THE BEGINNING OF COLONIAL BRAZIL 127
Janeiro, accompanied by their slaves and servants,
swarmed into the mining area. Their exodus from
the older regions caused an acute shortage of fi eld
hands that continued until the gold boom had run
its course by the middle of the eighteenth century.
The crown tried to stem the exodus by legislation
and by policing the trails that led to the mining
area, but its efforts were in vain. For two decades
(1700–1720), it had no success in asserting royal
authority and collecting the royal fi fth in the gold
fi elds. Violence between rival groups, especially
pioneers from São Paulo and European-born new-
comers, reached the scale of civil war in 1708. The
mutual weakening of the two sides as a result of
these struggles fi nally enabled the crown to restore
order.
In 1710 a new captaincy of “São Paulo and
the Mines of Gold” was established; in 1720 it was
divided into “São Paulo” and “Minas Gerais.” In
1729 wild excitement was caused by the discov-
ery that certain stones found in the area, hitherto
thought to be crystals, were in reality diamonds;
many adventurers, along with their slaves, turned
from gold to diamond washing. The great increase
in the supply of diamonds to Europe upset the mar-
ket, causing a serious decline in price. As a result,
the Portuguese government instituted a regime of
drastic control over the Diamantina (Diamond Dis-
trict) to limit mining and prevent smuggling and
thus maintain prices; this regime effectively iso-
lated the district from the outside world.
Like sugar production, the mineral cycle was
marked by rapid and superfi cial exploitation of
the new sources of wealth, followed by an equally
swift decline. Mining revenue peaked about 1760,
and thereafter both the river gold washings of
Minas Gerais and the Diamond District suffered a
progressive exhaustion of deposits. By 1809 the
English traveler John Mawe could describe the gold-
mining center of Villa Rica as a town that “scarcely
retains a shadow of its former splendor.”
Yet the mineral cycle left a permanent mark on
the Brazilian landscape in the form of new centers
of settlement in the southwest, not only in Minas
Gerais but also in the future provinces of Goias and
Matto Grosso, Brazil’s Far West, which was pen-
etrated by pioneers in search of gold. If the mining
camps became deserted, the new towns survived,
although with diminished vitality. The decline of
the mining industry also spurred efforts to promote
the agricultural and pastoral wealth of the region.
The shift of the center of economic and political
gravity southward from Pernambuco and Bahia to
Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro was formally rec-
ognized in 1763, when Rio de Janeiro became the
seat of the viceregal capital.
As the provinces of Minas Gerais and Goias
sank into decay, the northeast experienced a par-
tial revival based on increasing European demand
for sugar, cotton, and other semitropical products.
Between 1750 and 1800, Brazilian cotton produc-
tion made signifi cant progress but then declined
just as rapidly as a result of competition from the
more effi cient cotton growers of the United States.
The beginnings of the coffee industry—the future
giant of the Brazilian economy—also date from the
late colonial period.
Cattle raising also made its contribution to the
advance of the Brazilian frontier and the growing
importance of the south. The intensive agriculture
of the coast and the concentration of population in
coastal cities like Bahia and Pernambuco created a
demand for fresh meat that gave an initial impulse
to cattle raising. Since the expansion of planta-
tion agriculture in the coastal zone did not leave
enough land for grazing, the cattle industry inevi-
tably had to move inland.
By the second half of the seventeenth century,
the penetration of the distant São Francisco Valley
from Bahia and Pernambuco was well under way.
Powerful cattlemen, with their herds of cattle, their
vaqueiros (cowboys), and their slaves, entered the
sertão (backcountry), drove out the indigenous peo-
ples, and established fortifi ed ranches and villages
for their retainers. Such occupation was legitimized
before or after the fact by the offi cial grant of a huge
tract of land, a virtual feudal domain, to the cattle
baron in question, whose word became law on his
estate. The landowner’s cattle provided meat for the
coastal cities and mining camps, draft animals for
the plantations, and hides for export to Europe.
The cattle industry later expanded into the ex-
treme southern region of Rio Grande do Sul, which
was colonized by the government in the interests of