Rio de Janeiro

The city of Rio de Janeiro was founded by the Portuguese in 1565, and in 1567 was relocated to a hill in the Guanabara Bay. At the beginning of the seventeenth century port activities, based on slave labor, took place along the coastline close to the base of the hill, where sugar, produced in the mouth of the bay, was transported.

An urban center of regional importance during the seventeenth century, Rio experienced large economic growth in the following century thanks to mining in the region of Minas Gerais. Portuguese ships frequently visited exporting gold and diamonds, and receiving foodstuffs, fabrics, and slaves, the port of Rio. When Rio became the seat of the vice-kingdom of Brazil in 1763, its new political-administrative role helped offset the declining economic importance of mining that began in the mid-eighteenth century.

The transfer of the Portuguese court to Rio in 1808 signified the end of Brazil's colonial status; this was confirmed by independence in 1822. The opening of the port to nations friendly to Portugal allowed Brazil to freely export cotton, sugar, coffee, and animal hides; at the same time, the Brazilian market was inundated with manufactured products and foodstuffs, primarily from Britain. In 1807 only one of the 778 ships that entered Rio's port was foreign; in 1811 the more than 5,000 incoming ships hailed from diverse nations.

In the second half of the nineteenth century the use of steam power in maritime transport made freight cheaper and assured the safer and quicker movement of merchandise. Brazil was integrated into the world market as a large provider of coffee, its main export since the 1830s, and an importer of manufactured goods. The port of Rio was the point of convergence of the export/import flows of the entire country, and it grew in importance in world trade. However, its technical and material base had only slightly changed since the colonial period: ships were not able to dock directly on the shoreline, and loading and unloading could not keep pace with the increasing volume of merchandise, which at times had to be stored in precarious conditions. Numerous projects aimed at modernizing the port were conceived, but few were implemented.

At the beginning of the twentieth century Rio lost export leadership to Santos due to the decline in coffee production in the state of Rio de Janeiro, but it strengthened its role as principal port for imports. In this period an ambitious policy of urban reform was implemented in Rio that provoked profound transformations, especially in the central area. The axis of this reform was the construction of a new port. Initiated in 1904, the works consisted basically of landfill of a wide section of coastline, which straightened the shoreline. A large pier was built in this landed area that permitted ships to dock directly along the wharf. The renovations were completed in 1911, when eighteen internal and ninety-six external warehouses and ninety electric cranes began to function.

A second section of new docks was executed in the final years of the 1920s. In the 1980s the modernization of port activities, with a container system and conveyor belts, made clear the current structure was out of date. The solution was the transfer of the port's main activities to Sepetiba Bay, at the opposite side of the city of Rio de Janeiro.

SEE ALSO Brazil; Coffee; Empire, Portuguese;Port Cities;Portugal;Rubber;Slavery and the African Slave Trade;Sugar, Molasses, and Rum.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Burns, E. Bradford. A History of Brazil, 3rd edition. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993.

Fausto, Boris. A Concise History of Brazil, tr. Arthur Brakel. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Lamarão, Sergio Tadeu de Niemeyer. Dos trapiches ao porto: um estudo sobre a área portuária do Rio de Janeiro (From the warehouses to the port: a study of the harbor area of Rio de Janeiro). Rio de Janeiro: Departamento Geral de Documentação e Informação Cultural/Secretaria Municipal de Cultura, Turismo e Esportes, 1992.

Sergio Lamarão