The Brazilian Gold Rush
1946; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 3; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/978703
ISSN1533-6247
Autores Tópico(s)History of Colonial Brazil
Resumo“A’ meu Deos, como ouro mos, quereis castigar! Com ouro nos quereis castigar!” Frei Apolinário de Conceição, O.F.M., Primazia seráfica na regism da América (Lisboa, 1733), pp. 45-46. The news of the discovery of gold in Minas Gerais at the threshold of the eighteenth century spread like wildfire. Inebriated with the wealth which many thought would be perpetual, Brazil lived hours of rare exultation. “…those Mines,” wrote a former governor-general of Baía at the beginning of the eighteenth century, “are said to be so permanent that it will not be possible to exhaust them as long as the World lasts….” As early as 1697 the governor of Rio could write that the Caeté mines “extend in such a fashion along the foot of a mountain that miners are led to believe that [the extraction of] gold in that locality will be of great duration….” In the absence of more precise information, fantastic rumors became current. The new mining fields were of such dimensions, another contemporary affirmed, that they spread over the vast Brazilian hinterland. In 1709 the Overseas Council (Conselho Ultramarino) was willing to believe that the mines were the richest that had ever been discovered; the Council was certain that they would provoke the jealousy of foreign nations. After so many years of futile search Portugal had at length found another Potosí in the “most expansive heart of that world Emporium,” in that “resplendent diamond” of the finest quality which was Brazil.
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