Avenues for Research in Eighteenth-Century Portuguese Overseas History

Abstract

Early modern Luso-Brazilian history is in a rut; and nowhere is that rut more evident than for the period between the late seventeenth century and the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, the period of the Brazilian gold rush. The mineral strikes made a profound impact on Portugal's society and economy: in both what changed and what remained the same. Yet surprisingly, this era remains one of the least studied periods in Portuguese history. There is not, for example, even a modern biography of Dom Joao V, whose forty-five-year reign encompassed the gold rush's most glittering moments. In what follows I will argue that several widespread perceptions of the lack of sources for early modern Luso-Brazilian history are incorrect and in need of substantial revision; and further that some traditional explanations of eighteenth-century economic history have been based on inadequate research more dependent upon ideology than sound scholarship.