50 Brazil, conquest and colonization of A group of headhunters from the upper Amazon region in Brazil Enslaving native peoples was the initial strategy of colonizers diseases against which native peoples had no biological immunity These diseases led to rapid population declines in many areas long before Europeans arrived The years 1500–30 saw the growth of the brazilwood trade between Europeans and Brazil’s coastal peoples Relations between rival French and Portuguese traders soon degenerated into a series of violent clashes, with the French ignoring the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494, to which it was not a signatory In the early 1520s, the Portuguese established a garrisoned trading station at Pernambuco, where sugar cultivation was introduced in 1526 French‑Portuguese hostilities along the coast intensified In 1530, the Portuguese Crown responded by commissioning Martím Afonso de Sousa to begin the process of settlement and colonization, an expedition that in 1532 established the first permanent colony at São Vicente near modern São Paulo As conflicts with the French grew, in the mid-1530s King João III and his advisers devised the donatory system, which divided the coastland into 15 sections or donatories that extended along imaginary boundaries west into the interior, each to be ruled by a captain or hereditary lord Entrusting colonization to a handful of private individuals who would exercise full authority within their respective domains, the Crown hoped to secure its claims against its French rivals Most donatories languished and failed, with São Vicente and Pernambuco seeing the greatest albeit limited success Important in this early phase of colonization were a small number of individuals who mixed with the natives and acted as cultural intermediaries between indigenous peoples and the Portuguese Sailor Diogo Álvares ventured into the interior near Bahia in the early 1500s, married the daughter of the chief of the Tupinambá tribe, learned their language and culture, and changed his name to Caramurú By the 1530s, he had become a respected tribal chieftain and from this position of authority worked to facilitate the process of colonization That the Bahia captaincy failed was due mainly to poor administration and the settlers’ failure to heed Caramurú’s counsel regarding their interactions with the natives Farther south, the settlement of São Paulo succeeded in large part by the efforts of Portuguese castaway João Ramalho, who had also married into a local tribe, the Goiana Tupinikin, and served as interpreter and intermediary Portuguese colonists generally mixed with the local inhabitants to a greater extent than was true of other European powers, thereby facilitating subsequent cultural and linguistic melding of different ethnic and racial groups Sugar Trade As the brazilwood trade faded, sugar became the colony’s economic backbone By the mid-1540s, two sugarproducing centers had emerged; one was around Pernambuco in the north, and the other was in São Vicente in the south By this time, competition with French, Spanish, and other rivals had sharpened, prompting the Portuguese Crown to intensify colonization efforts Consequently, the Crown would play a major role in the colony’s economic development In 1549, Tomé de Sousa was appointed governorgeneral of Brazil at the head of a major expedition that included royal officials, artisans, soldiers, and Jesuit missionaries Sousa established Salvador as the colony’s capital To the south, the French colony at the Guanabara Bay threatened Portuguese control of the southern littoral In 1565–67, the Portuguese defeated and ousted the French colony and established the town São Sebastião de Rio de Janeiro Sousa’s successor Mem de Sá