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Brazilian sugar cycle

A sugar mill in colonial Pernambuco, by Dutch painter Frans Post (17th century).

The Brazilian sugar cycle, also referred to as the sugar boom or sugarcane cycle, was a period in the history of colonial Brazil from the mid-16th century to the mid-18th century. Sugar represented Brazil's first great agricultural and industrial wealth and, for a long time, was the basis of the colonial economy.

The cycle began in 1530, when sugarcane was introduced on the island of Itamaracá, off the coast of Pernambuco, by the colonial administrator Pero Capico.[1][2][3] With the creation of the hereditary captaincies, Pernambuco and São Vicente rose to prominence in sugar production, the latter being overtaken by Bahia after the establishment of the general government. In 1549, Pernambuco already had thirty sugar mills; Bahia, eighteen; and São Vicente, two. Sugarcane farming was prosperous and, half a century later, the distribution of the engenhos totaled 256.[4]

The production was based on the plantation system in which large farms were producing a single product. Their production was geared toward foreign trade and used slave labor composed of natives and Africans - whose trafficking also generated profits. The most productive sugar mills used African labor, while the smaller mills continued with the original indigenous labor.[5]

The senhor de engenho was a farmer who owned the sugar production unit. The main destination of Brazilian sugar was the European market.[6] Besides sugar, the production of tobacco and cotton also stood out in Brazil at that time.

Pernambuco, the richest of the captaincies during the sugarcane cycle, had impressed Father Fernão Cardim, who was surprised by "the farms larger and richer than those of Bahia, the banquets of extraordinary delicacies, the beds of crimson damask, fringed with gold and the rich bedspreads from India", and summarized his impressions in an anthological phrase: "Finally, in Pernambuco, one finds more vanity than in Lisbon". Pernambuco's opulence seemed to derive, as Gabriel Soares de Sousa suggests in 1587, from the fact that at that time the captaincy was "so powerful (...) that there are more than one hundred men in it that have from one thousand to five thousand cruzados of income, and some of eight, ten thousand cruzados. From this land, many rich men came to these very poor kingdoms". By the early 17th century, Pernambuco was the largest and richest sugar-producing area in the world.[7][8][9]

  1. ^ "Primeiros Engenhos do Brasil Colonial e o Engenho São Jorge dos Erasmos: Preliminares de uma Doce Energia". História e-história (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 18 October 2016. Retrieved 21 October 2016.
  2. ^ "O Maior Problema de Todos". Rolling Stone Brasil (in Portuguese). Archived from the original on 24 October 2020. Retrieved 30 April 2017.
  3. ^ "Um pouco de história". IBRAC (in Portuguese). Retrieved 29 October 2016.
  4. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica do Brasil Publicações Ltda (in Portuguese). Vol. 2. São Paulo. 1994. pp. 153–154.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  5. ^ Furtado (2000, pp. 7–10, 36)
  6. ^ Schwartz, Stuart B. "A Commonwealth within itself: The Early Brazilian Sugar Industry, 1550-1670". Revista de Indias. 115 (223). ISSN 0034-8341.
  7. ^ "Recife — cidade que surgiu do açúcar". Despertai! (in Portuguese). Retrieved 5 April 2015.
  8. ^ Hue, Sheila; Marcel Carvalho França, Jean (2014). Piratas no Brasil: As incríveis histórias dos ladrões dos mares que pilharam nosso litoral (in Portuguese). Globo Livros. p. 92. ISBN 978-8525058270.
  9. ^ Geraldo Silva, Luiz (2001). A Faina, a Festa e o Rito. Uma etnografia histórica sobre as gentes do mar (sécs XVII ao XIX) (in Portuguese). Papirus Editora. p. 122. ISBN 9788530806354.

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