Portugal Circa 1800: An Incredibly Crappy Country

Brazilians I know have an animosity towards Portugal that I've never understood. It comes out only every once in a while, especially during the World Cup. They get riled up and say things like "That lousy Portugal never invested even a cent in Brazil!"

Which stirs a variety of thoughts. First of all, why would they? Brazil was a colony and Portugal was a tiny country that desperately needed cash to defend itself and stay afloat. Who could realistically expect Portugal to make philanthropic investments in Brazil if Brazil existed as a colony only for the benefit of Portugal? And on the other hand, aren't many of the people complaining the descendants of these same Portuguese? It's like chimps blaming bonobos (to be clear, I am not claiming that Brazilian are similar to chimps) for things not having turned out the way they wanted. And finally, you don't see most sane Americans still grumbling about the British, despite their repression of the American colonists. Does it really make sense to still hate Portugal for Brazil's underdevelopment?

Yes, it probably does. I had no idea how thoroughly crappy of a country Portugal actually was in the colonial era until I picked up a recent book called "1808", a Brazilian history book by journalist Laurentino Gomes about the year in which the Portuguese crown fled Europe under threat from Napoleon and ruled its Empire from Brazil for a spell. Boy, was Portugal crappy! Some relevant points from the book:

--Portugal circa 1800 was the most Catholic country in Europe. 10% of the country's population "belonged to religious orders or remained dependent on monastic institutions in some form". The incredibly hegemony of Catholicism in the country had a number of ill events, such as...
--Portugal was incredibly averse to science and medicine. In fact, the man who was to be prince at the time (1808), the older brother of the prince Dom João, died from smallpox. His mother did not have him vaccinated due to the believe that medicine should not intervene in matters to be decided by god.
--Portugal roundly rejected freedom of thought and/or speech. It was the last country to continue with the inquisition, including barbaric executions of doubters of church doctrine (including witches, Moors, Jews, and the like).
--The country was profoundly illiterate and uneducated. It produced no great thinkers during the time of the American and French revolutions (though the inquisition did kick some writers and poets out). However, the same country had produced innovations in navigation and great adventurers 300 years prior, indicating that it was the country's intellectual climate as dictated by church and state, and not its population, that was at fault.

If it managed its own people in Portugal so badly, you can only imagine the situation in Brazil. The colony was used for the extraction of mineral goods along with tobacco, sugar and slaves, all of which was done so as to bring in as much revenue up front as possible, which did not encourage any innovation of any type. Brazil was divided up into a number of sub-colonies (captaincies), and the governor of Brazil was instructed to avoid allowing each of them to speak to each other. Books were frowned upon and publishing was impossible. Literacy rates were in the single digits. Foreigners, including German explorer Alexander von Humboldt, were looked on with suspicion and official communication to governors warned them to beware anyone that might "excite" the population. The major Brazilian newspaper of the time, the Correio Braziliense, was published from London since it could not be published in Brazil. Furthermore, the emperor bought off the publisher with a stipend in order to guarantee good press. Expressing ideas in public and even meeting in public was an offense that could result in one being shipped off to Africa. A Literary Society was formed in Rio in the late 1700's with official contributions. But soon after it was broken up when suspicion arose that the group, which largely discussed science and literature, was plotting a coup against the monarchy. Several of the suspects (society lawyers and doctors and the like) spent years in prison for participating in the book club.

In sum, the organization of Brazil pretty much revolved around suppressing communication and new ideas, and the compounded total crappiness of the existence of the mainstream Portuguese and Brazilian populations certainly outshone their British and American counterparts. I will no longer question Brazilians when they complain about the bad influence of the Portuguese in Brazil.