From Conquest to Colony: Empire, Wealth, and Difference in Eighteenth-Century Brazil

Transformations in Portugal and Brazil followed the discovery of gold in Brazil’s hinterland and the hinterland’s subsequent settlement.

Although earlier conquests and evangelizations had incorporated new lands and peoples into the monarchy, royal officials now argued that the extraction of gold and the imperatives of rivalry and commerce demanded new approaches to governance to ensure that Brazil’s wealth flowed to Portugal and into imperial networks of exchange.