Slave Control and Slave Resistance in Colonial Minas Gerais, 1700–1750

Abstract

In the early half of the eighteenth century, Minas Gerais became the main focus of colonial activity in Brazil. Gold and diamonds made this an immensely profitable colony at the very time when the sugar economy of the Northeast entered one of its most severe downturns. In response to this combination of circumstances, population and resources deserted the northeastern coastlands (and the Portuguese mainland as well) in favor of the rising Center–South. From that point on, this was to become the dominant area within Brazil – in a pattern unshaken either by independence or by the exhaustion of the gold deposits. The transfer of the viceregal capital from Bahia to Rio de Janeiro (1763) only gave official recognition to a process that demography, economy and society had already made quite unequivocal.