THE DEVELOPMENT OF BRAZIL’S COLONIAL ECONOMY

I. Introduction: Importance of exports (sugar and later gold)

II. Rise and Decline of Sugar Plantations

A. Production Trends

1. 1535-70: introduction
2. 1570-85: rapid growth

EX: Pernambuco
1570: 23 plantations
1585: 66 plantations
1629: 150

3. 1585-1680: steady growth:
Ave for Brazil: 15-20,000 metric tons/sugar/yr
4. 1680-1780: relative decline (not disappearance)

B. Characteristics

1. Location, climate, long growing season
2. Engenho: crops and refinery, monocrop
3. Refining: required capital investment
4. Planter elite
5. Trade less controlled by Portuguese crown

C. Labor: Stuart Schwartz thesis

1. Experiments with Native Labor, 1535-70

a. wage labor: indigenous have no need for wages

b. native slavery: through “just war” or redeeming war captives

c. Jesuit mission villages (aldeias)

1. 1561: 11 aldeias with pop of 34,000, contract labor out to plantations
2 . 1560s: demographic crisis (epidemics and famine ) reduced the population by 1/3 to ½
3. Native resistance

2. Transition to African Slavery, 1570-

a. rising price for sugar on world market covered cost
b. strategies of control: harder to escape, mixed ethnicities
c . Reliance on imports

1. Ave life expectancy: 7 years
2. 15-30 months to recoup investment
3. 17th century: ave 7-8000 slaves imported each year to Brazil
4. Up to 1/3 value of engenho in slaves (ave 60-100 slaves)

D. Relative Decline of Sugar

1. Dutch War, 1630-54
2. Taxes
3. Competition, esp. Caribbean, affects prices c. 1660
4. Discovery of gold, 1695, diverts resources south

III. Discussion of Slave Rebellion

A. Film clip from Quilombo (1984, Director Carlos Diegues; music by Gilberto Gil); compare to Karash on Zumbi, The Human Tradition, especially pp. 114-16. Consider how the context of Brazil in 1984 would influence the film version.
B. Document from Ilheus Rebellion

ID Terms:

• aldeias (Jesuit mission villages)
• Salvador (1st capital of Brazil)
• engenho
• bandeirantes
• Sao Paulo (farming region from which bandereintes set out into interior)
• Rio de Janeiro (1763 capital)

Maps

Portuguese explorations

Map of Brazil

Online Images of Slavery in the Americas (University of Virginia):

http://hitchcock.itc.virginia.edu/Slavery/index.html

Questions:

What factors (local and global) affected the rise and fall of various export products from Brazil?

How and why did labor methods change in Brazil over the 16th century?

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