The Golden Age Of Brazil

In the Spanish colonies in South America, the discovery of precious metals occurred around
1545. In Brazil, despite all the yearnings of the Portuguese Court, the same happened only around
1695, in the region of the actual Minas Gerais. Nevertheless, the amount of gold present in Portuguese
colonies it was not as much as the Spanish ones. But we can still say that this event marks the
beginning of the golden age of Brazil, the period in which the gold played an important role not just in
the economic life of the colony, but also in the political and social experience of both Portuguese and
Brazilians.
Insofar as the exploration of gold took the scene in the regions of Mato Grosso, Goias and Minas
Gerais, in the beginning of the 18 th century, significant suits started to operate in the life of the colony.
The population movement towards Centro-Sul, for instance, did not came only from other regions of
Brazil, but also from other countries. Between the 18 th to the 19th century, more than 600.000 people
came to Brazilian lands in search of advantages related to the gold activity. The axis of colonial
administration also moved to the Centro-Sul, changing even the capital of Brazil from Salvador to Rio
de Janeiro, in 1763. By that time, the presence of the Portuguese authority reached a level never seen
throughout the colonial period, showing itself in the abusive taxes imposed over the gold exploration
which were known as Quinto and Capitação.
Brazil experienced the golden peak between 1733 to 1748, but, to the sadness of the Portuguese
administrators, all this gold would come to an end sooner or later – which happened in the final
decades of the 18th century. Two reasons explain why that happened so. First, the peculiarity of the gold
present in the Brazilian lands, known as ouro de aluvião. Sedimented in riverbanks along the years, it
was natural that this gold would come to its end sometime, specially after the truculent exploration held
by the government. The second reason was the sloppiness way which the exploration was undertaken.
Without any concern about the techniques used and how to develop it in order to elevate the mode of
production to a higher level, the activities around gold exploration never reached a degree that allowed
a most efficient kind of production.