Northeast Brazil 1700-50: The agricultural crisis re-examined

Abstract

The period from 1700 to 1750 was one of dramatic change in Brazil. The two major elements in the change were the beginning of gold production in the highlands of present-day Minas Gerais and later in Goiás and Mato Grosso and a decline in agriculture in the coastal areas of the Northeast. In the historiography of Brazil these changes have been interrelated, the one as cause, the other as effect. In so doing, historians have paid little attention to the date of the agricultural depression or to the geographical variations in the intensity of the decline. In this paper I propose to examine the stages of that decline more closely and to try to determine the significance of the discovery of gold as a cause by comparing its role to that of other possible cause such as drought, political instability and, with the emergence of other more competitive centres of sugar production, declining sugar prices. I will show that the agricultural depression in the Northeast came long after the initial discoveries of gold and will argue that the price of sugar rather than the effects of a gold rush was the crucial variable in the timing of the depression.