THE Bahia Conjuration, or Tailors' Conjuration, was a revolt that took place in Bahia, in the year 1798. To understand this revolt, which took place at the time when Brazil was still a colony of Portugal, it is necessary to understand the world events that influenced it.
The liberal and Enlightenment ideas that shaped the French Revolution (1789) they were the same ones that influenced a range of movements and insurgencies on the American continent in the late eighteenth century. THE Mining Inconfidence and the Conjuração Baiana, in Brazil, were the ones that stood out.
Well then, the very term “conjuration”, which means conspiratorial gathering, already identifies this movement as something that had the objective of interfering with the current power of the Portuguese crown. The rebels in Bahia were frontally against the problems that this province was facing at the time, such as food shortages, and they also raised banners in favor of the abolition of slavery, the proclamation of the Republic in the Bahia region and the free market also in that region. All these themes were in line with liberal thought coming, above all, from revolutionary France.
The members of this conspiracy were, in general, men of liberal professions, free blacks and mulattos who they survived through the exercise of urban professions, such as crafts, policing and, above all, the tailoring. Hence the name of the revolt as “Tailors' Revolt”.
However, the proposals of the Conjuration did not come to fruition. According to historian Boris Fausto, in his history of Brazil, “after an attempt to obtain support from the government of Bahia, arrests and denunciations began. Four of the main defendants were hanged and quartered. Others received prison terms or banishment” (p. 104) [1].
The cruelty of the sentences was typical for this type of conspiracy. At Inconfidência Mineira, one of the main representatives, Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, was also hanged and quartered.
In addition to being inspired by the French Revolution, the Bahian Conjuration was also situated in the context of the 1791 Haitian slave revolts, which would culminate in that country's independence. This entire context worried the Portuguese court, which sought to retaliate against any similar insurgency in its colonies.
*Image credits: commons
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