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AMNESIOPOLIS
Amnesiopolis
Modernity, Space, and Memory
in East Germany

E L I RU B I N

1
 3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Eli Rubin 2016
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First Edition published in 2016
Impression: 1
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To Isaac, Oliver, Eloise, Lucien, Ezra, and Ari
 Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the many people and organizations that have contributed to
the research and writing of this volume. First and foremost, I would like to thank
the residents of Marzahn, who unreservedly and with the greatest warmth let me
in to their homes, showed me around their Stadtviertel, and shared with me their
life stories, their souvenirs, their family photographs, their garden plots, and
everything that makes up a history. Many of them are mentioned in this volume,
though some have requested their names be changed. I remain in the debt of all
those Marzahners who helped me, whether mentioned directly in this volume
or not.
I would also like to thank the archives and the archivists who patiently assisted
me in my work, including especially Dorothee Ifland of the Bezirksmuseum
Marzahn-Hellersdorf, who helped me not only while I was in Marzahn but also
long after I left. I must also thank Brigitte Freudenberg and Ute Lipske at the BStU
(Stasi) archive. Their help was invaluable in being able to research the fifth
chapter.
The overwhelming majority of this work was completed with the support of the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, which I held
from 2007–09. Mercedes Barbon and Maria-Bernadette Carstens-Behrens were
my main contacts during my fellowship, and both were extremely helpful. It was
an honor to be a Humboldt Fellow, and to be associated with such an amazing
organization.
Other parts of this work were completed with the financial support of the
Burnham-Macmillan Fund of the History Department at Western Michigan
University. Beyond the research, the Burnham-Macmillan Fund has supported my
travel to many conferences and workshops where I have had the chance to discuss
this work with colleagues. I remain extremely grateful to the Burnham-Macmillan
Fund, the Burnham-Macmillan Committee, and the Chair of the History
Department, Jose Brandao, for their support.
While in Berlin as a Humboldt Fellow, I was also a Visiting Fellow at the
Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam. There, I benefitted from the
lively exchange of ideas, and from the support and guidance of colleagues includ-
ing Martin Sabrow, Konrad Jarausch, Albrecht Wiesener, and Stefan-Ludwig
Hoffmann. In addition to the ZZF, I also owe thanks to the Berlin Program for
Advanced German and European Studies, through the Freie Universität Berlin,
and in particular Konrad Jarausch and Karin Goihl, for allowing me to make my
first major presentation of this research as a guest in the Berlin Program’s seminar.
In 2012 and 2013, I was a Visiting Fellow of the Centre for Metropolitan Studies
at the Technische Universität Berlin, with the support of Dorothee Brantz. There,
I was able to present my work in more advanced form to the Graduiertenkolleg,
and benefitted once again from the exchange of ideas.
viii Acknowledgments

There are others along the way in Germany who helped me. These include
Günter Peters, who shared several afternoons with me recounting his role in the
planning and construction of Marzahn. It also includes many who were not part
of the history of Marzahn, but who are just as passionate about it as I am, includ-
ing Lidia Tirri and Ylva Quiesser, Christian Domnitz, and Tobias Nagel, who is
mentioned at the end of this volume. My thanks as well to the Zeitzeugenbörse,
who helped me find several of my oral history interviewees.
I must of course thank everyone at Oxford University Press in the United
Kingdom who worked on this project with me, beginning with Christopher
Wheeler and Robert Faber, the editors who took this project on and supported it,
and including also Cathryn Steele, Gayathri Manoharan, Henry Mackeith, and
the anonymous readers who contributed so much to helping to shape this volume
into its present form. My thanks also go to Charles Cavaliere of Oxford University
Press in New York for encouragement and support.
My colleagues in the History Department at Western Michigan University have
been an invaluable source of support and encouragement. Marion Gray provided
crucial support and feedback along several stages of the writing of this, but as
Department Chair, was also incredibly supportive of my research leave. Lynne
Heasley helped to introduce me to the fascinating world of spatial thought and
critical geography, a journey undertaken with me by Sally Hadden. Many others
provided encouragement and feedback at some point along the way. Of course, my
students have also read drafts of this project and offered illuminating words of
advice.
Other colleagues outside of WMU deserve thanks here, including Lewis
Siegelbaum who also gave me an early venue to present my work in conjunction
with the Freie Universität Berlin and the German Historical Institute, Moscow,
and who has been a good colleague, friend and supporter going back to the begin-
ning of this project. I have benefitted greatly from my conversations with many
amazing colleagues, including Sandrine Kott, Alf Lüdtke, Paul Betts, Andreas
Ludwig, Justinian Jampol, Anne Berg, Jan Palmowski, Veronica Aplenc, Malgosia
Mazurek, Barry Jackisch, Kristin Poling, Jonathan Bach, Kerstin Barndt, Johannes
von Moltke, Marc Silberman, April Eisman, Ben Robinson, and many others.
I must devote special words of thanks to Clara Oberle. Clara helped me com-
plete the last leg of research for this project. In addition to being a great friend and
colleague, she is also a godsend. And I cannot give enough thanks to Konrad
Jarausch, without whose support early on this project would never have come to
fruition. The same is true of Geoff Eley, who has supported this project, and sup-
ported me as a mentor and a guide in many ways. Geoff and Konrad are a part of
this book.
Finally, there are no words that can really describe how grateful I am to my
partner, and colleague, Ari Sammartino. Of course, she has been part of this pro-
ject since the beginning, and her feedback, advice, patience, and sacrifice have
been invaluable and humbling. But more than that, her ideas, and her work, have
had a profound influence on me and on my work, and she has been an inspiration
in every conceivable way. I can never really repay her.
 Contents

List of Figures xi
List of Abbreviations xiii

Introduction 1
1. From the Slums to the Tabula Rasa: Germany’s Working Class,
the Housing Program, and the Marzahn Plan 13
2. Moonscape on the Mark: Socialism, Modernity, and the
Construction of a New World 49
3. Rainbows and Communism: Material, Sensory,
and Mnemonic Ruptures 77
4. Growing with Marzahn: Childhood, Community,
and the Space of Socialism’s Future 105
5. Plattenbau Panopticon: The Stasi, Durchherrschung,
and the New Housing Settlements 131
Conclusion 153

Appendices 161
Bibliography 165
Index 183
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 18/01/16, SPi

List of Figures
1. Map of Berlin with Marzahn highlights (courtesy of J. Glatz, Western Michigan
University Libraries Mapping Service).
2. Architect Heinz Graffunder showing Marzahn model to schoolchildren, 1976
(courtesy of the Bezirksmusum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf e.V.).
3. Map of Marzahn settlement (courtesy of J. Glatz, Western Michigan University
Libraries Mapping Services).
4. Erich Honecker posing with construction workers in Marzahn, 1978 (courtesy of the
Bezirksmuseum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf, e.V.).
5. Concrete Richtkrone and “Modulor”—homage to Le Corbusier in a concrete
panel—at the southern tip (Südspitze) in Marzahn (photo by author, 2012).
6. WBS 70 units in Marzahn, 1984 (courtesy of the Bezirksmuseum,
Marzahn–Hellersdorf, e.V.).
7. View from Barbara Diehl’s old rental barrack apartment, Friedrichshain (courtesy of
Barbara Diehl).
8. Double rainbow over Marzahn, from Marquardt family apartment (courtesy of
Evelyn Marquardt).
9. The Jütte family, 1978 (courtesy of the Bezirksmuseum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf, e.v./
Kühl).
10. Barbara Diehl’s new view in Marzahn, Allee der Kosmonauten, 1985 (courtesy of
Barbara Diehl).
11. Barbara Diehl’s two sons in Marzahn, outside their new home, 1986 (courtesy of
Barbara Diehl).
12. Marquardt family on the first day of school, 1980 (courtesy of Evelyn Marquardt).
13. Stasi manual on spying in the WBS 70 buildings of Marzahn (courtesy of BStU).
14. Seeing like a Plattenbau: Stasi photos of suspicious observations of nearby Soviet
base, Schönau–Grünau, Leipzig, 1988 (courtesy of BStU).
 List of Abbreviations

AWG Arbeiterwohnungsbaugenossenschaft (“worker’s housing construction society:”

the main form of access to and financing for apartments in East Germany)
CIAM Congrès Internationaux d’Architecture Moderne (International Congress of
Modern Architects, the main international organization for modernist
planners and architects from the 1920s to the 1960s)
CMEA Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (the Eastern Bloc economic union)
DBA Deutsches Bauakademie (Central East German architectural association)
DVP Deutsche Volkspolizei (regular East German police force)
FDGB Freie Deutsche Gewerkschaftsbund (state-controlled workers’ union)
FDJ Freie Deutsche Jugend (Free German Youth, the SED’s main youth
organization)
HG Hausgemeinschaft (building communal association)
HGL Hausgemeinschaftsleitung (building committee)
IM Informale Mitarbeiter (“informal cooperators,” citizen collaborators with the
Stasi)
ISA Institut für Städtebau und Architektur (East German Institute for Urban
Planning and Architecture)
KPD Kommunistische Partei Deutschlands (German Communist Party, forerunner to
the SED)
KWV Kommunale Wohnungsverwaltung (Communal Apartment building leadership)
NBI Neue Berliner Illustrierte (New Berlin Illustrated, popular weekly newsmagazine
in East Berlin)
OPK Operativer Personenkontrolle (Stasi investigation of particularly sensitive nature)
OV Operative Vorgang (Stasi surveillance and investigation operation)
P1 First model of prefabricated apartment blocks in East Germany
P2 Second model of prefabricated apartment blocks in East Germany
PDS Party of Democratic Socialism, the rump party left by the disintegration of the
ruling SED
QP 71 Model of prefabricated apartment block (“QP” stands for “Querwandbau in
Plattenbauweise” and “71” for the date of its first design, 1971)
SED Sozialistische Einheitspartei (Socialist Unity Party, the ruling Communist Party
of East Germany)
VMI Volkswirtschaftliche Masseninitiative (“people’s economic mass initiative:”
volunteer community service for East German citizens)
WBK Wohnungsbaukombinat (apartment construction combine, a conglomerate of
state-run companies involved in all aspects of housing)
WBS 70 Wohnungsbauserie 70 (“apartment building series 70:” the dominant model of
prefabricated block housing developed in East Germany in 1970
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

G BR
R A
U N N

D
Marzahn
N

E
E

N
D

East

BU
AN

Berlin

RG
BR

W e s t
B e r l i n

BR G
ANDENBUR
0 5 10 km

Figure 1. Map of Berlin with Marzahn highlights (courtesy of J. Glatz, Western Michigan
University Libraries Mapping Service).

Figure 2. Architect Heinz Graffunder showing Marzahn model to schoolchildren, 1976

(courtesy of the Bezirksmusum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf e.V.).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

0 1 2 km
AHRENSFELDE

WG Marzahn West

Alte
erg

Wu
b
ken
Fal

hl
N

e
WG
SE Marzahn
AU
ue Wu
NH

N
h le North

Ne
Ö
CH

Wu
hl e Straße
NS
HE
HO

ße Ahrensfelder
Berg
tra

(114.5m)
h-S

WG
WG 3
Ric

R- Marzahn
ch-

Wa
Marzhan ll enb East
inri

erg-S
Cemetary t
He

HELLERSDORF
raß
e

llee
nina
Le
LICHTENBERG

Old
Marzahn

WG 2
Kienberg
te n

u
smona (100m)
Ko

Springpfühl WG 1 Cecilienstraße
der

Allee
-Straße
Otto-Buchwitz

Südspitze

S-Bahn S-Bahn

BIESDORF

Figure 3. Map of Marzahn settlement (courtesy of J. Glatz, Western Michigan University

Libraries Mapping Services).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 4. Erich Honecker posing with construction workers in Marzahn, 1978 (courtesy
of the Bezirksmuseum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf, e.V.).

Figure 5. Concrete Richtkrone and “Modulor”—homage to Le Corbusier in a concrete

panel—at the southern tip (Südspitze) in Marzahn (photo by author, 2012).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 6. WBS 70 units in Marzahn, 1984 (courtesy of the Bezirksmuseum, Marzahn–

Hellersdorf, e.V.).

Figure 7. View from Barbara Diehl’s old rental barrack apartment, Friedrichshain (cour-
tesy of Barbara Diehl).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 8. Double rainbow over Marzahn, from Marquardt family apartment (courtesy of
Evelyn Marquardt).

Figure 9. The Jütte family, 1978 (courtesy of the Bezirksmuseum, Marzahn–Hellersdorf,

e.v./Kühl).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 10. Barbara Diehl’s new view in Marzahn, Allee der Kosmonauten, 1985 (courtesy
of Barbara Diehl).

Figure 11. Barbara Diehl’s two sons in Marzahn, outside their new home, 1986 (courtesy
of Barbara Diehl).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 12. Marquardt family on the first day of school, 1980 (courtesy of Evelyn
Marquardt).

Figure 13. Stasi manual on spying in the WBS 70 buildings of Marzahn (courtesy of
BStU).
 OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 28/12/15, SPi

Figure 14. Seeing like a Plattenbau: Stasi photos of suspicious observations of nearby
Soviet base, Schönau–Grünau, Leipzig, 1988 (courtesy of BStU).
 Introduction

Has state socialism produced a space of its own? The question is not
unimportant. A revolution that does not produce a new space has not realized
its full potential; indeed it has failed in that it has not changed life itself,
but has merely changed ideological superstructures, institutions or political
apparatuses. A social transformation, to be truly revolutionary in character,
must manifest a creative capacity in its effects on daily life, on language and
on space—though its impact need not occur at the same rate, or with equal
force, in each of these areas.
Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space1

In November 1980, Barbara Diehl, her husband Ralf, and her eight-year-old son
Dieter moved into a three-bedroom apartment in a newly constructed apartment
block in Marzahn, just outside East Berlin. The new home was a radical departure
from anything she had known in the past. Her childhood was spent in poverty, in
a dilapidated house outside Leipzig. For the previous decade, Barbara and Ralf had
lived in a tiny one-room apartment in a decaying nineteenth-century apartment
building near the center of East Berlin. It received little light, there was no bath-
room, and there was no warm water. After Dieter was born in 1975, the apartment
became especially cramped, and life became much harder. Although they lived
in the German Democratic Republic, supposedly a “workers’ and peasants’ state,”
they lived in much the same conditions that the working class had in the early days
of industrialization, when Berlin was known as having the worst living conditions
of any industrial city in the West.
When Barbara and her family moved to Marzahn, they entered what seemed
like an entirely new world. There they encountered a vast construction site, teem-
ing with tens of thousands of workers, fleets of trucks, excavators and bulldozers
churning through a sea of mud and earth, and what seemed like a forest of con-
struction cranes. Towering above the mud and the construction crews were row
upon row of newly built and almost identical housing blocks, constructed out of
prefabricated concrete panels. Entering theirs, a brand new WBS 70 five-story
model on Allee der Kosmonauten 183, they took an elevator to their floor. When
they entered their apartment they saw a newly finished, spacious flat, with a mod-
ern kitchen, a bathroom with a bath and shower, and a beautiful view. Sunlight
streamed in from both sides. Most of all, Dieter had his own room. Neither outside
nor inside the apartment bore any resemblance to the life that they had once lived;
1 Lefebvre, The Production of Space, trans. Donald Nicholson-Smith (Padstow, UK: Blackwell,
1991), 54.
2 Amnesiopolis

indeed, it bore no resemblance to the life that had been lived in Germany by the
working class since there had been a working class.
Their experience was one of profound rupture, a rupture experienced in both
psychological and spatial dimensions. They had not just moved to an apartment
or a district that was new to them. Their WBS 70 flat, and Marzahn itself, were
defined by newness. Marzahn was a settlement that had been built on a massive
scale upon what had previously just been “green fields” on the edge of Berlin. It was
more than just a place where apartments were built—it was an entirely new city,
one built on a tabula rasa. It was an urban space that reflected the modernist con-
cepts popularized by Le Corbusier, the CIAM, and like-minded planners and
architects, and one that reflected the economic and ideological structures of the
state that built it. In terms of its aesthetics and spatiality, it bore little to no resem-
blance to any other aspect of Berlin or Germany’s past. It was truly a socialist, and
modern, space.
And the Diehls were not alone. In fact, they shared this experience of rupture
and beginning a new life in a radically new and socialist world with nearly a half
million other East Germans who moved to Marzahn and the adjoining housing
settlements of Hellersdorf, Ahrensfelde, Lichtenberg, and Hohenschönhausen in
the 1970s and 1980s. Technically part of East Berlin, this massive new urban space
became a city unto itself, and, taken as such, was the fourth-largest city in the
GDR, behind only Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden. Indeed, the Diehls’ experience
was shared by millions more throughout the GDR who moved to similar prefabri-
cated housing settlements (Plattenbausiedlungen), many of which were built, like
Marzahn, in the 1970s and the 1980s on the edges of cities, such as Leipzig–
Grünau, Rostock North-west, or Dresden-Gorbitz. Each contained tens of thousands
of residents and formed a self-contained world.
The construction of these new, mass-produced housing settlements was the direct
result of the GDR’s Housing Program (Wohnungsbauprogramm), inaugurated in
1973.2 A central pillar of Erich Honecker’s policy of “real existing socialism,” the
Housing Program aimed to provide every East German with a new or renovated
apartment by the year 1990—aiming to build or renovate three million in all. By
1990 the GDR had managed to construct two million dwellings, most of them in
mass-produced apartment blocks, and 1.25 million of these were in settlements on
the edges of cities, known as Plattenbausiedlungen, Großsiedlungen, Satellitenstädte,
Neubausieldungen, or other names.3 By the time the Wall fell, close to 45 percent of
East Germans lived in some kind of prefabricated housing, with 28 percent living

2 Wohnungsbauprogramm translates literally as “apartment building program” but I have chosen

the term “housing program” because such a phrase is much more commonly used in English,
although, as I will show, the context is in certain important ways quite different to that in the West,
and therefore the same kinds of cultural connotations associated with the phrase “housing program,”
in particular the pejorative sense of “housing projects,” should not be associated with the East
German context.
3 Emily Pugh, Architecture, Politics, and Identity in Divided Berlin (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2014), 289.
 Introduction 3

in a self-contained “settlement” of 1,000 apartments or more; a much higher per-

centage than in the West.4
The move into to a mass-produced apartment, especially in a settlement on the
outskirts of a city was a profound and life-altering event for most of those East
Germans who experienced it; and it was an experience that became shared by
almost half of all East Germans. Clearly, the Housing Program and the way it
was experienced by East Germans—the effects it had on their everyday life—was
a central event of East German history. Yet oddly enough, beyond handful of
scholars, almost none of them historians, there has been little written on the
Housing Program;5 there has been virtually nothing at all written on the impact it
had on everyday East Germans.
This lacuna is all the more odd considering the extent to which scholars of
East Germany have endeavored to get at the culture and life experience of all
East Germans, and to get away from top-down, political histories. Indeed, East
German historiography has been framed over the last quarter-century by the
search for a way to understand what Thomas Lindenberger, Alf Lüdtke, and oth-
ers have called Herrschaft—domination—in ways more social and cultural than
purely political.6 How did the SED (Socialist Unity Party, the ruling communist
party of East Germany) state maintain and build upon its power, beyond the bare
and brute show of state violence, as with the Wall and the Stasi? How did it man-
ufacture stability, consent, or even legitimacy?7 Was it a “welfare dictatorship” as
Konrad Jarausch argued,8 or a “participatory dictatorship” as in Mary Fulbrook’s

4 See chapter 1, p. 29, and Appendices 1 and 2. I am basing this estimate on the total number of
newly built apartments between 1961, when the P2 (the first widely used prefabricated building
model) went into production, and 1990. According to Hansjörg Buck, this amounts to roughly 2.5
million apartments built in a Neubau or Plattenbau style. See Buck, Mit hohem Anspruch gescheitert.
Die Wohnungspolitik der DDR (Münster: Lit, 2004), 409. (There were some built in this fashion before
1961, but only in a few small pockets, such as Hoyerswerda.) In 1989 the population of the GDR
was roughly 16.4 million. In most cases where figures are given for specific prefabricated settlements,
the ratio of residents to dwellings falls, usually between 2.8 and 3 residents per dwelling, so I am
multiplying the number of dwellings by 2.9. This gives an estimate of 7.25 million, or 44% of the
population in 1989.
5 See Jay Rowell, Le totalitarisme au concret: Les politiques du logement en RDA (Paris: Economica,
2006); Christine Hannemann, Die Platte: Industrialisierte Wohnungsbau in der DDR (Berlin: Schiler,
2005); Emily Pugh, Architecture, Politics and Identity in Divided Berlin (Pittsburgh: University of
Pittsburgh Press, 2014); Florian Urban, Neohistorical Berlin: Architecture and Urban Design in the
German Democratic Republic 1970–1990 (Burlington, Vermont: Ashgate, 2009) and Tower and Slab:
Histories of Global Mass Housing (New York: Routledge, 2012). See also Buck, Mit hohem Anspruch.
6 Lindenberger, ed., Herrschaft und Eigen-Sinn in der Diktatur: Studien zur Gesellschaftsgeschichte
der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 1999), especially his introduction to the volume “Diktatur der Grenzen;”
and more recently “SED-Herrschaft als soziale Praxis, Herrschaft und ‘Eigen-Sinn:’ Problemstellung
und Begriffe” in Giseke, ed., Staatssicherheit und Gesellschaft (23–47); Lüdtke, ed., Herrschaft als
Soziale Praxis: historische und sozial-anthropologische Studien (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht,
1991).
7 Specifically on the question of creating stability, see Andrew Port, Conflict and Stability in the
German Democratic Republic (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
8 Jarausch, ed., Dictatorship as Experience: Towards a Socio-Cultural History of the GDR, trans. Eve
Duffy (New York: Berghahn, 1999).
4 Amnesiopolis

formulation?9 Were there “limits to the dictatorship” as Ralph Jessen and Richard
Bessel argued,10 or was it a “dictatorship of limits,” per Lindenberger? Indeed, did
the domestic take its “revenge” on the Party and state, as Donna Harsch argued?11
Or was the GDR thoroughly permeated—durchherrschte—(in Jürgen Kocka and
Alf Lüdtke’s formulation)12 by the state, even if it was a “normal” (in Mary
Fulbrook’s controversial shorthand) culture and society?13 Or, further, was the
GDR truly characterized by a strange combination of private refuges on one
hand, but thorough interpenetration of the state and its forces on the other, as
Paul Betts describes?14
Thomas Lindenberger argued in 2007 that understanding Herrschaft in the
GDR means understanding it, as Lüdtke described sixteen years earlier, as a “social
practice.” In particular, Lindenberger rightly reads Lüdtke’s notion through
Foucauldian ideas of “diffusion” and “fields of power.”15 Doing so, Lindenberger
claims, does not mean ignoring the institutions of power and repression in the
GDR, but rather realizing that the social dimensions of Herrschaft are also an
“institution.”16 And to truly understand the interactions of power between East
Germans and the SED regime, he writes, “we must reconstruct the bottommost
layer” of this dictatorship, including the many sites at which the regime’s power
directly interacted with ordinary East Germans on a daily basis—including, among
others, the living quarters (Wohngebiet).17
In search of this “bottommost” layer, also often referred to as “everyday life,”
cultural historians have produced a flood of work recently, on topics including
gender, material culture, tourism, nature, education, fashion, consumption, televi-
sion, film, and even the subculture of East German hip hop.18 These have largely

9 Among other places, Fulbrook, The People’s State: East German Society from Hitler to Honecker
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005).
10 Bessel and Jessen, eds., Die Grenzen der Diktatur: Staat und Gesellschaft in der DDR (Göttingen:
Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1996).
11 Harsch, Revenge of the Domestic: Women, the Family, and Communism in the German Democratic
Republic. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006).
12 Kocka, Hartmut Kaelble and Hartmut Zwahr, eds., Sozialgeschichte der DDR (Stuttgart: Klett-
Cotta, 1994).
13 Fulbrook, ed., Power and Society in the GDR, 1961–1979: The “Normalisation of Rule”? (New
York: Berghahn, 2009), in particular her “The Concept of ‘Normalisation’ and the GDR in
Comparative Perspective,” 1–30. On the controversy see Eli Rubin, Synthetic Socialism: Plastics and
Dictatorship in the German Democratic Republic (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press,
2008), esp. the introduction; and Lindenberger, “Normality, Utopia, Memory, and Beyond:
Reassembling East German Society,” German Historical Institute London Bulletin 33, 1, (2011), 67–91,
as well as Fulbrook’s rejoinder in the subsequent issue.
14 Betts, Within Walls: Private Life in the German Democratic Republic (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2010). This issue will be explored further in chapter 5.
15 Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft,” 30. 16 Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft,” 30.
17 Lindenberger, “SED-Herrschaft,” 31.
18 The titles are too numerous to list here, but a sampling would include: Andreas Ludwig, ed.,
Fortschritt, Norm und Eigensinn: Erkundungen im Alltag der DDR (Berlin: Ch. Links, 1999) and with
Katja Böhme, eds., Alles aus Plaste. Versprechen und Gebrauch in der DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2012);
Wierling, Geboren im Jahr Eins: der Jahrgang 1949 in der DDR: Versuch einer Kollektivbiographie
(Berlin: Ch. Links, 2002); Sandrine Kott, Communism Day-to-Day: State Enterprises in East German
Society, trans. Lisa Godin-Roger (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014) and Kott and
Emmanuel Droit, eds., Die ostdeutsche Gesellschaft: Eine transnationale Perspektive (Berlin: Ch. Links,
 Introduction 5

confirmed that, on one hand, East German society and culture differed substan-
tially from the Cold War stereotypes of a drab and deprived existence—it was its
own kind of modernity, an “alternative” or “socialist” modernity, as Pence and Betts
have written.19 Yet, on the other hand, most of this cultural history continues to
circle back around to the fact that, as Lindenberger has argued, everything in East
Germany, from toys to coffee, from sexuality to nature, was in some way altered and
shaped by the ruling ideology of socialism.20 Using Norbert Elias’ notion of the
“civilizing process” as a comparison, Sandrine Kott argues that East Germans “inter-
nalized” socialism, through everyday acts, through everyday and popular culture, in
ways so quotidian that it was barely perceptible, or not perceptible at all.21
But if the question of “domination” or “permeation” is to be answered in a place
that was, at least partially, imperceptible, this presents a real challenge for histori-
ans. It is in this framework that studying a socialist space becomes important,
because for at least three decades critical geographers, among them Henri Lefebvre,
Ed Soja, and David Harvey, have been demonstrating that space, as a category unto
itself, is one of the most powerful modes for inquiring into and understanding
structures of power, domination, and the transmission of ideology in precisely the
kinds of mechanisms that are so important because they are so diffuse and quotidian.22

2006); Josie McClellan, Love in the Time of Communism: Intimacy and Sexuality in the GDR (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2011); Heather Gumbert, Envisioning Socialism: Television and the
Cold War in the German Democratic Republic (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2014);
Scott Moranda, The People’s Own Landscape: Nature, Tourism and Dictatorship in East Germany (Ann
Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 2013); Monika Sigmund, Genuss als Politikum.
Kaffeekonsum in beiden deutschen Staaten (Berlin: De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2014) Judd Stitziel,
Fashioning Socialism: Clothing, Politics and Consumer Culture in East Germany (New York: Berg, 2005);
Kathy Pence “A World in Miniature: The Leipzig Trade Fairs in the 1950s and East German Consumer
Citizenship,” in David Crew, ed., Consuming Germany in the Cold War (New York: Berg, 2003) 21–50;
Ina Merkel’s monograph Utopie und Bedürfnis. Die Geschichte der Konsumkultur in der DDR (Cologne:
Böhlau, 1999), edited volume Wunderwirtschaft: DDR-Konsumkultur in den 60er Jahren (Cologne:
Böhlau, 1996); Philip Heldmann’s Herrschaft, Wirtschaft, Anoraks: Konsumpolitik in der DDR der
Sechzigerjahre (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2004); Patrice Poutrus, Die Erfindung des
Goldbroilers: Über den Zusammenhang zwischen Herrschaftssicherung und Konsumentwicklung in der
DDR (Cologne: Böhlau, 2002), and related Alice Weinreb, “Matters of Taste: The Politics of Food and
Hunger in Divided Germany” (PhD. dissertation, University of Michigan, 2009); Jan Palmowski,
Inventing a Socialist Nation: Heimat and the Politics of Everyday Life in the GDR, 1945–1990 (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Leo Schmieding, “Das ist unsere Party:’ HipHop in der DDR
(Stuttgart: Franz Steiner, 2014).
19 Pence and Betts, eds., Socialist Modern: East German Everyday Culture and Politics (Ann Arbor,
MI: University of Michigan Press, 2008).
20 Kott, Communism Day-to-Day, 8. 21 Kott, Communism Day-to-Day, 8.
22 Lefebvre, Production of Space; Soja, Postmodern Geographies: the Reassertion of Space in Critical
Social Theory (New York: Verso, 2011) and Soja, Seeking Spatial Justice: The Reassertion of Space in
Critical Social Theory (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2010); Harvey, The Condition of
Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of Cultural Change (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1990) and
Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanization
(Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985). See also Edward Casey, The Fate of
Place: A Philosophical History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997); Doreen Massey, For
Space (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2005) and Space, Place and Gender (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1994); Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: The Perspective of Experience (Minneapolis: The
University of Minnesota Press, 1977); Tim Cresswell, Place: A Short Introduction (Padstow, UK:
Blackwell, 2004) and In Place/Out of Place: Geography, Ideology and Transgression (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, 1996). Mike Davis’ City of Quartz: Excavating the Future in Los Angeles
6 Amnesiopolis

As a result, scholars across multiple disciplines have engaged in the so-called “spa-
tial turn” (a phrase coined in part by Soja himself ), seeking to understand
how spaces both absorb and also radiate or reproduce structures of inequality,
exploitation, and hegemony, in a circle that Soja describes as the “socio-spatial
dialectic.”23
This volume, then, seeks to understand East Germany as a socialist state through
the lens of space and everyday life—through the lens of the socio-spatial dialectic.
In doing so, it argues that space is and must be understood not as a text or a sym-
bolic category, but as a radically material one. As such, it transmits ideology not as
something to be “read” but by shaping the phenomenological and experiential
life-world of everyday subjects. One of the key modes of this transmission, I con-
tend, is the link between memory and place. In particular, communist housing
settlements like Marzahn are important to understanding East German socialism
because they created—or sought to create—spaces that were radically new, radi-
cally modern, and radically socialist, with no traces of the pre-socialist past, and
thus no opportunities for East Germans to retain whatever memories they may
have had of an older German historical narrative.
Put more plainly: the move from mostly older, nineteenth-century slum apart-
ments to the concrete utopia of Marzahn was experienced by ordinary East
Germans as quite a radical change in all the ways that a physical space can shape a
subject’s inner consciousness and sense of self. Such a radically new space as
Marzahn meant new sights, new smells, new everyday routines for people’s bodies,
new weather patterns, new flora and fauna, and a new sense of space within a ver-
tical and horizontal matrix. Without the familiar street corners, parks, or neigh-
borhoods, there were less opportunities for the old memories associated with those
places to be sparked. People do not, of course, necessarily need to pass by or
through a physical space to experience such a Proustian recall of lost time. However,
the material rupture that East Germans experienced as they moved into prefabri-
cated housing settlements significantly weakened those internal, emotional bonds
with earlier phases of their lives, and the lives of their parents and grandparents;
lives which were inescapably intertwined with economic catastrophe, fascism, and
war. The architecture of the prefabricated housing settlements was brutally utilitar-
ian and modern, intentionally eschewing any extra ornamentation or self-con-
scious imitation of past styles, which left even fewer “memory cues” which might
in some way spark a memory of a personal or familial past, and therefore the larger
past associated with those spaces and memories. In Germany, those larger pasts are
often the dark ones of fascism, war, and economic disaster, and in the post-war era
there was a continual attempt to forget that past, to induce a kind of historical
amnesia. This amnesia took many forms, from policy to education to culture. It

(New York: Vintage, 1992) is foundational in the critical understanding of urban space and social
injustice.
23 See Soja, Postmodern Geographies, chapter 3. Relatively few historians have engaged seriously
with the techniques and frameworks of analysis developed by critical geographers such as Soja. One
important exception to this is Jennifer Evans’ recent Life Among the Ruins: Cityscape and Sexuality in
Cold War Berlin (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
known. The whales keep in the open sea; some of them happen
now and then to be stranded in the bays, and their remains are
sometimes seen there. Some other bones of an enormous size, a
good way up in the country, whither the force of the waves could
never carry them, prove that either the sea is diminished, or that the
soil is encreased.
The wolf-fox, (loup-renard) thus called, on account of its digging a
kennel under ground, and having a more bushy tail than a wolf, lives
upon the downs along the sea-shore. It attacks the wild fowls; and
makes its roads from one bay to another, with so much sagacity, that
they are always the shortest that can be devised; and, at our first
landing on the isle, we had almost no doubt of their being the paths
of inhabitants. It seems this animal fasts during a time of the year;
for it is then vastly lean. Its size and make is that of a common
shepherd’s dog; and it barks in the same manner, though not so
loud. In what manner can it have been transported to these
islands[28]?
The birds and fish have enemies, which endanger their tranquility.
These enemies of the birds are the above kind of wolf, which
destroys many of their eggs and young ones; the eagles, hawks,
falcons, and owls.
The fish are still worse used; without mentioning the whales,
which feeding, as is well known, upon fry only, destroy prodigious
numbers; they are likewise exposed to the amphibious creatures,
and to birds; some of which are always watching on the rocks, whilst
others constantly skim along the surface of the sea.
It would require a great deal of time, and the eyes of an able
naturalist, in order to describe the following animals well. I shall
here give the most essential observations, and extend them only to
such animals as were of some utility.
Web-footed Among the web-footed birds, the swan is the first
birds. in order; it only differs from the European one by its
neck; which is of a velvet black, and makes an admirable contrast
with the whiteness of the rest of its body; its feet are flesh-coloured.
This kind of swan is likewise to be found in Rio de la Plata, and in
the straits of Magalhaens.
 Four species of wild-geese made part of our greatest riches. The
first only feeds on dry land; and has, improperly, been called
bustard[29]. Its high legs serve to elevate it above the tall grass, and
its long neck to observe any danger. It walks and flies with great
ease; and has not that disagreeable cackling cry, peculiar to the rest
of its kind. The plumage of the male is white, mixed with black and
ash-colour on the wings. The female is yellow; and its wings are
adorned with changing colours; it generally lays six eggs. Its flesh is
wholesome, nourishing, and palatable; it seldom happened that we
had any scarcity of this kind of geese; for, besides these which are
bred in the isle, they come in great flocks in autumn, with the east
wind, probably from some uninhabited country. The sportsmen
easily distinguish these new-comers, by the little fear they shew of
men. The other three species are not so much in request; for they
feed on fish, and get a trainy taste. Their figure is not so elegant as
that of the first species; one of these kinds seldom rises above the
water, and is very noisy. The colours of their feathers are chiefly
white, black, yellow, and ash-colour. All these species, and likewise
the swan, have a soft down under the feathers; which is white or
grey, and very thick.
Two kinds of ducks, and two of teals, frequent the ponds and
rivers. The former are but little different from those of our climate;
some of those which we killed, were quite black, and others quite
white. As to the teals, the one has a blue bill, and is of the size of
the ducks; the other is much less. Some of them had the feathers on
the belly of a flesh colour. These species are in great plenty, and of
an excellent taste.
Here are two kinds of Divers, of a small size. One of them has a
grey back, and white belly; the feathers on the belly are so silky,
shining, and close, that we imagined these were the birds, of whose
plumage the fine muffs are made: this species is here scarce[30]. The
other, which is more common, is quite brown, but somewhat paler
on the belly than on the back. The eyes of these creatures are like
rubies. Their surprising liveliness is heightened and set off still more
by the circle of white feathers that surrounds them; and has caused
the name of Diver with Spectacles to be given to the bird. They
breed two young ones at a time, which are probably too tender to
suffer the coldness of the water, whilst they have nothing but their
down; for then the mother conveys them on her back[31]. These two
species have not webbed feet, as the other water-fowl; but their
toes are separate, with a strong membrane on each side; in this
manner, each toe resembles a leaf, which is roundish towards the
claw; and the lines, which run from the toe to the circumference of
the membrane, together with its green-colour and thinness, increase
the resemblance.
Two species of birds, which were called by our people saw-bills[32],
I know not for what reason, only differed from each other in size,
and sometimes because there were now and then some with brown
bellies; whereas, the general colour of that part, in other birds of the
kind, was white. The rest of the feathers are of a very dark blueish-
black; in consequence of their shape, and the close texture and
silkiness of their vent feathers, we must rank them with the divers,
though I cannot be positive in this respect. They have a pointed bill,
and the feet webbed without any separation between the toes; the
first toe, being the longest of the three, and the membrane which
joins them, ending in nothing at the third toe, gives a very
remarkable character. Their feet are flesh-coloured[33]. These birds
destroy numbers of fish; they place themselves upon the rocks, join
together by numerous families, and lay their eggs there. As their
flesh is very good to eat, we killed two or three hundred of them at
a time; and the abundance of their eggs offered another resource to
supply our wants. They were so little afraid of our sportsmen, that it
was sufficient to go against them with no better arms than sticks.
Their enemy is a bird of prey, with webbed feet; measuring near
seven feet from tip to tip, and having a long and strong bill,
distinguished by two tubes of the same substance as the bill itself,
which are hollow throughout. This is the bird which the Spaniards
call Quebrantahuessos[34].
A great quantity of mews, variously and prettily marked, of gulls
and of terns, almost all of them grey, and living in families, come
skimming along the water, and fall upon the fish with extraordinary
quickness; they were so far of use to us, that they shewed us the
proper season of catching pilchards; they held them suspended in
the air for a moment only, and then presently gave back entire, the
fish they had swallowed just before. At other seasons they feed
upon a little fish, called gradeau, and some other small fry. They lay
their eggs in great quantities round the marshes, on some green
plants, pretty like the water lily[35], and they were very wholesome
food.
We found three species of penguins: the first of them is
remarkable on account of its shape, and the beauty of its plumage,
and does not live in families as the second species, which is the
same with that described in Lord Anson’s Voyage[36]. The penguin of
the first class is fond of solitude and retired places. It has a peculiar
noble and magnificent appearance, having an easy gait, a long neck
when singing or crying, a longer and more elegant bill than the
second sort, the back of a more blueish cast, the belly of a dazzling
white, and a kind of palatine or necklace of a bright yellow, which
comes down on both sides of the head, as a boundary between the
blue and the white, and joins on the belly[37]. We hoped to be able to
bring one of them over to Europe. It was easily tamed so far as to
follow and know the person that had the care of feeding it: flesh,
fish, and bread, were its food; but we perceived that this food was
not sufficient, and that it absorbed the fatness of the bird;
accordingly, when the bird was grown lean to a certain degree, it
died. The third sort of penguins live in great flocks or families like
the second; they inhabit the high cliffs, where we found the saw-bills
(becs-scies), and they lay their eggs there. Their distinguishing
characters are, the smallness of their size, their dark yellow colour, a
tuft of gold-yellow feathers, which are shorter than those of the
egret[38], and which they raise when provoked, and lastly, some
other feathers of the same colour, which stand in the place of eye-
brows; our people called them hopping penguins, because they
chiefly advance by hopping and flapping. This species carries greater
air of liveliness in its countenance than the two others[39].
Three species of petrels, (alcyons) which appear but seldom, did
not forebode any tempests, as those do which are seen at sea. They
are however the same birds, as our sailors affirmed, and the least
species has all the characters of it. Though this may be the true
alcyons[40], yet so much is certain, that they build their nests on
shore, whence we have had their young ones covered only with
down, but perfectly like their parents in other respects. The second
sort only differs from them in size, being somewhat less than a
pigeon. These two species are black, with some white feathers on
the belly[41]. The third sort was at first called white-pigeon, on
account of its feathers being all of that colour, and its bill being red:
there is reason to suppose it is a true white alcyon, on account of its
conformity with the other species.
Birds with Three sorts of eagles, of which the strongest have
cloven feet. a dirty white, and the others a black plumage, with
yellow and white feet, attack the snipes and little birds; neither their
size nor the strength of their claws allowing them to fall upon others.
A number of sparrow hawks and falcons, together with some owls,
are the other enemies of the fowl. Their plumage is rich, and much
varied in colour.
The snipes are the same as the European ones; they do not fly
irregularly when they rise, and are easy to be shot. In the breeding
season they soar to a prodigious height; and after singing and
discovering their nest, which they form without precaution in the
midst of the fields, on spots where hardly any plants grow, they fall
down upon it from the height they had risen to before; at this
season they are poor; the best time for eating them is in autumn.
In summer we saw many curlews, which were not at all different
from ours.
Throughout the whole year we saw a bird pretty like a curlew on
the sea-side; it was called a sea-pie[42], on account of its black and
white plumage; its other characteristics are, a bill of the colour of
red coral, and white feet. It hardly ever leaves the rocks, which are
dry at low water, and lives upon little shrimps. It makes a whistling
noise, easy to be imitated, which proved useful to our sportsmen,
and pernicious to the bird.
Egrets are pretty common here; at first we took them for common
herons, not knowing the value of their plumes. These birds begin to
feed towards night; they have a harsh barking noise, which we often
took for the noise of the wolf we have mentioned before.
Two sorts of stares or thrushes came to us every autumn; a third
species remained here constantly, it was called the red bird[43]; its
belly is quite covered with feathers of a beautiful fiery red, especially
during winter; they might be collected, and would make very rich
tippets. One of the two remaining species is yellow, with black spots
on the belly, the other has the colour of our common thrushes. I
shall not give any particular account of an infinite number of little
birds, that are pretty like those seen in the maritime provinces of
France.
Amphibious The sea-lions and seals are already known; these
creatures. animals occupy the sea-shore, and lodge, as I have
before mentioned, among the tall plants, called gladioli[44]. They go
up a league into the country in innumerable herds, in order to enjoy
the fresh herbs, and to bask in the sun. It seems the sea-lion
described in Lord Anson’s Voyage ought, on account of its snout, to
be looked upon as a kind of marine elephant, especially as he has no
mane; is of an amazing size, being sometimes twenty-two feet long,
and as there is another species much inferior in size, without any
snout, and having a mane of longer hairs than those on the rest of
the body, which therefore should be considered as the true sea-
lion[45]. The seal (loup marin) has neither mane nor snout; thus all
the three species are easily distinguished. Under the hair of all these
creatures, there is no such down as is found in those caught in
North America and Rio de la Plata. Their grease or train oil, and their
skins, might form a branch of commerce.
Fish. We have not found a great variety of species of
fish. That sort which we caught most frequently, we called mullet[46],
to which it bears some resemblance. Some of them were three feet
long, and our people dried them. The fish called gradeau is very
common, and sometimes found above a foot long. The sardine only
comes in the beginning of winter. The mullets being pursued by the
seals, dig holes in the slimy ground, on the banks of the rivulets,
where they take shelter, and we took them without difficulty, by
taking off the layer of mud that covered their retreats. Besides these
species, a number of other very small ones were taken with a hook
and line, and among them was one which was called a transparent
pike[47]. Its head is shaped like that of our pike, the body without
scales, and perfectly diaphanous. There are likewise some congers
on the rocks, and the white porpesse, called la taupe, or the mole,
appears in the bays during the fine season. If we had had time, and
men enough to spare, for the fishery at sea, we should have found
many other fish, and certainly some soals, of which a few have been
found, thrown upon the sands. Only a single sort of fresh water fish,
without scales, has been taken; it is of a green colour, and of the
size of a common trout[48]. It is true, we have made but few
researches in this particular, we had but little time; and other fish in
abundance.
Crustaceous Here have been found only three small sorts of
fish. crustacea; viz. the cray-fish, which is red, even
before it is boiled, and is properly a prawn; the crab, with blue feet,
resembling pretty much that called tourelourou, and a minute
species of shrimp. These three crustacea, and all muscles, and other
shell fish, were only picked up for curiosity’s sake, for they have not
so good a taste as those in France.——This land seems to be entirely
deprived of oysters.
Lastly, by way of forming a comparison with some cultivated isle in
Europe, I shall quote what Puffendorf says of Ireland, which is
situated nearly in the same latitude in the northern hemisphere, as
the Malouines in the southern one, viz. “that this island is pleasant
on account of the healthiness and serenity of the air, and because
heat and cold are never excessive there. The land being well divided
by lakes and rivers, offers great plains, covered with excellent
pasture, has no venemous creatures, its lakes and rivers abound
with fish, &c.” See the Universal History.
 CHAP. V.
Navigation from the Malouines to Rio-Janeiro; junction of the Boudeuse with the
Etoile.—Hostilities of the Portuguese against the Spaniards. Revenues of the
king of Portugal from Rio-Janeiro.

1767. June. I waited, in vain, for the Etoile, at the Malouines;

Departure from the months of March and April had passed, and that
the Malouines
for Rio-Janeiro.
store-ship did not arrive. I could not attempt to
traverse the Pacific Ocean with my frigate alone; as
she had no more room than what would hold six months provision
for the crew. I still waited for the store-ship, during May. Then
seeing that I had only two months provisions, I left the Malouines
the second of June, in order to go to Rio-Janeiro; which I had
pointed out as a rendezvous to M. de la Giraudais, commander of
the Etoile, in case some circumstances should prevent his coming to
join me at the Malouines.
During this navigation, we had very fair weather. The 20th of
June, in the afternoon, we saw the high head-lands of the Brasils;
and, on the 21st, we discovered the entrance of Rio-Janeiro. Along
the coast we saw several fishing-boats. I ordered Portuguese colours
to be hoisted, and fired a cannon: upon this signal one of the boats
came on board, and I took a pilot to bring us into the road. He made
us run along the coast, within half a league of the isles which lie
along it. We found many shoals every where. The coast is high, hilly,
and woody; it is divided into little detached and perpendicular
hillocks, which vary their prospect. At half an hour past five, in the
afternoon, we were got within the fort of Santa-Cruz; from whence
we were hailed; and at the same time a Portugueze officer came on
board, to ask the reason of our entering into port. I sent the
chevalier Bournand with him, to inform the count d’ Acunha, viceroy
of the Brasils, of it, and to treat about the salute. At half an hour
past seven, we anchored in the road, in eight fathoms water, and
black muddy bottom.
Discussion The chevalier de Bournand returned soon after;
concerning the and told me, that, concerning the salute, the count
salute.
d’ Acunha had answered him, that if a person,
meeting another in a street, took off his hat to him, he did not
before inform himself, whether or no this civility would be returned;
that if we saluted the place, he would consider what he should do.
As this answer was not a sufficient one, I did not salute. I heard at
the same time, by means of a canoe, which M. de la Junction with
Giraudais sent to me, that he was in this port; that the Etoile.
his departure from Rochefort, which should have been in December,
had been retarded till the beginning of February; that after three
months sailing, the water which his ship made, and the bad
condition of her rigging, had forced him to put in at Montevideo,
where he had received information concerning my voyage, by means
of the Spanish frigates returning from the Malouines; and he had
immediately set sail for Rio-Janeiro, where he had been at anchor for
six days.
This junction enabled me to continue my expedition; though the
Etoile, bringing me upwards of fifteen months salt provisions and
liquor, had hardly for fifty days bread and legumes to give me. The
want of these indispensable provisions, obliging me to return and
get some in Rio de la Plata; as we found at Rio-Janeiro, neither
biscuit, nor wheat, nor flour.
Difficulties There were, at this time, two vessels in this port
raised by the which interested us; the one a French, and the
Portuguese
against a
other a Spanish one. The former, called l’Etoile du
Spanish ship. Matin, or the Morning Star, was the king’s ship
bound for India; which, on account of its smallness,
could not undertake to double the Cape of Good Hope during winter;
and, therefore, came hither to wait the return of the fair season. The
Spanish vessel was a man of war, of seventy-four guns, named the
Diligent, commanded by Don Francesco de Medina. Having sailed
from the river of Plata, with a cargo of skins and piastres; a leak
which his ship had sprung, much below her water-line, had obliged
him to bring her hither, in order to refit her for the voyage to
Europe. He had been here eight months; and the refusal of
necessary assistance, and the difficulties which the viceroy laid in his
way, had prevented his finishing the repair: Assistance
accordingly, Don Francisco sent the same evening which we gave
that I arrived, to beg for my carpenters and her.
caulkers; and the next morning I sent them to him from both the
vessels.
The viceroy The 22d we went in a body to pay a visit to the
visits us on viceroy; he came and returned it on the 25th; and,
board the
frigate.
when he left us, I saluted him with nineteen guns,
which were returned from the shore. On this visit,
he offered us all the assistance in his power; and even granted me
the leave I asked, of buying a sloop, which would have been very
useful, during the course of my expedition; and, he added, that if
there had been one belonging to the king of Portugal, he would have
offered it me. He likewise assured me, that he would make the most
exact enquiries, in order to discover those, who, under the very
windows of his palace, had murdered the chaplain of the Etoile, a
few days before our arrival; and that he would proceed with them
according to the utmost severity of the law. He promised justice; but
the law of nations was very ineffectually executed at this place.
However, the viceroy’s civilities towards us continued for several
days: he even told us his intention of giving us a petit souper, or
collation, by the water-side, in bowers of jasmine and orange-trees;
and he ordered a box to be prepared for us at the opera. We saw, in
a tolerable handsome hall, the best works of Metastasio represented
by a band of mulattoes; and heard the divine composition of the
great Italian masters, executed by an orchestra, which was under
the direction of a hump-backed priest, in his canonicals.
The favour which we enjoyed, occasioned great matter of
astonishment to the Spaniards, and even to the people of the
country; who told us, that their governor’s proceedings would not be
the same for a long time. Indeed, whether the assistance we gave
the Spaniards, and our own connections with them displeased him,
or whether he could no longer feign a conduct, so diametrically
opposite to his natural temper, he soon became, in regard to us,
what he had been to every body else.
Hostilities of The 28th of June, we heard that the Portuguese
the Portugueze had surprised and attacked the Spaniards at Rio-
against the
Spaniards.
Grande; that they had driven them from a station
which they occupied on the left shore of that river;
and that a Spanish ship, touching at the isle of St. Catherine, had
been detained there. They fitted out here, with great expedition, the
San Sebastiano, of sixty-four guns, built here; and a frigate,
mounting forty guns, called Nossa Senhora da Gracia. This last was
destined, it was said, to escort a convoy of troops and ammunition
to Rio-Grande, and to the colony of Santo Sacramento. These
hostilities and preparations gave us reason to apprehend that the
viceroy intended to stop the Diligent; which was careening upon the
isle das Cobras, and we accelerated her refitment as much as
possible. She really was ready on the last day of 1767. July.
June, and began to take in the skins, which were part of her lading;
but on the sixth of July, when she wanted to take back her cannon,
which, during the repair, had been deposited on the isle das Cobras,
the viceroy forbade their being delivered; and declared, that he
arrested the ship, till he had received the orders of his court, on the
subject of the hostilities committed at Rio-Grande. In vain did Don
Medina take all the necessary steps on this occasion; count d’Acunha
would not so much as receive the letter, which the Spanish
commander sent him by an officer, from on board his ship.
Bad We partook of the disgrace of our allies. Having,
proceedings of upon the repeated leave of the viceroy, concluded
the viceroy
towards us.
the bargain for buying a snow, his excellency
forbade the seller to deliver it to me. He likewise
gave orders, that we should not be allowed the necessary timber out
of the royal dock-yards, for which we had already agreed: he then
refused me the permission of lodging with my officers, (during the
time that the frigate underwent some essential repairs) in a house
near the town, offered me by its proprietor: and which commodore
Byron had occupied in 1765, when he touched at this port. On this
account, and likewise upon his refusing me the snow and the timber,
I wanted to make some remonstrances to him. He did not give me
time to do it; and, at the first words I uttered, he rose in a furious
passion, and ordered me to go out; and being certainly piqued, that,
in spite of his anger, I remained sitting with two officers, who
accompanied me, he called his guards; but they, wiser than himself,
did not come, and we retired; so that nobody seemed to have been
disturbed. We were hardly gone, when the guards of his palace were
doubled, and orders given to arrest all the French that should be
found in the streets after sun-setting. He likewise sent word to the
captain of the French ship of four guns, to go and anchor under the
fort of Villagahon; and the next morning I got her towed there by
my boats.
They determine From hence forward, I was intent upon my
us to leave Rio- departure; especially as the inhabitants, with whom
Janeiro.
we had any intercourse of trade, must fear every
thing from the viceroy. Two Portuguese officers became the victims
of the civility they shewed us; the one was imprisoned in the citadel;
the other exiled to Santa, a small town between St. Catherine and
Rio-Grande. I made haste to take in our water, to get the most
necessary provisions out of the Etoile, and to embark refreshments.
I had been forced to enlarge our tops; and the Spanish captain
furnished me with the necessary timber for that purpose, which had
been refused us out of the docks. I likewise got some planks, which
we could not do without; and which were sold to us secretly.
At last, on the 12th, every thing being ready, I sent an officer to
let the viceroy know, I should weigh with the first fair wind. I
advised M. d’Etcheveri, who commanded l’Etoile du Matin, (the
Morning-Star) to stop at Rio-Janeiro as little as he could; and rather
to employ the time that remained, till the favourable season for
doubling the Cape of Good Hope came on, in going to survey the
isles of Tristan d’Acunha, where he would find wood, water, and
abundance of fish; and I gave him some memoirs I had concerning
these isles. I have since heard, that he has followed my advice.
During our stay at Rio-Janeiro, we enjoyed one of the springs,
which are obvious in poetical descriptions; and the inhabitants
testified, in the most genteel manner, the displeasure which their
viceroy’s bad proceedings against us, gave them. We were sorry,
that it was not in our power to stay any longer with them. The
Brasils, and the capital in it, have been described by so many
authors, that I could mention nothing, without tediously repeating
what has been said before. Rio-Janeiro has once been conquered by
France; and is, of course, well known there. I will confine myself to
give an account of the riches, of which that city is the staple[49]; and
of the revenues which the king of Portugal gets from thence. I must
previously mention, that M. de Commerçon, an able naturalist, who
came with us on board the Etoile, in order to go on the expedition,
assured me, that this was the richest country in plants he had ever
met with; and that it had supplied him with whole treasures in
botany.
Account of the Rio-Janeiro is the emporium and principal staple
riches of Rio- of the rich produce of the Brasils. The mines, which
Janeiro.
are called general, are the nearest to the city; being
about seventy-five leagues distant. They annually bring in to the
king, for his fifth part, at least one hundred and twelve arobas of
gold; in 1762 they brought in a hundred and nineteen. Under the
government of the general mines, are comprehended those of Rio
das Mortes, of Sabara, and of Sero-frio. The last place, besides gold,
produces all the diamonds that come from the Brasils. They are in
the bed of a river; which is led aside, in order afterwards to separate
the diamonds, topazes, chrysolites, and other stones of inferior
goodness, from the pebbles, among which they ly.
Regulations for All these stones, diamonds excepted, are not
examining the contraband: they belong to the possessors of the
mines.
mines; but they are obliged to give a very exact
account of the diamonds they find; and to put them into the hands
of a surveyor[50], whom the king appoints for this purpose. The
surveyor immediately deposits them in a little Mines of
casket, covered with plates of iron, and locked up by diamonds.
three locks. He has one of the keys, the viceroy the other, and the
Provador de Hazienda Reale the third. This casket is inclosed in
another, on which are the seals of the three persons above
mentioned, and which contains the three keys to the first. The
viceroy is not allowed to visit its contents; he only places the whole
in a third coffer, which he sends to Lisbon, after putting his seal on
it. It is opened in the king’s presence; he chooses the diamonds
which he likes out of it; and pays their price to the possessors of the
mines, according to a tariff settled in their charter.
The possessors of the mines pay the value of a Spanish piastre or
dollar per day to his Most Faithful Majesty, for every slave sent out to
seek diamonds; the number of these slaves amounts to eight
hundred. Of all the contraband trades, that of diamonds is most
severely punished. If the smuggler is poor, he loses his life; if his
riches are sufficient to satisfy what the law exacts, besides the
confiscation of the diamonds, he is condemned to pay double their
value, to be imprisoned for one year, and then exiled for life to the
coast of Africa. Notwithstanding this severity, the smuggling trade
with diamonds, even of the most beautiful kind, is very extensive; so
great is the hope and facility of hiding them, on account of the little
room they take up.
Gold-mines. All the gold which is got out of the mines cannot
be sent to Rio Janeiro, without being previously brought into the
houses, established in each district, where the part belonging to the
crown is taken. What belongs to private persons is returned to them
in wedges, with their weight, their number, and the king’s arms
stamped upon them. All this gold is assayed by a person appointed
for that purpose, and on each wedge or ingot, the alloy of the gold
is marked, that it may afterwards be easy to bring them all to the
same alloy for the coinage.
These ingots belonging to private persons are registered in the
office of Praybuna, thirty leagues from Rio Janeiro. At this place is a
captain, a lieutenant, and fifty men: there the tax of one fifth part is
paid, and further, a poll-tax of a real and a half per head, of men,
cattle, and beasts of burden. One half of the produce of this tax
goes to the king, and the other is divided among the detachment,
according to the rank. As it is impossible to come back from the
mines without passing by this station, the soldiers always stop the
passengers, and search them with the utmost rigour.
 The private people are then obliged to bring all the ingots of gold
which fall to their share, to the mint at Rio Janeiro, where they get
the value of it in cash: this commonly consists of demi-doubloons,
worth eight Spanish dollars. Upon each demi-doubloon, the king
gets a piastre or dollar for the alloy, and for the coinage. The mint at
Rio Janeiro is one of the finest buildings existing. It is furnished with
all the conveniences necessary towards working with the greatest
expedition. As the gold comes from the mines at the same time that
the fleets come from Portugal, the coinage must be accelerated, and
indeed they coin there with amazing quickness.
The arrival of these fleets, and especially of that from Lisbon,
renders the commerce of Rio Janeiro very flourishing. The fleet from
Porto is laden only with wines, brandy, vinegar, victuals, and some
coarse cloths, manufactured in and about that town. As soon as the
fleets arrive, all the goods they bring are conveyed to the custom-
house, where they pay a duty of ten per cent to the king. It must be
observed that the communication between the colony of Santo
Sacramento and Buenos Ayres being entirely cut off at present, that
duty must be considerably lessened; for the greater part of the most
precious merchandizes which arrived from Europe were sent from
Rio Janeiro to that colony, from whence they were smuggled
through Buenos Ayres to Peru and Chili; and this contraband trade
was worth a million and a half of piastres or dollars annually to the
Portuguese. In short, the mines of the Brasils produce no silver, and
all that which the Portuguese got, came from this smuggling trade.
The negro trade was another immense object. The loss which the
almost entire suppression of this branch of contraband trade
occasions, cannot be calculated. This branch alone employed at least
thirty coasting vessels between the Brasils and Rio de la Plata.
Revenues of Besides the old duty of ten per cent which is paid
the king of at the royal custom-house, there is another duty of
Portugal from
Rio Janeiro.
two and a half per cent, laid on the goods as a free
gift, on account of the unfortunate event which
happened at Lisbon in 1755. This duty must be paid down at the
custom-house immediately, whereas for the tenth, you may have a
respite of six months, on giving good security.
 The mines of S. Paolo and Parnagua pay the king four arrobas as
his fifth, in common years. The most distant mines, which are those
of Pracaton and Quiaba, depend upon the government[51] of
Maragrosso. The fifth of these mines is not received at Rio Janeiro,
but that of the mines of Goyas is. This government has likewise
mines of diamonds, but it is forbidden to search in them.
All the expences of the king of Portugal at Rio Janeiro, for the
payment of the troops and civil officers, the carrying on of the
mines, keeping the public buildings in repair, and refitting of ships,
amount to about six hundred thousand piastres. I do not speak of
the expence he may be at in constructing ships of the line and
frigates, which he has lately begun to do here.
A summary account, and the amount of the separate articles
of the king’s revenue, taken at a medium in Spanish
dollars.
Dollars.
One hundred and fifty arrobas of gold,
of which in common years all the
fifths amount to 1,125,000
The duty on diamonds 240,000
The duty on the coinage 400,000
Ten per cent. of the custom-house 350,000
Two and a half per cent. free gift 87,000
Poll tax, sale of employs, offices, and
other products of the mines 225,000
The duty on negroes 110,000
The duty on train-oil, salt, soap, and
the tenth on the victuals of the
country 130,000
Total in dollars or piasters 2,667,000
From whence, if you deduct the expences above mention ed, it
will appear that the king of Portugal’s revenues from Rio Janeiro,
amount to upwards of ten millions of our money (livres[52]).
 CHAP. VI.
Departure from Rio Janeiro: second voyage to Montevideo:
damage which the Etoile receives there.

The 14th of July we weighed from Rio Janeiro, but for want of wind
we were obliged to come to an anchor again in the road. We sailed
on the 15th, and two days after, the frigate being a 1767. July.
much better sailer than the Etoile, I was obliged to unrig my top-
gallant masts, as our lower masts required a careful management.
The winds were variable, but brisk, and the sea very Departure from
high. In the night between the 19th and 20th, we Rio Janeiro.
lost our main-top-sail, which was carried away on its clue-lines. The
25th there was an eclipse of the sun, visible to us. I Eclipse of the
had on board my ship M. Verron, a young sun.
astronomer, who came from France in the Etoile, with a view to try,
during the voyage, some methods towards finding the longitude at
sea.
According to our estimation of the ship’s place, the moment of
immersion, as calculated by the astronomer, was to be on the 25th,
at four hours nineteen minutes in the evening. At four hours and six
minutes, a cloud prevented our seeing the sun, and when we got
sight of him again, at four hours thirty-one minutes, about an inch
and a half was already eclipsed. Clouds successively passed over the
sun’s disk, and let us see him only at very short intervals, so that we
were not able to observe any of the phases of the eclipse, and
consequently could not conclude our longitude from it. The sun set
to us before the moment of apparent conjunction, and we reckoned
that that of immersion had been at four hours twenty-three minutes.
Entrance into On the 26th we came into soundings; the 28th in
Rio de la Plata. the morning we discovered the Castilles. This part of
the coast is pretty high, and is to be seen at ten or twelve leagues
distance. We discovered the entrance to a bay, which probably is the
harbour where the Spaniards have a fort, and where I have been
told there is very bad anchorage. The 29th we entered Rio de la
Plata, and saw the Maldonados. We advanced but little this day and
the following. Almost the whole night between the 30th and 31st we
were becalmed, and sounded constantly. The current set to the
north-westward, which was pretty near the situation of the isle of
Lobos. At half an hour past one after midnight, having sounded,
thirty-three fathoms, I thought I was very near the isle, and gave
the signal for casting anchor. At half past three we weighed, and saw
the isle of Lobos in N. E. about a league and a half distant. The wind
was S. and S. E. weak at first, but blew more fresh towards sun-
rising, and we anchored in the bay of Montevideo the 31st in the
afternoon. We had lost much time on account of the Etoile; because,
besides the advantage of our being better sailers, that store-ship,
which at leaving Rio Janeiro made four inches of water every hour,
after a few days sail made seven inches in the same space of time,
which did not allow her to crowd her sails.
Second time of News which we We were hardly moored, when an
touching at hear at this officer came on board, being sent
Montevideo. place.
by the governor of Montevideo, to
compliment us on our arrival, and informed us that orders had been
received from Spain to arrest all the Jesuits, and to seize their
effects: that the ship which brought these dispatches had carried
away forty fathers of that community, destined for the missions: that
the order had already been executed in the principal houses without
any difficulty or resistance; and that, on the contrary, these fathers
bore their disgrace with resignation and moderation. I shall soon
enter into a more circumstantial account of this great transaction, of
which I have been able to obtain full information, by my long stay at
Buenos Ayres, and the confidence with which the governor-general
Don Francisco Bukarely[53] honoured me.
1767. As we were to stay in Rio de la Plata till after the
August. equinox, we took lodgings at Montevideo, where we
settled our workmen, and made an hospital. This having been our
first care, I went to Buenos Ayres, on the 11th of August, to
accelerate our being furnished with the necessary provisions, by the
provider-general of the king of Spain; at the same price as he had
agreed to deliver them to his Catholic Majesty. I likewise wanted to
have a conference with M. de Buccarelli, on the subject of what had
happened at Rio-Janeiro; though I had already, by express, sent him
the dispatches from Don Francisco de Madina. I found he had
prudently resolved to content himself with sending an account of the
hostilities of the viceroy of the Brasils to Europe, and not to make
any reprisals. It would have been easy to him, to have taken the
colony of Santo Sacramento in a few days; especially as that place
was in want of every necessary, and had not yet obtained, in
November, the convoy of articles and ammunition that were
preparing to be sent thither, when we left Rio-Janeiro.
The governor-general made every thing as convenient as possible,
towards quickly making up our wants. At the end of August, two
schooners, laden with biscuit and flour for us, sailed for Montevideo;
whither I likewise went to celebrate the day of St. Louis. I left the
chevalier du Bouchage, an under-lieutenant, at Buenos Ayres, in
order to get the remainder of our provisions on board; and to take
care of our affairs there till our departure; which, I hoped, would be
towards the end of September. I could not foresee that an accident
would detain us six weeks longer. In a hurricane, Damage which
blowing hard at S. W. the San Fernando, a register- the Etoile
ship, which was at anchor near the Etoile, dragged receives.
her anchors, ran foul of the Etoile at night; and, at the first shock,
broke her bowsprit level with the deck. Afterwards the knee and rails
of her head were carried away; and it was lucky that they separated,
notwithstanding the bad weather, and the obscurity of the night,
without being more damaged.
1767. This accident greatly enlarged the leaks in the
September. Etoile, which she had had from the beginning of her
voyage. It now became absolutely necessary to unload this vessel, if
not to heave her down[54], in order to discover and stop this leak,
which seemed to lie very low, and very forward. This operation could
not be performed at Montevideo; where, besides, there was not
timber sufficient to repair the masts; I therefore wrote to the
chevalier du Bouchage, to represent our situation to the marquis de
Buccarelli; and to obtain, that by his leave the Etoile might be
allowed to come up the river, and to go into the Encenada de
Baragan; I likewise gave him orders to send timber and the other
materials, which we should want thither. The governor-general
consented to our demands; and, the 7th of September, not being
able to find any pilot, I went on board the Etoile, Navigation
with the carpenters and caulkers of the Boudeuse, from
in order to sail the next morning, and undertake in Montevideo
Baragan.
to

person a navigation, which we were told was very

hazardous. Two register-ships; the San-Fernando and the Carmen,
provided with a pilot, were ready the same day, to sail for
Montevideo to Encenada; and I intended to follow them; but the
San-Fernando, which had got the pilot, named Philip, on board,
weighed in the night, between the seventh and eighth, purely with a
view of hiding his track from us; and left her companion in the same
distress. However, we sailed on the eighth in the morning, preceded
by our canoes; the Carman remaining to wait for a schooner to
direct her route. In the evening we reached the San-Fernando,
passed by her; and, on the tenth in the afternoon, we came to an
anchor in the road of the Encenada: Philip, who was a bad pilot, and
a wicked fellow, always steering in our water.
In this road I found the Venus frigate of twenty-six guns, and
some merchant-ships; which were bound, together with her, to sail
directly for Europe. I likewise found there la Esmeralda, and la
Liebre; who were preparing to return to the Malouines, with
provisions and ammunitions of all sorts; from whence they were to
sail for the South Seas, in order to take in the Jesuits of Chili and
Peru. There was likewise the xebeck[55] el Andaluz; which arrived
from Ferrol, at the end of July, in company with another xebeck,
named el Aventurero; but the latter was lost on the point of what is
called the English-Sand; and the crew had time to save their lives.
The Andaluz was preparing to carry presents and missionaries to the
inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego; the king of Spain being desirous of
testifying his gratitude to those people, for the services they
rendered the Spaniards of the ship la Concepcion, which was lost on
their coasts in 1765.
The Etoile goes I went on shore at Baragan, whither the chevalier
to be repaired du Bouchage had already sent part of the timber we
there.
wanted. He found it very difficult and expensive to
collect it at Buenos Ayres, in the king’s arsenal, and in some private
timber-yards; the stores of both consisting of the timbers of such
ships as were wrecked in the river. At Baragan we found no supplies;
but, on the contrary, difficulties of many kinds; and every thing
conspired to make all operations go on very slowly. The Encenada de
Baragan is, indeed, merely a bad kind of bay, formed by the mouth
of a little river, which is about a quarter of a league broad; but the
depth of water is only in the middle, in a narrow channel; which is
constantly filling more and more; and, in which, only ships drawing
no more than twelve feet water can enter. In all the other parts of
the river, there is not six inches of water during the ebb; but as the
tides are irregular in Rio de la Plata; and the water sometimes high
or low, for eight days together, according to the winds that blow, the
landing of boats was connected with great difficulties. There are no
magazines on shore; the houses, or rather huts, are but few, made
of rushes, covered over with leather, and built without any regularity,
on a barren soil; and their inhabitants are hardly able to get their
subsistance; all which causes still more difficulties. The ships, which
draw too much water to be able to enter this creek, must anchor at
the point of Lara, a league and a half west. There they are exposed
to all the winds; but the ground being very good for anchoring, they
may winter there, though labouring under many inconveniences.
1767. October. I left M. de la Giraudais, at the point of Lara, to
take care of what related to his ship; and I went to Buenos Ayres,
from whence I sent him a large schooner, by which he might heave
down as soon as he came into the Encenada. For that purpose, it
was necessary to unload part of the goods she had on board; and M.
de Buccarelli gave us leave to deposit them on board the Esmeralda
and the Liebre. The 8th of October the Etoile was able to go into
port; and it appeared, that her repair would not take so much time
as was at first expected. Indeed, they had hardly begun to unload
her, when her leak diminished considerably; and she did not leak at
all when she drew only eight feet of water forward. After taking up
some planks of her sheathing, they saw that the seam of her
entrance was entirely without oakum for the length of four feet and
a half, from the depth of eight feet of her draught upwards. They
discovered likewise two auger holes, into which they had not put the
bolts. All these faults and damages being quickly repaired, new
railing put on the head, a new bowsprit made and rigged, and the
ship being new caulked all over, she returned to the point of Lara on
the 21st, where she took in her lading again, from on board the
Spanish frigates. In that road she likewise stowed the wood, flour,
biscuit, and different provisions I sent her.
Departure of From thence, the Venus and four other vessels
several vessels laden with leather, sailed for Cadiz, at the end of
for Europe,
and arrival of
September, having on board two hundred and fifty
others. Jesuits, and the French families from the Malouines,
seven excepted, who having no room in these ships,
were obliged to wait for another opportunity. The marquiss of
Buccarelli transported them to Buenos Ayres, where he provided
them with subsistence and lodgings. At the same time we got
intelligence of the arrival of the Diamante, a register ship, bound for
Buenos Ayres, and of the San-miguel, another register ship, bound
for Lima. The situation of the last ship was very distressing: after
struggling with the winds at Cape Horn during forty-five days, thirty-
nine men of her crew being dead, and the others attacked by the
scurvy, and a sea carrying away her rudder, she was obliged to bear
away for this river, and arrived at the port of Maldonados seven
months after leaving Cadiz, having no more than three sailors and a
few officers that were able to do duty. At the request of the
Spaniards we sent an officer with some sailors to bring her into the
port of Montevideo. On the fifth of October the Spanish frigate la
Aguila arrived there, having left Ferrol in March. She touched at the
isle of St. Catherine, and the Portuguese had arrested her there at
the same time that they stopped the Diligent at Rio Janeiro.
 CHAP. VII.
Accounts of the missions in Paraguay, and the expulsion of the
Jesuits from that province.

Whilst we carried on our preparations for leaving Rio de la Plata, the

marquiss of Buccarelli made some on his part to go on the Uraguai.
The Jesuits had already been arrested in all the other provinces of
his department; and this governor-general intended to execute the
orders of his catholic majesty, in person, in the missions. It
depended upon the first steps that were taken, either to make the
people consent to the alterations that were going to be made, or to
plunge them again into their former state of barbarism. But before I
give an account of what I have seen of the catastrophe of this
singular government, I must speak something of its origin, progress,
and form. I shall speak of it sine irâ & studio, quorum causas procul
habeo.
Date of the In 1580 the Jesuits were first admitted into these
establishment fertile regions, where they have afterwards, in the
of the missions.
reign of Philip the third, founded the famous
missions, which in Europe go by the name of Paraguay, and in
America, with more propriety, by that of Uraguay, from the river of
that name, on which they are situated. They were always divided
into colonies, which at first were weak and few, but by gradual
progress have been encreased to the number of thirty-seven, viz.
twenty-nine on the right side of the Uraguay, and eight on the left
side, each of them governed by two Jesuits, in the habit of the order.
Two motives, which sovereigns are allowed to combine, if they do
not hurt each other, namely, religion and interest, made the Spanish
monarch desirous of the conversion of the Indians; by making them
catholics, they became civilized, and he obtained possession of a
vast and abundant country; this was opening a new source of riches
for the metropolis, and at the same time making proselytes to the
true Deity. The Jesuits undertook to fulfil these projects; but they
represented, that in order to facilitate the success of so difficult an
enterprize, it was necessary they should be independent of the
governors of the province, and that even no Spaniard should be
allowed to come into the country.
Conditions The motive on which this demand was grounded,
agreed on was, the fear lest the vices of the Europeans should
between the
diminish the ardour of their proselytes, or even
court of Spain
and the Jesuits. remove them farther from Christianity; and likewise
lest the Spanish haughtiness should render a yoke,
already too heavy, insupportable to them. The court of Spain,
approving of these reasons, ordered that the missionaries should not
be controuled by the governor’s authority, and that they should get
sixty thousand piastres a year from the royal treasure, for the
expences of cultivation, on condition that as the colonies should be
formed, and the lands be cultivated, the Indians should annually pay
a piastre per head to the king, from the age of eighteen to sixty. It
was likewise stipulated, that the missionaries should teach the
Indians the Spanish language; but this clause it seems has not been
executed.
Zeal and The Jesuits entered upon this career with the
success of the courage of martyrs, and the patience of angels.
missionaries.
Both these qualifications were requisite to attract,
retain, and use to obedience and labour, a race of savage, inconstant
men, who were attached to their indolence and independence. The
obstacles were infinite, the difficulties encreased at each step; but
zeal got the better of every thing, and the kindness of the
missionaries at last brought these wild, diffident inhabitants of the
woods, to their feet. They collected them into fixed habitations, gave
them laws, introduced useful and polite arts among them; and, in
short, of a barbarous nation, without civilized manners, and without
religious principles, they made a good-natured well governed people,
who strictly observed the Christian ceremonies. These Indians,
charmed with the persuasive eloquence of their apostles, willingly
obeyed a set of men, who, they saw would sacrifice themselves for
their happiness; accordingly, when they wanted to form an idea of
the king of Spain, they represented him to themselves in the habit of
the order of St. Ignatius.
Revolt of the However, there was a momentary revolt against
Indians against his authority in the year 1757. The catholic king had
the Spaniards.
exchanged the colonies on the left shore of the
Uraguay against the colony of Santo Sacramento with the
Portuguese. The desire of destroying the smuggling trade, which we
have mentioned several times, had engaged the court of Madrid to
this exchange. Thus the Uraguay became the boundary of the
respective possessions of the two crowns. The Indians of the
colonies, which had been ceded, were transported to the right hand
shore, and they made them amends in money for their lost labour
and transposition. But these men, accustomed to Causes of their
their habitations, could not bear the thought of discontent.
being obliged to leave the grounds, which were highly cultivated, in
order to clear new ones. They took up arms: for long ago they had
been allowed the use of them, to defend themselves from the
incursions of the Paulists, a band of robbers, descended from
Brasilians, and who had formed themselves into a republic towards
the end of the sixteenth century. They revolted without any Jesuits
ever heading them. It is however said, they were really kept in the
revolted villages, to exercise their sacerdotal functions.
They take up The governor-general of the province de la Plata,
arms and are Don Joseph Andonaighi, marched against the rebels,
defeated.
and was followed by Don Joachim de Viana,
governor of Montevideo. He defeated them in a battle, wherein
upwards of two thousand Indians were slain. He then proceeded to
conquer the country; and Don Joachim seeing what terror their first
defeat had spread amongst them, resolved to subdue them entirely
with six hundred men. He attacked the first colony, took possession
of it without meeting any resistance; and that being taken, all the
others submitted.
The At this time the court of Spain recalled Don
disturbances Joseph Andonaighi, and Don Pedro Cevallos arrived
are appeased. at Buenos Ayres to replace him. Viana received
orders at the same time to leave the missions, and bring back his
troops. The intended exchange was now no longer thought of, and
the Portuguese, who had marched against the Indians with the
Spaniards, returned with them likewise. At the time of this
expedition, the noise was spread in Europe of the election of king
Nicholas, an Indian, whom indeed the rebels set up as a phantom of
royalty.
Don Joachim de Viana told me, that when he received orders to
leave the missions, a great number of Indians, discontented with the
life they led, were willing to follow him. He opposed The Indians
it, but could not hinder seven families from appear
accompanying him; he settled them at the disgusted the
with

Maldonados, where, at present, they are patterns of administration

industry and labour. I was surprised at what he told of the Jesuits.
me concerning this discontent of the Indians. How is
it possible to make it agree with all I had read of the manner in
which they are governed? I should have quoted the laws of the
missions as a pattern of an administration instituted with a view to
distribute happiness and wisdom among men.
Indeed, if one casts a general view at a distance upon this magic
government, founded by spiritual arms only, and united only by the
charms of persuasion, what institution can be more honourable to
human nature? It is a society which inhabits a fertile land, in a
happy climate, of which, all the members are laborious, and none
works for himself; the produce of the common cultivation is faithfully
conveyed into public storehouses, from whence every one receives
what he wants for his nourishment, dress, and house-keeping; the
man who is in full vigour, feeds, by his labour, the new-born infant;
and when time has consumed his strength, his fellow-citizens render
him the same services which he did them before. The private houses
are convenient, the public buildings fine; the worship uniform and
scrupulously attended: this happy people knows neither the
distinction of rank, nor of nobility, and is equally sheltered against
super-abundance and wants.
 The great distance and the illusion of perspective made the
missions bear this aspect in my eyes, and must have appeared the
same to every one else. But the theory is widely different from the
execution of this plan of government. Of this I was convinced by the
following accounts, which above a hundred ocular witnesses have
unanimously given me.
Accounts of the The extent of country in which the missions are
interior situated, contains about two hundred leagues north
government.
and south, and about one hundred and fifty east
and west, and the number of inhabitants is about three hundred
thousand; the immense forests afford wood of all sorts; the vast
pastures there, contain at least two millions of cattle; fine rivers
enliven the interior parts of this country, and promote circulation and
commerce throughout it. This is the situation of the country, but the
question now is, how did the people live there? The country was, as
has been told, divided into parishes, and each parish was directed by
two Jesuits, of which, one was rector, and the other his curate. The
whole expence for the maintenance of the colonies was but small,
the Indians being fed, dressed, and lodged, by the labour of their
own hands; the greatest costs were those of keeping the churches in
repair, all which were built and adorned magnificently. The other
products of the ground, and all the cattle, belonged to the Jesuits,
who, on their part, sent for the instruments of various trades, for
glass, knives, needles, images, chaplets of beads, gun-powder and
muskets. Their annual revenues consisted in cotton, tallow, leather,
honey, and above all, in maté, a plant better known by the name of
Paraguay tea, or South-Sea tea, of which that company had the
exclusive commerce, and of which likewise the consumption is
immense in the Spanish possessions in America, where it is used
instead of tea.
The Indians shewed so servile a submission to their rectors, that
not only both men and women suffered the punishment of
flagellation, after the manner of the college, for public offences, but
they likewise came of themselves to sollicit this chastisement for
mental faults. In every parish the fathers annually elected
corrégidors, and their assistants, to take care of the minutiæ of the
government. The ceremony of their election was performed on new
year’s day, with great pomp, in the court before the church, and was
announced by ringing of bells, and the playing of a band of music.
The newly elected persons came to the feet of the father rector to
receive the marks of their dignity, which however did not exempt
them from being whipped like the others. Their greatest distinction
was that of wearing habits, whereas, a shirt of cotton stuff was the
only dress of the other Indians of both sexes. The feasts of the
parish, and that of the rector, were likewise celebrated by public
rejoicings, and even by comedies, which probably resembled those
ancient pieces of ours, called mystéres or mysteries.
The rector lived in a great house near the church; adjoining to it
were two buildings, in one of which were the schools for music,
painting, sculpture, and architecture; and likewise, work-houses of
different trades; Italy furnished them with masters to teach the arts,
and the Indians, it is said, learn with facility: the other building
contained a great number of young girls at work in several
occupations, under the inspection of old women: this was named the
guatiguasu, or the seminary. The apartment of the rector
communicated internally with these two buildings.
This rector got up at five o’clock in the morning, employed an
hour in holy meditation, and said his mass at half past six o’clock;
they kissed his hands at seven o’clock, and then he publicly
distributed an ounce of maté to every family. After mass, the rector
breakfasted, said his breviary, conferred with the corregidors, four of
whom were his ministers, and visited the seminary, the schools, and
the work-shops. Whenever he went out, it was on horseback, and
attended by a great retinue; he dined alone with his curate at eleven
of the clock, then chatted till noon, and after that, made a siesta till
two in the afternoon; he kept close in his interior appartments till it
was prayer time, after which, he continued in conversation till seven
in the evening; then the rector supped, and at eight he was
supposed to be gone to bed.
From eight of the clock in the morning, the time of the people was
taken up either in cultivating the ground, or in their work-shops, and
the corregidors took care to see them employ their time well; the
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