From Gold to Manioc: Contraband Trade in Brazil during the Golden Age, 1700–1750

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Acknowledgements

Various parts of this paper have benefitted from conference and seminar presentations. Thanks to Alan Gallay and the Center for Historical Research at Ohio State University and Karen Kupperman at the Atlantic Workshop of New York University for opportunities to present. Thanks also to Aaron Slater as well as Geoffrey Parker and the students from his fall, 2008, seminar in Colonial Latin American History at OSU for superb comments. The two readers’ reports on my first draft were enormously helpful.This work was supported (in part) by a grant from The City University of New York PSC-CUNY Research Award Program.

Notes

1. National Archives, London, State Papers (hereafter SP), 89/36, 301, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 29 September 1734.

2. Arquivo Municipal, Salvador (hereafter: AM), Seçào Cadeia, Condenações do Senado, 1730–1805, 100–1v.

3. For taxation in early-modern Portugal, see Hespanha (1989).

4. For this situation in Brazil, see Sampaio (2006, 73–96).

5. See Pinto (1979). For more recent works on the British factory: Francis (1985) and Shaw (1998). Neither deals primarily with Brazil.

6. For an elaborate typology of the concept of ‘hinterland,’ see: Russell-Wood (2002).

7. One of the best recent examples is Costa, Rocha and Souza (2003).

8. For a theoretical framework, see North (1991) and Mennard (1991).

9. The term ‘factory’ denotes a foreign resident merchant community with corporate privileges negotiated with the host country. The term is interchangeable with the word ‘nation’ in the early modern period.

10. 1750 marked the death of Portugal's long-serving monarch, João V. The subsequent rise of Sebastião José de Carvalho e Melo, the Marquis de Pombal, with his anti-British policy; the Lisbon earthquake of 1755; and the deteriorating production of Brazilian mines, spelled an end for this ‘golden age.’

11. SP 89/23, 246, Poyntz to Stanhope, 31 July 1715.

12. SP 89/26, 69, Copy of letter to Worsley, 1 August 1718.

13. SP 89/36, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 6 June 1732.

14. SP 89/30, Representation (copy) to the Portuguese King of the consuls of foreign nations residing in Lisbon, 87–92, 9 August 1722. British merchants had recourse to their own institutions, including a British ‘consul’ and a specially appointed Portuguese judge, the conservador. In practice, British merchants often behaved like Portuguese ones, relying on Portuguese institutions, including the Portuguese merchant courts in the customs house, to solve their disputes. This was a practice that brought complaints from the British envoy, but it demonstrated a strong level of integration of the British into the Portuguese merchant community, and the probable blurring over time of the distinction between ‘British’ and ‘Portuguese’ merchants. SP, 89/36, 40, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 22 September 1730; see also Shaw (1998, 65–66).

15. SP 89/35, 181, attachment to letter, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 26 June 1729.

16. SP 89/35, 196, Remarks on the Estimate of the British Trade, attachment to letter, Compton to Tyrawley, 26 July 1729.

17. See Shaw (1998, 115–17).

18. See Miller (2000, especially chapters 6 and 7).

19. For this practice in the context of earlier Dutch trade with Brazil: Ebert (2008, 101–4).

20. In early-modern practice, ships owners were usually distinct from those who hired their cargo space.

21. SP 89/30, 28, Lumley to Carteret, 31 May 1722.

22. Printed cotton cloth from India—the chief global supplier—was traded to the Americas during this period, but not monopolized by the British (Riello 2009).

23. SP 89/23, 212, Poyntz to Stanhope, 24 May 1715.

24. SP 89/30, 10, Lumley to Cartaret, late winter, 1722.

25. SP 89/36, 181, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 6 June 1732.

26. This is an assertion that occurs over and over in the British correspondence to London. One example here: SP 89/26, 31, Poyntz to Craggs, 21 May 1718.

27. Bahian tobacco was perhaps an exception. SP 89/35, 183–84, ‘An extract of the State of Trade between England and Portugal,’ 26 June 1729.

28. SP 89/29, 147, Worsley to Carteret, 29 September 1721. Various other letters in the subsequent two years deal with this matter, which led to a protracted diplomatic exchange.

29. SP 89/26, 31, Poyntz to Craggs, 21 May 1718.

30. Space does not admit of a thorough discussion of the problems of contraband trade of gold, which apparently could—and did—take place both in Brazil and Portugal. What this research suggests is that, even though taxes on gold production were high, there was some incentive to submit gold to coinage and pay the taxes (Costa et al. 2003).

31. This fact was also suggested by Pinto (1979).

32. Ships arriving from Brazil were meant to be very carefully searched. For the process of transporting gold on private accounts and a summary of the relevant rules see Russell-Wood (2000, 815).

33. SP 89/30, 59, Lumley to Carteret, 8 September 1722, and subsequent letters.

34. ‘Indeed if there was no other Method for us to send it home, this would be right, but we have our Packetts that go constantly, and Merchant Men, that usually attend this Lisbon Trade, … besides that the officers and even Sailors of these are so acquainted with the nature of the Place, that they know how to go about this Business privately and discretely, but Every Body knows that a Man of Warr, can have no other Business in life here, but to carry away Money, and generally go about it so awkwardly that I have often wondered they are not caught in the Fact. The Ships of newfoundland Station, constantly touch here in their Way home, how many Leagues it is out of their Way, I need not tell Your Grace.’ SP 89/36, 301, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 29 September, 1734.

35. Very many documents dealing with this incident are scattered throughout SP 89/36; see also McNeill (1985). 1734 and 1735 were years when British naval expenditures rose dramatically.

36. SP 89/36, 301, Tyrawley to Newcastle, 29 September 1734.

37. ‘We doe also further beg leave to lay before His Majesty, in relation to this Trade, that it will be necessary, that His Majesty would be pleased to give very strict directions, that none of His Majestys Ships of Warr or others, presume to carry any goods directly to the Brazils from Great Britain, which tho it may be advantageous to the particular persons concerned; is very mischievous & prejudicial to the Trade in general, & may be attended with very ill consequences.’ SP 89/23, 212, Poyntz to Stanhope, 24 May 1715.

38. A comprehensive study of Salvador's overseas trade in the colonial period is still lacking. Some earlier partial studies include: Lapa (1968); Verger (1968); Flory and Smith (1978); Kennedy (1973). Mattoso has studied Salvador's marketplace in the late colony and empire (Mattoso 1978, 1992). Schwartz has discussed problems of provisioning in the colony, but mostly in a late-colonial (post-1750) context. As he has noted, there is little work on peasant cultivators in the colony. He has made many of the same arguments about manioc scarcity in Salvador that I have made here, although, as mentioned, for a later time period (Schwartz 1992).

39. For excellent examples of the recent trend in the historiography see: Alencastro (2000); Adelman (2006); and Curto and Lovejoy (2004).

40. See Elliott (2006, 90). Virtually all of the European settlement cities had food crises in their formative stages, including those towns settled amidst pre-existing large indigenous peasant populations. Also, drought or epidemic could create occasional crises, but Salvador's problems seem to have been of a chronic nature.

41. The Santa Casa account books show this production in some detail. One example here of manioc planting expenses: Arquivo Histórico da Santa Casa da Misericórdia da Bahia, Salvador, Receita e Despesa, vol. 848, 101.

42. For taxes on sugar and a summary of the portuary fiscal system, see Ebert (2008, 39–44).

43. A recent summary of the role and composition of Portuguese overseas town councils is: Bicalho (2001).

44. Livros De Atas Da Câmara 1625–1765, 1: 42, 77–78, 316–17.

45. Livros De Atas Da Câmara 1625–1765, 1: 42, 77–78, 1: 5–9.

46. AM, Seção Tesouro, Livro de Arrematação das Rendas da Câmara, vol. 1: 49–57v.

47. Livros De Atas Da Câmara 1625-1765,VII: 236–37.

48. Livros De Atas Da Câmara 1625-1765, VII: 22–23, 37, 53, 127–29, 195, 239–40.

49. To give just one example of this: Livros De Atas Da Câmara 1625–1765, VII: 23.

50. This is the case in many of the Atas indicated in the notes above. In these years (1700–1705) that I am using to highlight the problem in general, much of the demand for manioc flour came from Minas, and the concern was for transshipment of the flour to Rio de Janeiro. Indeed, it took decades for the mines to develop their own productive hinterland.

51. Arquivo do Estado da Bahia, Salvador, Alvarás, no. 439, 1678–1702: 1–233.