Augusto Ivan de Freitas Pinheiro and Eliane Canedo
Research and contributions: Cristiane Titoneli
Open ports
A new phase was opening up for the old entrepot, closely watched and tightly controlled by the Portuguese Crown.
Appointed the seat of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and Algarves in 1763, the Very Loyal and Heroic City of São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro was to open its ports to friendly nations with the arrival of the Portuguese Courts. Its shelves adorned with the precious volumes of the Royal Portuguese Library (Biblioteca Real Portuguesa), its economy was boosted by setting up its national bank: the Banco do Brasil; its communications were enriched by the presence of the Royal Press (Imprensa Régia) and its science was enhanced by the Royal Botanical Garden (Real Jardim Botânico); its military clout was strengthened through setting up a gunpowder factory, followed by the Royal Military Academy (Real Academia Militar) in 1810, together with other educational institutions such as the Royal Fine Arts Academy (Real Academia de Belas Artes) in 1816.
The impacts on the city were vast. As estimated by Luccock,23 it had some 80,000 inhabitants by 1815, of whom 16,000 were foreigners. Listed by this merchant and writer by profession, its many different classes included 700 priests, 500 lawyers, 200 medical practitioners and 12,000 enslaved workers.
In addition to the immediate effects on the private lives of the local cariocas – some of whom were forced to hand over their homes to Portuguese aristocrats – the city expanded out towards all the areas surrounding its original urban core, even those offering poor housing conditions alongside lagoons, mangrove swamps and floodlands, as well as the slopes of the hills around the original heart of the city.
As the Saúde district slowly absorbed the neighboring areas of Gamboa, Santo Cristo and São Diogo (still very remote and deserted), it slotted into the city’s fabric and its urban facilities, attracting residents to its hillsides as wooden jetties multiplied along its small beaches and inlets. According to Abreu,24 the earliest record of a wooden jetty for weighing and shipping sugar out of Rio de Janeiro dates back to 1612.
Close to the Outeiro de São Sebastião hillock (later the Morro do Castelo) and the Ermida de São José hermitage, this land had been transferred by City Hall through an exclusive grant to Aleixo Manoel, who owned this land running along the beach. It was then up to him to build a ‘weighing palace’ (paço de ver o peso) there at his own expense. Despite its pompous title, this weigh-house was far from a palace – in fact, it was no more than a rough shed that charged fees for weighing and conveying all the wares loaded onto the ships.
In fact, the wooden jetties were ramshackle wooden buildings connecting ships to the wharf. They consisted of walled and roofed weighing jetties, with pier running out into the water that could be accessed by larger vessels needing more draft.
Gradually shifting away from the old Port in the Largo do Paço square, the docklands moved firmly into the areas between the Saúde and São Diogo districts, where goods were loaded and offloaded, some produced locally, others arriving from Europe. Notable among them was coffee, known as the black gold of Brazil. With this new wealth, storage demands also rose. As a result, the tumbledown piers jutting out into the Guanabara Bay were replaced by wrought iron structures shipped in mainly from the UK, already deeply entwined in the dynamic of the Industrial Revolution.