Pernambuco e o medo dos Clubes de França:o caso do Le Diligent (1792-1793)

Abstract

In the year 1792, an official letter sent to the Portuguese colonial authorities by Secretary of Navy and overseas, Martinho de Melo e Castro, guided them to act with extreme caution in the contacts made with French ships which wanted to grapple in their ports. Strong vigilance should be done in order to avoid the meeting among French crew and the residents. All due to the repercussions of the revolutionary movement that is established in France in the eighteenth century, affecting not only the surrounding European kingdoms, but also their own colonies.The "abominable doctrine that the clubs of France" wanted to spread caused fear in the administration of the Portuguese metropolis which provided steps to combat the possibility of contamination of revolutionary ideas, especially in its colonies to avoid a repetition of what occurred in the Island of São Domingos. Indeed, to combat these ideas, we can highlight one episode occurred in 1792, when in December of that year, it grappled, in the Island of Fernando de Noronha - which worked as a prison – a Bergantim with French flag with the name Le Diligent. Le Diligent was under the command of Aristide Aubert du Petit-Thouars, whose application for landing on the island was motivated by the need to restore some of his crew, who were supposedly sick. For that it was necessary twenty days ashore. However, the arrival process of the ship and the procedures ashore raised suspicions which culminated in the detention of the whole crew. From the documents concerning the case of detention of prisoners of the whole crew of the Le Diligent, it is tried to understand some elements of the fear that has spread in the colonies, for the revolutionary events in France and if there was relationship of that situation with the practice of smuggling.