Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

The Undeclared War of 1773-1777: Climax of Luso-Spanish Platine Rivalry

1961; Duke University Press; Volume: 41; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-41.1.55

1527-1900

Dauril Alden,

Colonialism, slavery, and trade

HROUGHOUT THE sixteenth and most of the seventeenth centuries, a vast no-man's-land of fertile soils and temperate climates existed in eastern South America beyond the limits of Portuguese or Spanish settlements. Bounded on the east by the Atlantic Ocean, on the north by the Portuguese captaincy of Sao Paulo, on the south by the estuary of the Rio de la Plata, and on the west by the UruguLay and Parana rivers, this territory was claimed by both Spain and Portugal in accordance with the terms of the Treaty of Tordesillas. But during the first half of the colonial period neither power supported its claim by colonization, for Portugal was preoccupied with the development of her tropical sugar aind dyewood lands to the north, while Spain was primarily concerned with the exploitation of the metaliferous Andes and with the establishmenit of tributary agricultural colonies in the northwestern Platine provinces and in interior Paraguay. It was from Paraguay that Spanish Jesuits twice tried to extend their mission system into this neglected area. Their first reductions, founded during the 1620's and 1630's in the provinces of Guaira (today central Sao Paulo and Parana) and Tape (in the heart of modern Rio Grande do Sul) were destroyed by slave-hunting Paulistas before they could become securely established. Discouraged, the Black Robes retreated across the Uruguay, where with Indian help they won a decisive victory over the bandeirantes in the battle of Mborore (March, 1641). Nearly fifty years later the Fathers returned to Rio Grande to found the famous Seveli Missions, situated east of the great arc of