A Forgotten Century of Brazilwood: The Brazilwood Trade from the Mid-Sixteenth to Mid-Seventeenth Century

• Autor(a) principal: Dodge,Cameron J. G.
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://scielo.pt/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S1645-64322018000100001
• topic: Brazilwood; economic history of Brazil; colonial Brazil; royal monopoly; Atlantic history

The brazilwood trade was the first major economic activity of colonial Brazil, but little research has examined the trade after the middle of the sixteenth century. This study describes the emergence of the trade and the subsequent changes that allowed it to overcome the commonly-cited reasons for its presumed decline within a century of its beginnings, namely coastal deforestation and a shrinking supply of indigenous labor. Examining the brazilwood trade on its own apart from comparisons with sugar reveals an Atlantic commercial activity that thrived into the middle of the seventeenth century.