The City Traded for Thirty Thousand People

Chapters

1. 0:00 Four words that redrew a continent
2. 0:24 An army built by one crown, commanded by both
3. 0:46 The line a pope drew
4. 1:11 What Colonia already proved
5. 1:39 Whoever holds it, keeps it
6. 2:09 Twenty-six thousand, three hundred sixty-two people
7. 2:38 Nobody in the room
8. 3:02 An autonomous republic on the frontier
9. 3:28 Mbororé, 1641
10. 3:53 A century of holding the line
11. 4:18 The order to evacuate
12. 4:47 The towns refuse
13. 5:19 Sepé Tiaraju
14. 5:49 Two crowns, one army
15. 6:18 The seventh of February
16. 6:32 Caiboaté
17. 7:01 Three hundred to one
18. 7:26 The evidence used to abolish it
19. 8:08 The treaty is cancelled
20. 8:34 The siege that beat the treaty to it
21. 9:09 A dossier still being assembled
22. 9:37 What actually moved
23. 10:11 Next: the port becomes the government

Transcript

Four words that redrew a continent 0:00

Madrid, the thirteenth of January, seventeen fifty. Two crowns sign a treaty that redraws an entire continent, and the line that had governed it for two hundred and fifty years, a line a pope drew on a map neither side had truly explored, is replaced by four words. Whoever holds it, keeps it. On paper, this is a border settlement.

An army built by one crown, commanded by both 0:24

In practice, it is an order to move thirty thousand people who never agreed to it, off land seven towns had lived on for a century. And it will end with an army built by one crown marching against them, commanded by both. The strange part of this story is not the argument over the line. It's who the treaty sent to enforce it.

The line a pope drew 0:46

Fifteen years after Columbus returned, a pope drew a line down the Atlantic and split the unexplored world between Spain and Portugal. Everything west, Spain. Everything east, Portugal. The Treaty of Tordesillas of fourteen ninety-four never surveyed a single mile of what it divided, and for two hundred and fifty years, both crowns cited it as if it had.

What Colonia already proved 1:11

But holding the line and holding the ground were two different things, and the last episode already showed you the proof. Colonia do Sacramento sat inside Spanish territory by Tordesillas, and Portugal built a city there anyway and held it, on and off, for seventy years, because a line on parchment in Madrid could not evict a garrison on a riverbank. Everyone knew the map was fiction. Nobody had admitted it in writing.

Whoever holds it, keeps it 1:39

On the thirteenth of January, seventeen fifty, they admitted it. The new treaty adopted a Roman law principle: uti possidetis. Whoever holds it in fact, holds it in right. Two hundred and fifty years of papal geography, replaced by a survey of who was actually standing where. Spain's entire claim to the Americas had rested on that papal line. This was the moment the empire that invented the argument stopped using it.

Twenty-six thousand, three hundred sixty-two people 2:09

And here is what that principle bought. Portugal kept Colonia's harbor and gave up the city itself, plus territory to the north. In exchange, Spain gave up the land east of the Uruguay River, four hundred thousand square kilometers of it, including seven towns the Jesuits had spent a century and a half building. Population, by the Jesuits' own count that year: twenty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-two people.

Nobody in the room 2:38

Nobody in those seven towns was in the room. The treaty was negotiated by ministers in Madrid and signed by a king who had never crossed the Atlantic. Even in Europe it had enemies, the Portuguese minister Pombal opposed it, and so did the future Charles the Third of Spain, but the objection was about which empire gained more, not about the people being handed over as part of the deal.

An autonomous republic on the frontier 3:02

To understand why they refused, you need to know what those towns actually were. Since the sixteen-thirties, the Jesuit missions on this frontier had grown into something close to an autonomous republic. Guarani towns with their own councils, their own workshops, printing presses, orchestras, and their own army, armed and drilled by the missionaries themselves, because the frontier had no other defense.

Mbororé, 1641 3:28

That army had a founding battle. March sixteen forty-one, at Mbororé: four thousand Guarani soldiers, carrying firearms the Spanish crown had supplied, ambushed and routed a Portuguese slaving expedition, killing more than a hundred. It was the moment the missions stopped being a target for Brazilian slavers and became the only standing army on this entire border.

A century of holding the line 3:53

For the century after Mbororé, that army did the job Spain's own troops couldn't. Skirmishes against Portuguese incursions in seventeen twenty-four, again in the early seventeen-thirties, every time, Guarani soldiers held this exact stretch of frontier for the Spanish crown. When the Treaty of Madrid was signed, the men being asked to hand it over were the men who had spent a hundred years defending it.

The order to evacuate 4:18

By seventeen fifty-four, the demarcation was final. The Jesuits, under direct order from their own superiors, tell the seven towns to pack their movable property and relocate west of the Uruguay. A Guarani corregidor named Nicolau Ñeenguirú tries the negotiated path first, petitions, delegations, appeals through the proper channels of an empire that had, for once, made itself perfectly clear it was not listening.

The towns refuse 4:47

The towns refuse. Not the Jesuits, the towns. Guarani councils vote against evacuation and start arming for a fight their own missionaries, caught between their king and their converts, cannot fully stop. In July of seventeen fifty-four, Spain and Portugal send troops to force the evacuation, and a war the treaty's authors had not planned for begins. Historians call it the Guarani War. It is also called the War of the Seven Reductions.

Sepé Tiaraju 5:19

The military leader who emerges is Sepé Tiaraju, an officer of the mission militia. Accounts written down after his death report the line he is remembered for. Our wealth is our freedom. This land has an owner, and it is neither Portuguese nor Spanish. No document from seventeen fifty survives in his own hand, the phrase comes down to us the way most of what indigenous leaders said in this period does, through the people who wrote it down afterward.

Two crowns, one army 5:49

Seventeen fifty-six. To end the resistance, Spain sends the governor of Buenos Aires, José de Andonaegui. Portugal sends the governor of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Gomes Freire de Andrade. Three thousand soldiers march together, Spanish and Portuguese, the same two crowns that had fought over this exact ground for two and a half centuries, against an army built, armed, and trained by one of them.

The seventh of February 6:18

On the seventh of February, Sepé Tiaraju is killed in a skirmish near a stream called the Bica, close to what is now the town of São Gabriel. He does not live to see what happens three days later.

Caiboaté 6:32

The tenth of February, seventeen fifty-six, at Caiboaté. The joint army meets the main Guarani force in trenches they had dug themselves. The fighting lasts a little over an hour. One thousand five hundred and eleven Guarani soldiers are killed. One hundred fifty-two are taken prisoner. On the joint Spanish-Portuguese side: four dead. The trenches the defenders had dug became their graves.

Three hundred to one 7:01

That ratio, over three hundred to one, is not a battle. It's what happens when one side has been building an army against the other for a century and only uses it, at full strength, exactly once, and loses. The seven towns emptied out over the following decade. The mission system that had run this frontier for a hundred and fifty years never recovered.

The evidence used to abolish it 7:26

And the war did one more thing nobody in Madrid had planned for either. In Lisbon, the minister Pombal built a propaganda campaign that took the very idea that had described these towns, an autonomous Jesuit republic, and turned it into treason. The Jesuits, he charged, had incited the Guarani to rebel against a royal treaty. In seventeen fifty-nine, Portugal expelled the Society of Jesus from every one of its territories. Spain followed in seventeen sixty-seven. Neither accusation was ever proven. The mission system's own success, described as a state within a state, became the evidence used to abolish it.

The treaty is cancelled 8:08

And here is the part the treaty's authors did not see coming either. Five years later, in seventeen sixty-one, Spain's new king annulled the entire Treaty of Madrid. Every article, the line, the swap, uti possidetis itself, cancelled by the Treaty of El Pardo. On paper, the agreement that had cost fifteen hundred lives in a single morning no longer existed.

The siege that beat the treaty to it 8:34

Colonia do Sacramento did not, in the end, change hands by quiet paperwork. In seventeen seventy-six, Spain sent the largest fleet it had ever dispatched to South America, under a general named Pedro de Cevallos. His forces besieged the city in May of seventeen seventy-seven. The Portuguese garrison, already starving under blockade, surrendered a week later. The Treaty of San Ildefonso, signed five months after that, only confirmed on paper what the siege had already decided.

A dossier still being assembled 9:09

One more document is still being written. In two thousand fifteen, the Catholic Church, the same institution whose missionaries built the army at Mbororé and then could not stop what happened at Caiboaté, opened a formal cause to canonize Sepé Tiaraju. He was declared a Servant of God. If it succeeds, he becomes the first Indigenous Brazilian recognized as a saint. The dossier is still being assembled.

What actually moved 9:37

So what actually moved in seventeen fifty? Not a line, the line had never been real. What moved was an army built for a hundred years to say this land has an owner, used exactly once, and the treaty that provoked it was undone five years later by two men who had never fought in it. The document that mattered in this story was never the treaty. It was the count the Jesuits took the same year: twenty-six thousand, three hundred and sixty-two people, named as a population instead of a battlefield, in the last year before they became one.

Next: the port becomes the government 10:11

Next time on Codice: the port from episode six, the one Spain had spent a hundred years calling illegal while it quietly financed the crown, gets legalized. In seventeen seventy-six, Madrid creates an entire new viceroyalty and makes Buenos Aires its capital. The city built on contraband becomes, on paper, the government.

Description and sources

On the thirteenth of January, seventeen fifty, Spain and Portugal signed a treaty in Madrid that redrew the Rio de la Plata border. Portugal kept the harbor of Colonia do Sacramento -- the smuggling port from the previous episode -- and gave up the city itself. In exchange, Spain gave up the land east of the Uruguay River: seven Jesuit mission towns, and twenty-six thousand three hundred and sixty-two people, by the Jesuits' own count that year.

The treaty did something bigger than move a border. It replaced the Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 -- the papal line that had underwritten Spain's entire claim to the Americas -- with a Roman law principle: uti possidetis, whoever holds it in fact, holds it in right. Two hundred and fifty years of theological geography, cancelled by a single clause, because everyone already knew the line had never controlled anything on the ground.

What the treaty's authors in Madrid did not fully reckon with was who they were moving. Since the 1630s, the Jesuit missions on this frontier had grown into something close to an autonomous Guarani republic, with its own councils, workshops, and an army the Spanish crown itself had armed and trained. That army had a founding battle -- Mbororé, 1641, four thousand Guarani soldiers routing a Portuguese slaving raid with Spanish-supplied firearms -- and for the century that followed, it was the only standing force on this entire border, holding it for Spain against repeated Portuguese incursions.

In 1754, ordered to evacuate, the seven towns refused. A war neither side had planned for began, led on the Guarani side by Sepé Tiaraju. In 1756, Spain sent the governor of Buenos Aires and Portugal sent the governor of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, and three thousand soldiers marched together against the army Spain itself had spent a century building. Sepé was killed on the 7th of February. Three days later, at the Battle of Caiboaté, the fighting lasted a little over an hour: 1,511 Guarani soldiers dead, 152 captured, four dead on the joint Spanish-Portuguese side.

And five years after that, the treaty that started it all was cancelled. In 1761 the Treaty of El Pardo annulled the Treaty of Madrid in its entirety. Colonia do Sacramento did not, in the end, change hands by quiet paperwork: in 1776 Spain sent the largest fleet it had ever dispatched to South America, and in May 1777 laid siege to the city. The starving Portuguese garrison surrendered a week later; the Treaty of San Ildefonso, signed five months after that, only confirmed on paper what the siege had already decided.

One document from this story is still being written. In 2015, the Catholic Church opened a formal cause to canonize Sepé Tiaraju, declaring him a Servant of God. If it succeeds, he becomes the first Indigenous Brazilian recognized as a saint.

PRINT-READY, FROM THIS CHANNEL

The Document Set, Vol. 01 — Cajamarca 1532 and Buenos Aires 1595-1680 — the documents at reading size, with author, date, archive and licence

https://therepository.gumroad.com/l/document-set

SOURCES — every image in this video is a public-domain document.

Each plate below is listed with its author, date, holding archive and licence.

• Henry Harrisse (c.1830–1910) — 1897 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Diego Ribero — 1529 c. 1887 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Spanish School, 18th century | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Antonio de Herrera — 1601 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Author : Homem, Lopo. Cartographe | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Probably Diogo Ribeiro or Nuño García de Toreno. — 1525 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Mapa Que contém o País conhecido da Colónia até as Missões, e o Caminh | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain
• Unidentified painter — 1754 | Wikimedia Commons | Public domain

... and 22 more plates, each credited on screen in the video and listed in this project's manifest.