Cultural life

Among the state’s prominent cultural institutions are the Bahia Academy of Letters, the Bahia Geographical and Historical Institute, and the Bahia Institute of Music. The state’s major historical figures include abolitionist and essayist Ruy Barbosa and 20th-century novelist Jorge Amado. Capoeira, a musical martial art with diverse African roots, was created and initially cultivated within the slave populations of Brazil, particularly in Bahia; since the 1930s, however, the art has been taught formally and has spread well beyond Bahia and the Afro-Brazilian community.

History

On All Saints’ Day, November 1, 1501, Portuguese explorers entered the bay on which Salvador now stands; they therefore named it Baía de Todos os Santos (All Saints Bay). The subsequent occupation of the vicinity by the Portuguese led in 1549 to the merging of four captaincies under the first governor-general of Brazil, Tomé de Sousa, who in the same year founded Salvador as the seat of his government.

The colonization of the territory began in the Recôncavo, where sugarcane and tobacco were grown for export and other crops raised for the settlers’ food. In the semiarid interior, cattle raising was considerably stimulated in the 18th century, when the discovery of gold and gems in the Diamantina Upland attracted more settlers.

When the Empire of Brazil was proclaimed in 1822, Bahia was still controlled by forces loyal to Portugal, but on July 2, 1823, Brazilian troops occupied Salvador, and Bahia became a province of the empire. In 1889, under the republic, Bahia became a state of the Brazilian republic. During the 1890s a major messianic movement led by the charismatic preacher Antônio Vicente Mendes Maciel, known to his followers as Antônio Conselheiro (“Counselor”), and centred at the religious settlement of Canudos (in the arid interior of Bahia) was viewed as a subversive threat to the secular republic. It was bloodily repressed in 1897 in what became known as the War of Canudos. (This event has been immortalized by Peruvian author Mario Vargas Llosa as well as many Brazilian writers.)

During the 19th century there was a revival of agriculture: it was the golden age for sugarcane, coffee was grown on a large scale, cotton production increased, and the forests of the south were turned into profitable plantations of cacao. Rubber plantations were developed at the beginning of the 20th century. By the turn of the 21st century, although agriculture remained important, the majority of the state’s income derived from industry, commerce, and tourism.