A transformation began in Brazil during the period from 1850 to 1914, and this book examines, as one theme within that story, the relationship of the British to the onset of this revolutionary process. By 1914 Brazil had done no more than begin to modernize; but it had begun. And perhaps the effort needed to start along this way was greater than that required to continue, for I am not merely speaking of economic development, but of modifications in the social structure and alterations of individual beliefs and attitudes, that is, of changes which have facilitated further changes down to our own day.

The British were among the major actors in this drama. They contributed directly to the spread of coffee culture which disrupted the ancient economic patterns of Brazil. They also provided much of the ‘infrastructure’ and some of the capital for industrialization. They wrought major changes in Brazil's labor system and were among the agents of diffusion for a more ‘Western’, European world-view and societal structure. But Britishers also hindered Brazilian development, and it is historically important to perceive the ambiguity of their role on the Brazilian stage. Brazil's development—and lack of development—is a complex story and neither a ‘devil theory’ nor a panegyric will satisfy its exigencies.

Scholars of many disciplines are today concerned with the kind of change which I here describe in Brazil, and it is not my purpose to add to the extant literature on the theory of modernization. I only say what so many already know: that this process is not an easy one to foster.

One of the most significant early landmarks on the road toward a modern society in Brazil was the end of Negro slavery in 1888. Although, seen in the context of world history, slavery may be considered a part of the mercantile expansion of Europe characteristic of the modern era, in Brazil few institutions were more clearly a part of the traditional order. It was the most eloquent manifestation of the belief in a man's immutable social position and it was the antithesis of individualism. It frustrated attempts to encourage immigration and acted as a brake on economic development. On the other hand, the abolition of slavery strengthened the modernizing, European-oriented cities that had worked for it and weakened the backward countryside. It was the coup de grâce for the sugar zone of the northeast and the old coffee regions of the Paraíba valley, and served to shift power definitely into the hands of those who controlled the new coffee area of São Paulo state. It seriously weakened the monarchy, which until then had been staunchly defended by the slave-owners: the abolitionists had pointedly referred to ‘the slave quarter barons … the buttress of throne and pillory’. Abolition contributed powerfully to economic, social, and political change in Brazil.

It was also the product of beginning change. The two sources of abolitionist sentiment were to be the coffee planters of São Paulo, dissatisfied with the dwindling supply of slaves, and the new groups on the rise within the cities that saw slavery as a threat to their world-view. The planters had to bring under cultivation ever vaster stretches of good coffee land.

Brazil was a backward country in 1850. To make this point, it is worthwhile to contrast it with a society which was modernizing at that time. There has sometimes been a tendency to draw precise lines to separate those nations that are modern from those that are not. Whether these measurements are based on the degree of urbanization or on per capita income or on the number of automobiles, they are all misleading in that they focus attention on secondary factors. It is the direction and rate of change that must be examined and not the establishment of particular benchmarks. Therefore, a look at Britain in 1850, no matter how brief, and perforce superficial, will here be useful; for it is not only by contrast with modern nations of the twentieth century that Brazil's condition at that time must be evaluated. In addition, even a hasty glance at Britain will make clear that the British presence in Brazil was not an isolated instance of British expansion, but part of a larger trend in that nation's history.

The steadily increasing flow of innovation—which goes hand-in-hand with rapid economic growth and the steady process of capital formation—is an identifying mark of modern economies. It is especially by this standard that Britain may be considered modernizing over a hundred years ago. Thus, although by 1850 the adoption of mechanical means of production had not yet become common in any but a small number of industries, the goal of mechanization had been accepted and rapid strides toward it were being taken.

In Brazil cities were the beachheads of the modern world. Urban groups wished to approximate the models created in Europe in their economic organization, social structure, attitudes, and style of life. Brazilians must now eat imported foods, cure their sickness with patent medicines, perfume themselves with new scents, fill their homes with strange furniture and novel sanitary devices, light their houses without oil, go into town with greater speed and return to garden suburbs, dress in the foreign mode, and adopt new forms of recreation, all because Europeans were doing it. And even when Paris was the ideal, it was the British who supplied the wherewithal to imitate it. Aspiring to enter the ranks of modernity, the Brazilian urban classes proudly adopted a new way of life as if holding up a coat of arms largely designed by the British and emblazoned with British devices.

One of the most striking aspects of the Brazilian import structure was the degree to which these urban groups, formed by the beginning processes of modernization, demanded in their cities the products that were available overseas. Few things are more intimately a part of one's culture than one's diet; yet urban, mobile Brazilians were led by their fascination with modernity to use imported foodstuffs. British foods were a common item on the shelves of the nineteenth-century merchant in Rio de Janeiro. At first, dairy products headed the list. One importer received 500 barrels of butter from England during one month in 1850, and English butter continued to be advertised in the Rio de Janeiro papers until the 1870s.

The idea of the mobile individual set free from the immutable ties of the traditional society was further strengthened by new religious doctrines. Roman Catholicism had been the social cement of the outgoing order, and the message of the Protestant missionary worked to loosen its bonds. As one observer noted in 1856, ‘civil and social relationships would be broken up’ if the missionary were successful. Protestantism in Brazil did not particularly contribute, as it may have done in other times and places, to the growth of capitalism through new ideas on interest and usury, novel views of vocation, or the separation of business life from religious belief. But Protestantism, as it was preached in Brazil, emphasized individualism at the very time other currents were moving in the same direction. This was its major significance.

In addition, Protestantism contributed to the progressive secularization of society so essential to the process of modern change. The very presence of Protestants introduced an element into the social system which was not harmonious with the view of religion as the bulwark of the social order. The latter was seriously weakened once it could no longer rely on a universally shared belief in a faith which sanctioned that order. As we have noted, the idea of a secular state grew steadily in Brazil, culminating in the republic organized in 1889. Protestantism was a small but significant force toward this transformation.

Protestantism was spread in Brazil by missionaries of various nationalities. The most important numerically were the Americans, but not only were the British the first to begin missionary activity there, but they greatly influenced its direction and emphases.

The myriad activities and interests of the Juzgado clearly indicate its importance and influence within the economic and social structure of Mexico. As the sole banking institution in the country, the fiscal policy and lending operations undertaken by the various Judges and officials provided a unique source of finance for any aspiring merchant or impecunious landowner. To the latter, the Church must indeed have seemed benevolent, for the low interest charges and easy terms imposed by the clergy contrasted sharply with the exorbitant demands of the capitalist money-lenders, the notorious agiotistas. The Juzgado was not in the modern sense a profit-making enterprise. It owed its existence partly to the desire of the wealthy, for religious or other reasons, to bequeath money for the benefit of the Church or their descendants, and partly to the constant need of the property-owning classes to borrow money. Having achieved a substantial revenue the success of its operations was not determined by any preconceived policy or by the great spiritual influence of the Church, but by the public demand for financial assistance.

It was for this reason that the Juzgado, and to a lesser extent the regular orders, were allowed by the Spanish monarchy to achieve such extensive control of real estate by means of mortgages. The Crown had in effect no means of preventing this, for the public demand had to be met.

In comparison with other clerical corporations such as the convents and monasteries, the position of the Juzgado within independent Mexico was relatively secure and no direct attempt at abolition was made even when the liberals were in full control of the national government. This was mainly due to the nature of the institution and its activities for, although a unit within the corporate body of the Church, the Juzgado was in most respects a secular organization. Its employees, with the important exception of the Judge, were rarely ordained members of the Church, and its daily business was almost exclusively concerned, either directly or indirectly, with commercial and financial matters. Furthermore, even though its capital and revenue were considered to be sacred funds, the Fiscal rightly pointed out in 1813 that the many capellanías managed by the officials were not really ecclesiastical benefices, but were rather trust funds which the wealthy had established for the use of their descendants. Hence the Church as a whole in fact received little financial return from the capellanías, for the only obligation laid upon the recipient, to whom the net income was paid, was to say a certain number of masses each year for the soul of his benefactor. The capellanes had to be ordained but they were not required to perform any religious or spiritual exercise which brought material benefit to the Church. In many cases they became clerics only in order to qualify for a benefice.

The activities and business undertaken and conducted by the employees described in the previous chapter involved and were dependent upon the revenue of the Juzgado, which resulted mainly from the three sources mentioned in the title of the institution, namely wills, capellanías, and pious works. To some extent these three sources overlap, for benefices and pious works were usually established by will. Indeed, income from legacies was throughout the colonial period a most important branch of ecclesiastical finance and bequests of enormous amounts were made. It seems probable that almost every person who was financially able to do so did leave some form of legacy to a clerical corporation. The administration of the majority of these donations was entrusted to the Juzgado.

The most common form of bequests were the capellanía and the pious work. The latter requires little comment. Many people left funds or property, the income from which was to be devoted to a pious work. For example, in the year 1796 Juan Acosta left 200,000 pesos to the Church and this sum was to be invested to yield an annual income of 8,000 pesos. Half of the income was to be devoted each year to the establishment of a capellanía, and the other half was to be used for the dowry of a novice wishing to take the final vows. Most of the charitable institutions managed by the clergy were supported by monetary gifts and legacies, and money was often left towards the maintenance of an orphanage or hospital.

The amounts invested by the ecclesiastical corporations are difficult to ascertain. The examples of loans given in the preceding chapters are only a few of the many thousands contained in the Church records which clearly reveal that the total capital invested by way of personal loans amounted to several millions of pesos. Numerous calculations have been made of the total wealth of the Church in Mexico but most of these estimates are unreliable because of bias, and none seems to have been based on primary sources. Cuevas has indicated the inaccuracies of those most frequently quoted. For example, with regard to Alamán, who stated that the Church owned at least half the real estate in the country, Cuevas points out that according to Alamán's own statistics, the total capital value of real estate was in the region of 4,000 million pesos and that no one had dared to say that the clergy owned 2,000 million pesos worth of land. Such an estimate was clearly incorrect. Again the estimates made by the liberal Mora come under Cuevas's scrutiny. He rightly notes several basic errors, for example Mora calculated the tithe revenue on the basis of the 1829 returns and ignored the fact that since the 1833 law, the yield had greatly decreased. He also ignores the fact that more than half the tithe product was paid to the civil authorities.

Each diocese had its own Juzgado, which was generally located in the episcopal palace. The one in the archbishopric occupied several rooms on the ground floor and in the year 1838 its director, Dr D. Felipe Osores, wrote to the chapter to complain of the lack of space and the need of an additional room. He explained the inconveniences of the present accommodation and pointed out the obvious dangers of keeping the money chests in the same room to which the public were daily admitted for the conduct of their business. He emphasized that because most of the coinage received was in copper, four large chests at least were needed, and these filled every spare corner at one end of the room. The other end was used to receive and count the money and there was hardly space for the table. Hence because the public seemed to see nothing but overflowing money chests there was a general misconception about the wealth of the Juzgado. He then recalled that only recently thieves had attempted to open the doors with skeleton keys, probably encouraged by the mistaken belief that the chests contained great amounts. Moreover, the attempt had been made in broad daylight between seven and eight in the morning, and according to the only porter in the building the thieves had had the effrontery to return to measure the locks on the doors.

Ecclesiastical wealth in Mexico became the subject of bitter controversy within a few years of the declaration of independence in 1821. Although both contemporary and recent historians have tried to estimate the total value of clerical holdings of property and capital, and have written much about the effects of so much wealth being owned by one institution, nevertheless, to my knowledge, no detailed study has been made of the way in which the ecclesiastical corporations were able to accumulate their wealth, nor what they did with it once it had reached the coffers of the Church. It is well known, for example, that the Church acted as a type of lending bank, but almost no accurate information has been published concerning the terms of the loan contracts, or the organization responsible for lending the money. Similarly, it is known that the Church gathered tithes, but little is known of the exact way in which the tithe collection system was operated in the nineteenth century. Again, it is agreed that the regular clergy owned much of the urban property in the country, but no details are available of the rental contracts and terms demanded by the Church. Finally, many writers on clerical affairs have mentioned the loans which the Church gave to various independent governments, but no one has examined the way in which such loans were organized, nor made an accurate evaluation of the frequent protestations of the Church that it could not afford to meet the enormous financial demands made upon it by the State.

The person who established a capellanía did so in the hope and expectation that it would endure perpetually, for the purpose of the benefice was that the principal would provide an income to enable a cleric to say a stipulated number of masses each year for the soul of the founder. Although the capellanía would die, the monetary fund providing the income would endure, and, therefore, a succession of capellanes would continue in perpetuity to pray for their benefactor. The pious works were likewise intended to provide a continuous source of income with which to carry out the desired charity. As the Church was the only institution which could be considered honest, permanent and perpetual, the trusteeship of these foundations was inevitably given to it, and within the Church the Juzgado was the specific organization charged with the management of the finances involved. Therefore, the nature of the revenue which the Juzgado received caused it to act as a type of investment company or bank.

The other ecclesiastical corporations, notably the convents, also received large sums in the form of legacies and other sources of revenue, for example, alms and dowries yielded considerable amounts, particularly in the colonial period. One of the ways chosen by the convents for utilizing their surplus income and for safeguarding their future needs was investment at interest.

The method adopted by the Juzgado for safely investing the capital and acquiring the necessary interest on it was to extend loans at interest to any person who could offer sufficient security to guarantee the loan.