Brazil’s Exports

26.2.2: Brazil’s Exports

During the first 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the economic exploitation of the territory was based on brazilwood extraction (16th century), sugar production (16th-18th centuries), and finally on gold and diamond mining (18th century).

Learning Objective

List Brazil’s economic power and role in the Portuguese Empire

Key Points

  • The Portuguese colony of Brazil was centered upon a series of commodity productions: first brazilwood extraction, then sugar production, and finally gold and diamond mining.
  • Initially, colonists were heavily dependent on indigenous labor, often through capture and coercion, during the early phases of settlement, subsistence farming, and brazilwood production.
  • The importation of African slaves began midway through the 16th century, but the enslavement of indigenous peoples continued well into the 17th and 18th centuries.
  • During the Atlantic slave trade era, Brazil imported more African slaves than any other country, with an estimated 4.9 million slaves from Africa coming to Brazil from 1501 to 1866.
  • Slave labor was the driving force behind the growth of the sugar economy in Brazil, and sugar was the primary export of the colony from 1600–1650.
  • Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market.
  • Gold production declined towards the end of the 18th century, beginning a period of relative stagnation of the Brazilian hinterland.

Key Terms

Triangular trade
A historical term indicating trade among three ports or regions, especially the transatlantic slave trade. This operated from the late 16th to early 19th centuries, carrying slaves, cash crops, and manufactured goods between West Africa, Caribbean or American colonies, and the European colonial powers, with the northern colonies of British North America, especially New England, sometimes taking over the role of Europe.
Xica da Silva
A Brazilian woman who became famous for becoming rich and powerful despite being born into slavery. Her life has been a source of inspiration for many works in television, film, theater, and literature. She is popularly known as the slave who became a queen.
brazilwood
A genus of flowering plants in the legume family, Fabaceae. This plant has a dense, orange-red heartwood that takes a high shine, and it is the premier wood used to make bows for stringed instruments. The wood also yields a red dye called brazilin, which oxidizes to brazilein. Starting in the 16th centuries, this tree became highly valued in Europe and quite difficult to get.

During the first 300 years of Brazilian colonial history, the economic exploitation of the territory was based on brazilwood extraction (16th century), sugar production (16th–18th centuries), and finally gold and diamond mining (18th century). Slaves, especially those brought from Africa, provided most of the working force of the Brazilian export economy after a brief period of Indian slavery. The boom and bust economic cycles were linked to export products. Brazil’s sugar age, with the development of plantation slavery (merchants serving as middle men between production sites, Brazilian ports, and Europe) was undermined by the growth of the sugar industry in the Caribbean on islands that European powers had seized from Spain. Gold and diamonds were discovered and mined in southern Brazil through the end of the colonial era. Brazilian cities were largely port cities and the colonial administrative capital was moved several times in response to the rise and fall of export products’ importance.

 

Brazilwood Production

After European arrival, the land’s major export was a type of tree the traders and colonists called pau-Brasil (Latin for wood red like an ember) or brazilwood from whence the country got its name. This large tree (Caesalpinia echinata) has a trunk that yields a prized red dye, and was nearly wiped out as a result of exploitation. Starting in the 16th centuries, brazilwood became highly valued in Europe and quite difficult to get. A related wood from Asia, sappanwood, was traded in powder form and used as a red dye in the manufacture of luxury textiles, such as velvet, in high demand during the Renaissance.

When Portuguese navigators discovered present-day Brazil on April 22, 1500, they immediately saw that brazilwood was extremely abundant along the coast and in its hinterland along the rivers. In a few years, a hectic and very profitable operation for felling and shipping all the brazilwood logs they could get was established as a crown-granted Portuguese monopoly. The rich commerce that soon followed stimulated other nations to try to harvest and smuggle brazilwood contraband out of Brazil and corsairs to attack loaded Portuguese ships in order to steal their cargo. For example, the unsuccessful attempt in 1555 of a French expedition led by Nicolas Durand de Villegaignon, vice-admiral of Brittany and corsair under the King, to establish a colony in present-day Rio de Janeiro (France Antarctique) was motivated in part by the bounty generated by economic exploitation of brazilwood.

 

The Sugar Age (1530–1700)

Since the initial attempts to find gold and silver failed, the Portuguese colonists adopted an economy based on the production of agricultural goods to be exported to Europe. Tobacco, cotton and other crops were produced, but sugar became by far the most important Brazilian colonial product until the early 18th century. The first sugarcane farms were established in the mid-16th century and were the key for the success of the captaincies of São Vicente and Pernambuco, leading sugarcane plantations to quickly spread to other coastal areas in colonial Brazil. Initially, the Portuguese attempted to utilize Indian slaves for sugar cultivation, but shifted to the use of black African slave labor.

The period of sugar-based economy (1530 – c. 1700) is known as the sugar age in Brazil. The development of the sugar complex occurred over time with a variety of models. The dependencies of the farm included a casa-grande (big house) where the owner of the farm lived with his family, and the senzala, where the slaves were kept.

Portugal owned several commercial facilities in Western Africa, where slaves were bought from African merchants. These slaves were then sent by ship to Brazil, chained and in crowded conditions. The idea of using African slaves in colonial farms was also adopted by other European colonial powers in tropical regions of America (Spain in Cuba, France in Haiti, the Netherlands in the Dutch Antilles, and England in Jamaica).

The Portuguese attempted to severely restrict colonial trade, meaning that Brazil was only allowed to export and import goods from Portugal and other Portuguese colonies. Brazil exported sugar, tobacco, cotton, and native products and imported from Portugal wine, olive oil, textiles, and luxury goods – the latter imported by Portugal from other European countries. Africa played an essential role as the supplier of slaves, and Brazilian slave traders in Africa frequently exchanged cachaça, a distilled spirit derived from sugarcane, and shells for slaves. This comprised what is now known as the triangular trade between Europe, Africa and the Americas during the colonial period.

Merchants during the sugar age were crucial to the economic development of the colony as the link between the sugar production areas, coastal Portuguese cities, and Europe. Merchants initially came from many nations, including Germany, Italy, and modern-day Belgium, but Portuguese merchants came to dominate the trade in Brazil.

Even though Brazilian sugar had a reputation for quality, the industry faced a crisis during the 17th and 18th centuries when the Dutch and the French started producing sugar in the Antilles, located much closer to Europe, causing sugar prices to fall.

View of a sugar-producing farm (engenho) in colonial Pernambuco by Dutch painter Frans Post (17th century). A rural landscape, with palm trees, overlooking a vast, hilly area.

The Sugar Age View of a sugar-producing farm (engenho) in colonial Pernambuco by Dutch painter Frans Post (17th century).

Gold Rush

The discovery of gold was met with great enthusiasm by Portugal, which had an economy in disarray following years of wars against Spain and the Netherlands. A gold rush quickly ensued, with people from other parts of the colony and Portugal flooding the region in the first half of the 18th century. The large portion of the Brazilian inland where gold was extracted became known as the Minas Gerais (General Mines). Gold mining in this area became the main economic activity of colonial Brazil during the 18th century. In Portugal, the gold was mainly used to pay for industrialized goods (textiles, weapons) obtained from countries like England and especially during the reign of King John V, to build magnificent Baroque monuments like the Convent of Mafra. Apart from gold, diamond deposits were also found in 1729 around the village of Tijuco, now Diamantina. A famous figure in Brazilian history of this era was Xica da Silva, a slave woman who had a long term relationship in Diamantina with a Portuguese official; the couple had 13 children and she died a rich woman.

Minas Gerais was the gold mining center of Brazil during the 18th century. Slave labor was generally used for the workforce. The discovery of gold in the area caused a huge influx of European immigrants and the government decided to bring in bureaucrats from Portugal to control operations. They set up numerous bureaucracies, often with conflicting duties and jurisdictions. The officials generally proved unequal to the task of controlling this highly lucrative industry. In 1830, the Saint John d’El Rey Mining Company, controlled by the British, opened the largest gold mine in Latin America. The British brought in modern management techniques and engineering expertise. Located in Nova Lima, the mine produced ore for 125 years.

Gold production declined towards the end of the 18th century, beginning a period of relative stagnation of the Brazilian hinterland.

Slaves mine for diamonds in Minas Gerais (ca. 1770s). It shows several slaves in a rocky valley using pick-axes and carrying piles of stone. One white man oversees the operation.

Diamond Mining Slaves mine for diamonds in Minas Gerais (ca. 1770s). Gold and diamond deposits were discovered in Brazil in 1690, which sparked an increase in the importation of African slaves to power this newly profitable market.

Attributions