Trade, Colonial Brazil

Colonial internal trade in Brazil was circumscribed by geographical, transport, financial, and administrative constraints; it was organized in regional systems focused on important plantation zones and their port cities. The export economy was the focus of both the colonial administration and most of the available merchant capital, and it tended to determine the transport routes. Small vessels carried high-bulk commodities along the coast, but the road network was so poor that overland trade was limited to self-transporting livestock and the relatively high-value, low-bulk goods that could be carried by human porters on mule trains (tropas) conducted by tropeiros.

Internal trade can be divided into three categories: (1) an extension of the export-import trades in which export commodities were funneled to coastal port cities and imports were distributed from the ports to communities on the coast and in the interior; (2) the internal labor trade in African, Afro-Brazilian, and Amerindian slaves; (3) the trading of commodities and livestock produced in Brazil to supply Brazilian cities and towns, export producers, and mining operations. This discussion will focus on the last category of internal trade. The extent and volume of colonial internal trade can be divided into four periods: pre-1700, 1700–1750, 1750–1808, and 1808–1822.

Before the inception of the mining industry at the end of the seventeenth century, internal exchanges were limited in extent. As the port cities and plantation zones, especially in the Northeast, increasingly experienced shortages of Brazil's staple food of manioc flour (farinha), specialized manioc-producing zones emerged within bays and on the coast, for example, at Maragogipe, Jaguaribe, Cairú, and Camamú to supply the Salvador region, and at Una, Porto Calvo, and Alagoas in Pernambuco.

In the Northeast from the 1590s on, livestock ranches were increasingly distanced from their markets in the plantation zones and ports, first along the coast to Paraíba, Rio Grande do Norte, and Sergipe, and then up the São Francisco River valley. Cattle were driven to fair towns on the edge of the plantation districts, to Santo Amaro, for example, which served the region of Salvador. Dried and salted beef (carne seca) was also sent from the cattle districts to feed plantation slaves and the urban poor. Similarly, Rio de Janeiro drew its supplies of cattle on the hoof from nearby pastures in its own captaincy. São Paulo, isolated in the first two centuries of colonization, slowly forged trading relationships with other parts of Brazil through commerce in flour, marmalade, and, especially in the first half of the seventeenth century, Amerindian slaves.

Between 1700 and 1750 the discovery of gold and later diamonds in Minas Gerais, Mato Grosso, and Goiás created new transport routes and internal trade networks. Some supplies and livestock intended for the coast were initially diverted to the new mining markets, but during the eighteenth century, cattle ranches extended into the interior near these markets. As the principal export port for gold, the city of Rio de Janeiro took on greater importance and became the focus for the expanded internal trade network of central, southeastern, and southern Brazil.

In order to control contraband, the government forbade the opening of new roads into the interior without permission and set up registers (registros) to tax livestock, slaves, and goods by weight as they passed from one captaincy to another. Traffic was further burdened by fees for river crossings (passagens). Effective settlement of southern Brazil began in this period, and this region became an important source of mules and cattle on the hoof for other captaincies.

After 1750, gold production began to decline, and coastal export agriculture also experienced a prolonged recession. In the 1790s, however, export production intensified and diversified in traditional plantation zones and expanded into some areas that had previously produced primarily for the internal market. This export resurgence created greater markets for livestock and other commodities, bringing more distant production areas into the internal trade network. As sugarcane replaced cattle in Rio de Janeiro's pastoral areas, southern Minas Gerais became a source of cheese, bacon, and cattle and pigs on the hoof for the Rio market. Beef on the hoof was also drawn from as far away as Rio Grande do Sul and São Paulo (including modern Paraná). A series of droughts in the northeastern interior decimated herds, opening markets for the new carne seca industry in Rio Grande do Sul in the late 1780s. Simultaneously, the same captaincy became an important source of wheat for Rio de Janeiro. Rio also began to draw supplies of farinha from distant coastal producers such as Santa Catarina in the south and Porto Seguro to the north. As export producers and city dwellers increasingly relied on the market to supply their wants, dried and salted fish, maize, beans, rice, other foodstuffs, and lumber from small coastal communities also found markets in the major cities and plantation zones.

The 1808 arrival of the Portuguese royal family in Rio de Janeiro brought an influx of population, setting off food price inflation and a construction boom. Salvador and other regional export centers also grew because of the expansion and diversification of export production. The government began to pay more attention to the internal economic development of Brazil, and internal trade began to attract merchant capital to a much greater degree than before. In particular, producers and merchants in southern Minas Gerais and Rio Grande do Sul were able to accumulate capital and develop a positive balance of trade by supplying other regions.

At the close of the colonial period, internal trade remained dependent on the export sector as the dynamic force in the economy, and continued to face daunting obstacles. Among the most important were the limited investment in road improvement and expansion, heavy tax burdens on overland trade, and shortage of capital.

See alsoCommercial Policy: Colonial Brazil; Slave Trade.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Charles R. Boxer, The Golden Age of Brazil (1962).

Maria Thereza Schorer Petrone, O Barão de Iguape (1976).

Maria Yedda Leite Linhares, História do Abastecimento (1979).

Alcir Lenharo, As tropas da moderação (1979).

Stuart B. Schwartz, Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society (1985), pp. 89-90, 435-436.

Leslie Bethell, ed., Colonial Brazil (1987), pp. 104-110, 113-114, 195-196, 199-200, 303-336.

Additional Bibliography

Baskes, Jeremy. Indians, Merchants, and Markets: A Reinterpretation of the Repartimiento and Spanish-Indian Economic Relations in Colonial Oaxaca, 1750–1821. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000.

Hill, Ruth. Hierarchy, Commerce and Fraud in Bourbon Spanish America: A Postal Inspector's Exposé. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.

Martínez Shaw, Carlos, and José María Oliva Melgar. Sistema atlántico español: Siglos XVII-XIX. Madrid: Marcial Pons Historia, 2005.

Mauro, Frédéric. Portugal, o Brasil e o Atlântico, 1570–1670. Lisbon: Editorial Estampa, 1997.

Mazzeo, Cristina Ana. Los comerciantes limeños a fines del siglo XVIII: Capacidad y cohesión de un elite, 1750–1825. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Dirección Académica de Investigación, 2003.

Pedreira, Jorge Miguel Viana. Estrutura industrial e mercado colonial: Portugal e Brasil (1780–1830). Lisbon: DIFEL, 1994.

Romano, Ruggiero. Mecanismo y elementos del sistema económico colonial americano, siglos XVI-XVIII. México: El Colegio de México, Fideicomiso Historia de las Américas: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 2004.

Stein, Stanley J., and Barbara H. Stein. Apogee of Empire: Spain and New Spain in the Age of Charles III, 1759–1789. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.

Stein, Stanley J. and Barbara H. Stein. Silver, Trade, and War: Spain and America in the Making of Early Modern Europe. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000.

Topik, Steven, Carlos Marichal, and Zephyr L Frank. From Silver to Cocaine: Latin American Commodity Chains and the Building of the World Economy, 1500–2000. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006.

Valle Pavón, Guillermina del. Mercaderes, comercio y consulados de Nueva España en el siglo XVIII. Mexico City: Instituto Mo, 2003.

                                            Larissa V. Brown