Brazil’s Colonial Economy and the Atlantic Slave Trade

This chapter focuses on estimates of Brazil's slave imports during the Atlantic slave trade era calculated by several researchers. It also presents an outline of current knowledge on the colonial economy with which that human traffic was interlinked, seeking to comprehend its distinct fields and productive sectors. In the decade 1760-1770, Brazil's colonial economy underwent a serious crisis, stemming from the decline of gold mining as well as weak performance among other Brazilian commodity exports. Though Minas Gerais was entangled in the revival in late eighteenth century Brazil through supplying foodstuffs to areas producing export crops as well as to smaller local markets, Bergad has argued that, with the exception of a few areas and years, Minas no longer depended on African slave imports after 1780 to replenish the captaincy's slave labour force. Keywords: agricultural revival; Atlantic slave trade; Brazil's colonial economy; Brazilian commodity exports; gold mining; late eighteenth century

Archaeology · Colonialism · Economics · Economy · Geography · International trade · Macroeconomics · Supply and demand · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History of Colonial Brazil