Forestry in Brazil is almost a dirty work. It brings to mind slash and burn types destroying the Amazon rain forest and by extension contributing to climate change. This image may trace back all the way back to the founding of Brazil around 1600. So slip on your smoking jacket, fill your pipe, take your first sip of your adult beverage, and sit back in your most comfortable chair. Welcome to todays offering from The Philatelist.
This stamp series recognizes the 400th anniversary of the voyage of Martim Afonso de Souza who sailed from Portugal with 400 to get a more formal colony going in the previously discovered and claimed for Portugal territory of Brazil. The need to get things more formal was not a gold rush but a textile dye rush. The name Brazil should of course have given that away if I was more literate. The stamp issue shows it’s modernity in one of the stamp showing a native guide that helped the Portuguese. This was before political correctness meant that the native counts more than the explorer. A student today will hear more about Sacagawea than Lewis and Clark. She was the native wife of the cook of that expedition. I guess the discussion of indigenous people’s great explorers would be embarrassingly short. Such is life.
The stamp today is issue A102, a 200 Reis stamp issued by independent Brazil on June 3rd, 1932. It was a 5 stamp issue in various denominations displaying various aspects of the 1632 expedition. According to the Scott catalog, the stamp is worth 40 cents used.
Brazil was spotted by Portuguese explorers quite early but in 1600 the Portuguese landed and claimed the area for the King of Portugal. The first Portuguese did not establish colonial settlements but lived with and integrated with the indigenous people. This was a persistent problem for Portugal and one they eventually enlisted the Jesuits to help solve. See https://the-philatelist.com/2017/11/10/remember-the-divine-duty-of-empire/ . There was however a rush on for a dye to use in textiles. Sappanwood is common in South East Asia and was imported very expensively to Europe to make red and pink dyes. When a similar brazilwood tree was discovered by the Portuguese there was a rush on. Not all the participants in the rush were Portuguese, so the decision was taken to send a new expedition to formalize settlement and the colony. The work extracting the brazilwood extract was done by natives who then traded it to the Portuguese in exchange for things like axes and mirrors.
Martim Afonso de Souza had 400 men and set up shop in what now is Sao Paulo. He became the first colonial governor and Brazil became the name of the colony after the tree. De Souza already held the Portuguese title of Fidalgo, a great title that means literally the Son of Someone. Bet that made him stand out. The expedition ran out of steam at the river Plate, when they suffered a ship wreck and so Argentina is not a province of Brazil. It made a difference, notice the Portuguese colonies stuck together while Spanish ones splintered. Imagine all Latin America one country, a super power or giant ….hole? Perhaps both? Hmmm.
Fidalgo de Souza was not finished going far and wide for Portugal. He later went to India where he founded the city of Diu. He was named again colonial governor of Portuguese India. and the fort at Dui fought off successfully Persians and Mughals, Arabs and even Dutch. Diu eventually declined in importance relative to Bombay but the Portuguese managed to hold on to it until 1961. India then attacked it, can’t have an Indian Macau.
Forestry is still big business in Brazil but not the brazil tree, which is endangered. Now it is mainly pine. Brazil still has ample forests and most forestry is now done with sustainability in mind.
Well my drink is empty and I will pour another to toast the colonial expedition. No more of those, except maybe to Mars. Come again tomorrow for another story that can be learned from stamp collecting.