On Red Gold

This is a remarkably comprehensive book, it isn’t hard to be impressed by the depth of Hemming’s research. It is also a narrative history, which is well and good, but Hemming’s analysis isn’t nearly as strong as it could be. The book is worth reading for those looking to dive straight into the early history of colonial Brazil in a way that centers on indigenous peoples, but it’s also easy to feel overwhelmed by the depth of content here.

In broad strokes, Hemming’s narrative goes something like this. In 1500, Portuguese voyagers who were supposed to sail around the cape of South Africa accidentally voyaged a bit too far to the west and, from there, sighted the coast of Brazil. Given that, it is a wonder that Brazil isn’t actually the first place that Europeans “discovered.” Upon arriving on land, this band of Portuguese voyagers immediately made contact with Tupi Indians. While some Portuguese sailors wrote accounts of their experiences, the bulk of Portuguese colonists were neither impressed nor sympathetic by Brazil’s indigenous peoples, instead treating them derisively. Because of this, most of what we know about Brazilian Indians in the sixteenth century were actually the result of French voyagers, who saw indigenous peoples in more sympathetic terms (although this plays into some myths that the French were much more humanistic towards indigenous peoples—they could be as brutal as any other European group).

In the 17th century, few Portuguese took any interest in indigenous peoples at all, and they instead opted to create insular (in European terms) communities. This is not to say that coastal Brazilian cities were not cosmopolitan—peoples from all over Europe blended together there, but they did exclude indigenous peoples and African slaves. During this period, most sustained contacts between native Brazilians and Europeans were the result of a sort of uncouth pioneering by what might be termed “lower-class” Portuguese people (this has parallels to the eighteenth and nineteenth century United States). Rather than treating indigenous peoples as equals, they opted to murder and enslave indigenous peoples. At the same time, colonial officials waged full-scale campaigns against Brazilian Indians, ultimately culminating in large-scale Indian Wars in northeastern Brazil during the seventeenth century.

In contrast to settlers and colonial officials, many Jesuits made Brazil their home, and they treated indigenous peoples with far more respect, although they had ulterior motives. While they did come to learn about and understand Brazilian Indians in a way that few other Europeans wanted to, it was because they believed that they only way to transform Brazil’s indigenous peoples was to know them. The end goal, then, was conversion. Jesuits, alongside colonial officials, pushed deep into the Amazon and southern Brazilian, along the border with what is now Paraguay. Accompanying the spread of Europeans in Brazil, disease absolutely devastated the lives of Brazil’s Indians. Hemming reassures us that neither missionaries nor colonial officials wanted to kill of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, as missionaries wanted to convert souls while colonial officials sought a source of free labor (hence, enslaving indigenous peoples). Yet, disease wiped out the bulk of Brazil’s pre-Columbian population.

Hemming’s stopping point is with the expulsion of the Jesuits from Brazil, an event examined a bit in Voltaire’s Candide and many other works. By the mid-eighteenth century, Hemming finds that Brazil’s Indians didn’t stand a chance, and the course of Brazil’s history could no longer be examined with native peoples as the main subject. Instead, the driving force of Brazilian history after 1760 can be found almost exclusively in coastal cities, which flourished (thanks in large part due to the role of African slavery). Most indigenous peoples who lived in the coast then lived the remainder of their lives deep in the Amazon.

This is a really big story, and Hemming tells it in epic terms. My main critiques are (1) that Hemming doesn’t discuss the role of African slavery here enough—of course, indigenous slavery is discussed heavily and the main subject of the book is indigenous people, but Brazil cannot be understood without making sense of the role of Africa; and (2) I think that Hemming gives far too much weight to the role of disease. It’s in his discussion of disease that the book really shows its age. While earlier historians have argued that disease alone effectively (nearly) wiped out the indigenous peoples of the Americas, more recent generations have qualified this framework a bit. While disease is undoubtedly important, it was rare for disease alone to wipe out so many people—instead, the impact of disease must be understood within the context of colonization. Many likely would have recovered from European diseases (especially smallpox), if they also didn’t face the dislocations that came with colonization, whether they be forced migration or exile and the accompanying homelessness, the role of famine instigated by colonial upheaval, and active violence by European colonizers. I don’t want to say that it’s a lie that disease killed the indigenous peoples of the Americas, but emphasizing the role of disease to such a high degree allows readers to put blinders on to the scale of brutality inflicted by colonization while allowing them to claim that “it wasn’t wholly the fault of Europeans, they couldn’t control the disease.”

To get the full depth of this text, it’s important for other readers to take time with this text—it isn’t an easy one to gut and is written in a way where it must be gradually consumed. Yet, it’s a good starting-point for those interested in Brazilian history.