The experiment had been premature. They wanted to colonize Brazil when the country was not yet perfectly known, albeit in the proximity of the coast, and even less the spirit of the natives towards the conquerors. Instead of constituting a center of colonization, well equipped and well equipped for any attempt at cultivation, and from there slowly radiating in every direction, the conquerors had placed themselves in many small centers, open to all offenses and destined, almost all of them, to succumb. Yet this experiment, if it can be considered a failure from a purely practical point of view, is nevertheless to be regarded as a good principle for the political formation of the Brazilian people. The almost independence from the Crown, recognized to the captaincy, and the privileges, even if destined to remain on paper, given to the colonists in respect of the concessionaries, they were all fruitful germs for the future. We will see in fact how in the Brazilians (including under this name Europeans and Creoles, Indians and Africans) a strong national sentiment was formed, before in Spanish America. The situation of the Brazilians, at the beginning of the colonization, was incomparably superior to that of the Hispanic-Americans. With the captaincy system, a class of colonists was immediately formed, a kind of agricultural and commercial bourgeoisie which, on the other hand, appeared very late in the Spanish colonies. Especially along the coasts and in the immediate hinterland, this new bourgeoisie, daring, intelligent, industrious, capable of resisting the greed of foreigners and the same oppressions of the metropolis, forma mentis and a purely Brazilian moral habit; this new bourgeoisie immediately took over and represented a very important part in American history, indeed from a colonial history it quickly made a national history. Finally, educated in the system of captaincy governed by a central power (as we will now see), she educated herself in that federalist conception of political life, which then triumphed and is the strength of modern Brazil.
Another very important element for the formation of the Brazilian nationality was the crossing of the Portuguese with the Indian woman: precursors of it, that Diogo Alvares, already mentioned, who went down in history with the name of Caramurú ; and the no less famous João Ramalho, another pioneer of European colonization in Brazil. In the footsteps of them, who had created vast families of mestizos (curibocas or mamelucos), joining the indigenous women, the later Portuguese colonists, who in general emigrated without families, entered into regular marriages with the Indians, very willing to join the whites to escape the kind of slavery in which they were kept in their respective tribes. Of course, this merger did not always occur, nor was it always peaceful. We have already seen how the life of the captaincy was made difficult by the hostility of the Indians; and if to the innate barbarism of these it is necessary to attribute the greater blame of the conflicts, it is also honest to recognize the cruelty and intolerance of the first colonizers. The ancient chroniclers tell how many Indians preferred suicide to captivity under the Portuguese: this before the catechesis and colonization of the Jesuits.
According to SOURCEMAKEUP, the bad luck of most of the captaincy, and the constant threat of the French, suggested to John III the idea of an administrative centralization, through the General Government of Brazil, which, decreed in 1548, was fully implemented the following year., with the sending of the first governor Tomaso de Souza (1549-1553). The headquarters of the Bay of All Saints was chosen as the seat of government, the more central than the others, bought back by the Crown for this purpose from the heirs of the concessionaire Pereira Coutinho; and there the City of the Savior was founded (corresponding to the upper part of today’s city of Bahia), which attracted the colonial nuclei already established on the beaches of the bay. With the governor came a major auditor, Pietro Borges, in charge of justice affairs (the judicial power, in the new system, was fully independent from the governor); a prosecutor, Antonio Cardoso de Barros (already mentioned as the concessionaire of Ceará), in charge of the collections on behalf of the Crown; and a major captain of the coast, Pietro Goes da Silveira, the concessionaire of Parahyba, in charge of military surveillance and defense of the coast. The central government not only did not damage the captains’ offices in their development, but, in a certain sense, favored and strengthened them: since, more guaranteed in their safety by the central forces, as well as by their own obligatory militia, they were better able to wait for the exploitation of wealth. natural, with varied experiences of cultivation. The captaincy of S. Vicente, in 1558, already had 6 engenhos sugar, which arose following the example of the aforementioned Giuseppe Adorno, and 600 colonists, as well as African slaves; while, on the plateau, the city of Piratininga had already had privileges from the concessionaire. No less prospered, even in the midst of painful events, the captaincy of Pernambuco, where the cultivation of cotton had begun, and where farmers, bricklayers, blacksmiths and carpenters found work. Other captains, after the creation of the central government, were gradually granted until almost the entire century. XVII: Paraguassú (1557); Rio de Janeiro (1567); Sergipe (1590); Grão-Pará (1615); Cabo Frio (1615); S. Pedro d’El-Rey (1620); Cumau (1620); Camuhá (1633); Cabo do Norte (1637); Marajó (1665); Parahyba do Sul (1674). Only in the century. XVIII, with the prevalence of the ideas of monarchical absolutism over the feudal system,
