ColonialRiodeJaneirothroughtheeyesoftravelers

The colonial period was the age of travelers. The discovery of a new world was contemporary with the intellectual renewal taking place in a Renaissance, reformist Europe, one crossed by religious conflicts. With the fame of a paradisiacal city and the utopian prospect of a “paradise on earth,” Rio was visited by dozens of foreign narrators, who highlighted both its beauty and its inequalities. This interest was also driven by the exotic aspect foreigners attributed to our territory.

Image description: This is a colored engraving depicting a historical scene. On the left side, we see a black man carrying a large bucket on his head. In the center, there is an individual dressed in colonial clothing, including a triangular hat and olive-green trousers, holding a pointed object. Behind him, another black man, also dressed in colonial clothing, walks with a staff in his hands. On the right, a third black man carries a large quantity of objects on his head. In the background, there is a white building with a brown roof, possibly a house or public building. The landscape in the background features mountains and a clear sky. At the bottom of the image, it reads "A PEDLAR AND HIS SLAVE."

Already in the 16th century, the accounts of Jesuits who came with the Society of Jesus to collaborate on the Portuguese Crown's catechization process provided the first impressions of this space of exuberant nature. French Catholics and Protestants, who took part in the campaigns fighting against the Portuguese around Guanabara Bay, also recorded the – always superlative – characteristics of the Rio de Janeiro landscape.

José de Anchieta, André Thévin, and Jean de Léry were among the first to give literary accounts of the city. They highlighted, in equal measure, the region's waters and pleasant climate, its landscape full of hills and forests, and the dangers, both natural and posed by the local population, along with its oscillation between welcoming and waging war against the Portuguese and French invaders.

Although the Portuguese government was increasingly hostile to the presence of foreigners in the colony, during the 18th century, through the strong commercial and geopolitical alignment between Portugal and England, we had a wave of English travelers who landed in the city of Rio and described some of its aspects.

Aeneas Anderson did as his predecessors had done, opening his 1795 account with adjectives about the view before him: charming, majestic, a "vision of elegance, wealth and beauty." Countering the idea of the Portuguese "sower," in the words of Sérgio Buarque de Holanda when referring to Rio's chaotic urbanization, Anderson said that its central streets were "regular and uniform, crossing at right angles." He further praised the city's active trade at that time and, surprisingly, remarked on the notable aspect of its cleanliness.

Joseph Banks also highlighted the exuberance of the city's fauna and flora and offered a less sympathetic view of Rio. He described its population in 1768 as follows: "they are Portuguese, blacks, Indians, aborigines of the region," and noted that the majority were enslaved people (17 for every white person).

Image description: This is a colored engraving by T. Hunt, dated 1822, depicting criminals carrying provisions to prison. The image shows a stone building with arched windows and numbered doors. In front of the building, four men are being led by a uniformed officer. The criminals are carrying a red crate and a wooden barrel. The officer, wearing a tall hat and blue uniform, holds a baton. The background features a clear sky with a few clouds.

John Barrow, the most meticulous of the Englishmen in his accounts of the city, landed in Rio in 1792 and produced literarily rich descriptions of the entrance to Guanabara Bay and other aspects of the cariocas. Regarding the occupation of the site, he acknowledged a merit in Portuguese colonization: “If the Portuguese of Rio have done little to make the most of nature, they at least have some claim to the merit of not having disfigured it much.” Barrow also already pointed to the city's social inequality and violence, noting that the local government assigned guards to accompany foreigners in order to “protect them from the thefts and insults perpetrated by the blacks or vagrants who might be lying in wait.”

Image description: This is a black-and-white print. In the image, we see three human figures arranged in a simple setting. The figure furthest to the left is standing, wearing an apron and a hat. This figure is interacting with the second figure, who is seated and appears to be receiving something from the first figure's hands. The third figure is also seated, but is covering their face with their hands, possibly as a sign of sadness or reflection. All of them are on a flat surface, with no additional details in the background.

Still during the colonial period, one of the most important texts showing the day-to-day life of Rio de Janeiro is by the English painter, illustrator, and writer Maria Graham, who also traveled through the city and the country in the early years of the 1820s. Graham, who was likewise dazzled by a city described as "the most enchanting scene that imagination can conceive," witnessed the urban transformations set off by the presence of the Portuguese court. Living in a house in Catete, she described the city's habits regarding food and leisure and recorded countless events, such as bullfights in São Cristóvão, washerwomen at the Carioca river in Laranjeiras, walks around the Rodrigo de Freitas lagoon and Jardim Botânico, operas at the Real Teatro de São João (whose site is occupied today by the Teatro João Caetano), balls and dinners in private homes, visits to the Glória hill, and interactions with the urban enslaved people who traded in the streets. Graham described Rio as "a city more European than Bahia or Pernambuco" and, at the same time, did not spare expressions of horror during a visit to the Cais do Valongo.

Another foreign author who described the daily life of Rio in detail was the Frenchwoman Adèle Toussaint-Samsom, who lived in the city for twelve years, between the 1850s and 1870s. A writer raised in a family of artists, she married the French dancer of Brazilian origin Jules Toussaint, who went on to become dance teacher to the imperial family. Her account was published in excerpts in Figaro, in France, and in the quintessentially Rio-based Jornal do Comércio, coming out in book form in 1891. In the pages of these memoirs, Adèle refused to stereotype the city in the fashion of exotic travel accounts, and provided an accurate portrait of everyday life in Rio at the time. Her narrative moves through a sober description of nature and its already famous mountains and the popular markets downtown -- with a spectacle of fruits and vegetables, amid "parrots of every kind, armadillos, monkeys, marmosets, turkeys, and birds of every plumage." She sang the praises of the French atmosphere of Rua do Ouvidor, lived through the yellow fever epidemic of 1849, and described in minute -- and racist -- detail the enslaved women who worked for hire known as "negras de Mina" -- whose prejudiced tone nonetheless did not fail to point out the absurdities of everyday life under slavery and her own outrage at the local situation.

Image description: This is a colored print depicting a shoemaker's shop. The image shows several people working around a large central counter. On the left, a woman holds a baby while another person sits nearby, apparently watching. In the center, a man sits using tools to work with leather. On the right, two men are seated, also engaged in activities related to shoemaking. The background features shelves full of hanging shoes. In the foreground, there are dried plants and flowers. Below the image is written "BOUTIQUE DE CORDONNIER".

Owner of a style that placed her close to the romantic period (and genre) she lived in, after a long journey that began at three in the morning to Corcovado, Adèle summed up what she saw at the end of the trip like this: "I could somewhat imagine the splendid view that awaited me at such a height, but I could not have foreseen the profound emotion I would feel at the sight of nature emerging virgin from the hands of God."

While most travelers' accounts of Rio did not necessarily amount to a literature about the city, their writings provided themes for the first generations of local writers. This is the case with recurring subjects in the first phase of Brazilian Romanticism, such as nature, exoticism, grandiloquence, and slavery. In the context of the country becoming independent from Portugal starting in 1822 and needing to find its own voice in a national literary project, the traveling writers were an inexhaustible source of references for the literary and publishing circles that would emerge in the 19th century – and which would, in fact, give rise to a Brazilian and carioca literature.