Tordesillas to divide the lands "discovered and undiscovered" by both outside Europe. These explorations led to numerous naval expeditions in the Atlantic, Indian and Pacific Oceans and land excursions in the Americas, Asia, Africa and Australia until the end of the 19th century. The Spanish navigator and explorer Vicente Yáñez Pinzón was the first to land on Brazilian territory, reaching Cape Santo Agostinho in Pernambuco on January 26, 1500. Pedro Álvares Cabral, captain of a Portuguese expedition traveling to the Indies, arrived in Porto Seguro in Bahia on April 22 of the same year and claimed sovereignty over the territory, which he called the Ilha de Santa Cruz, for the Kingdom of Portugal. The French privateers were also prominent among the Europeans who visited Brazilian beaches from the southeast to the northeast from the beginning of the 16th century.
The natives At the beginning of the 15th century, between 2.5 and 3.5 million indigenous people, divided into four linguistic and cultural groups, lived in Brazil: Tupi, Jê, Arawak and Kalinago. Most of the tribes encountered by the Europeans on the coast belonged to the Tupi trunk, who had expelled the non-Tupi tribes to the hinterland. Overall, the tribes were traditional communities formed by individuals whose villages occupied a contiguous area, spoke the same language, had the same habits and a sense of unity. As it grew, each group divided into a new autonomous unit that became increasingly differentiated and hostile as it spread apart.
The tribes had a warrior chief, an ordinary man who was assigned command only in cases of war. There was also a leader for the religious ceremonies with great influence over the group known as the pajé and caraiba, who attended to the sick with medicinal herbs and magic. There were no slaves or dominant social strata and everyone worked equally to survive. The indigenous people had no written language, used rudimentary techniques to obtain their means of subsistence and the exploitation of natural resources was limited. Agricultural activity was carried out almost exclusively on forest land, where they cleared the fields with their stone axes and burned the land to grow cotton, yams, beans, corn, manioc, sweet potatoes, pumpkins, peppers, tobacco and other plants, as well as fruit trees such as cashews and pequi. Each group lived in permanent war against the others within its area of expansion, even with those from the same cultural background.
Pre-colonialism
Despite the discovery of the New World, Portuguese interests were focused on the lucrative spice trade with the East Indies. On February 16, 1504, the King of Portugal, Manuel I, donated the Captaincy of São João (now Fernando de Noronha) to Fernão de Loronha to explore brazilwood. The structures were limited to factories, temporary constructions where friendly relations were formed with the natives, whose permanence depended on the stability of these relations, enemy attacks and profits from trade.
They were simple fortifications staffed by a few men used mainly to store brazilwood and to supply the ships that arrived to collect it; all the workforce was formed by indigenous allies. Exploratory expeditions were sent by the navigators Gaspar de Lemos in 1501 and Gonçalo Coelho in 1503, who surveyed the Brazilian coastline and described its geographical features. The extraction of brazilwood was short-lived, as this type of tree was quickly exhausted and did not generate permanent settlements. Portugal's lack of interest in the American continent allowed other nations to visit the Brazilian coast, such as the English, Dutch, Spanish and French.
The relationship between the natives and the Europeans In the early decades, small settlements composed mainly of convicts, corsairs, smugglers, deserters and occupants of the small factories emerged on the Brazilian coast.The degraded who were sent in greater numbers after the implementation of the Hereditary Captaincies in 1534 were largely responsible for the adaptation of foreigners to the physical reality of Brazil. They exploited the land's natural resources, captured indigenous people to sell as slaves, adopted the natives' customs and diet and learned everything they could from them. Initially, the European conquerors perceived their relationship with the natives as a commercial alliance based on the barter practice, in which objects of limited value (knives, scythes, axes, glass necklaces, textiles and others) were exchanged for brazilwood, cotton and exotic species such as monkeys and parrots. The Portuguese practiced "cunhadismo", an indigenous custom used to incorporate strangers into their society, which consisted of forming a union between a native woman and a European man. It served as an effective and extensive way of recruiting workforce to cut and transport brazilwood to the factories and ships, hunt and gather food and capture prisoners. "Cunhadismo" was the basis of the miscegenation that formed the Brazilian population, allowing foreigners to form units apart from the villages, composed of multiple indigenous wives and their countless children. One of these groups was in the Captaincy of Bahia and was formed by Diogo Álvares Correia, known as Caramuru, and his large indigenous family.
Hereditary captaincies and colonialism
In 1534, Portugal implemented the system of Hereditary Captaincies to avoid possible invasions, especially from the French. Fourteen territories divided into 15 lots were distributed to 12 small noblemen, as many Portuguese wealthy men were not interested in the region, considering that the only source of wealth confirmed at that point was brazilwood, reserved for exploitation by the Crown. Four of the donatários never came to Brazil to take possession of their lands.
After the implementation of the Hereditary Captaincies, relations between indigenous peoples and settlers in the current state of Paraíba changed due to the conflicting interests and the intensification of the colonization process. The Portuguese were concerned with keeping an alliance with the tribes in order for them to join their battle against European enemies (the French, Dutch and Spanish) and other hostile indigenous peoples in the expansion of their frontiers (the Tapuia). Both the Portuguese and the French maintained friendly policies with the natives who occupied the regions of the current state of Paraíba, such as the Potiguara, inhabitants of the coast and the first to have contact with the colonizers, and the Tabajara, who left the hinterlands of the current Northeast region for the lands occupied along the Paraíba do Norte River.
During the process of conquest and colonization of Brazil by the Portuguese, the different indigenous ethno-linguistic groups such as the Tamoio, Tupiniquim, Aimoré and Goitacá were generally reduced to two large groups: the Tupi (considered tame) and the Tapuia (considered untamed). The relations of alliance or hostility between the native tribes and the foreigners also depended on their own objectives and interests linked to the dynamics of their social organizations. For both groups, the arrival of the Europeans brought incalculable damage such as epidemics, high mortality, mass enslavement, intensification of intertribal wars, slave labor and social and cultural disruption. As allies or enemies, the Europeans became part of the inter-tribal relations of the various Tupi groups, who associated with different groups (Portuguese, French, Dutch), according to circumstances and their interests. The Tupi language, also known as the "common language", was used by foreigners to communicate with the majority of natives on the Brazilian coast.
In geographical terms, the history of Paraíba includes the captaincies of Itamaracá and Rio Grande, part of the area that forms present-day Paraíba, and the captaincies of Pernambuco and Bahia, also decisive contributors to its formation.
Captaincy of Rio Grande
In November 1535, a fleet of ten ships with 900 men and over a hundred horses commanded by Aires da Cunha, a warrior experienced in the conquests of the Orient set sail from the Tagus for Brazil. João de Barros, Aires' partner, sent two of his sons to represent him on the expedition. The fleet first headed for the Captaincy of Pernambuco, where Duarte Coelho welcomed the explorers and provided them with information and interpreters, as well as a rowing boat to precede the squad and survey the coast.
The squad explored the coast with the goal of reaching the mouth of the Amazon River, probably in search of gold, abundant in the areas. After reaching Cape São Roque, the rowing boat provided by Duarte Coelho disappeared and the ship Capitania sank, killing Aires da Cunha. However, the remaining boats reached the estuary and landed on the Trindade Island. There they built a castle and established a colony which they named Nazareth. For about three years, they explored the surrounding lands in search of gold, sailing about two hundred and fifty leagues upriver and creating two more settlements.
However, the explorers failed to find gold and were constantly attacked by the Potiguara, which led them to return to Portugal. On the way, three ships were blown by contrary winds and ended up in the Antilles, where they were taken prisoner by the Spanish. Around 1550, João de Barros tried again to colonize his captaincy, arming a fleet with his two sons, but the Potiguara and the French offered fierce resistance. In 1554, Luís de Melo da Silva tried to explore the region with three ships, but he sank. Later, the government of Pernambuco used the abandoned areas of these captaincies to expand its territory, expelling the French from Maranhão, founding the city of Belém and attacking the English in the Amazon.
Captaincy of Itamaracá