The gold rush and the Inconfidência Mineira
Gold strikes in Minas Gerais pull the colony's centre south and inland; a century later a plot against Portuguese taxes ends with the execution of Tiradentes, who becomes a republican martyr.
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- Brazil: Five Centuries of Change — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (2010)
In the 1690s bandeirantes from São Paulo found gold in the hills of what became Minas Gerais (“General Mines”), and diamonds followed in the 1720s. The rush was enormous: settlers poured in from Portugal and the coast, and hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans were brought to work the rivers and mines. Brazil became the world’s largest gold producer for much of the eighteenth century, and much of the gold flowed through Lisbon to pay for imports from Britain.
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
The wealth paid for the churches of Ouro Preto, Mariana and São João del-Rei, decorated by the sculptor Antônio Francisco Lisboa, “Aleijadinho”, the son of a Portuguese builder and an enslaved African woman, whose soapstone prophets at Congonhas are among the masterpieces of colonial American art.
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
As the gold ran out, Lisbon pressed harder for its royal fifth. In 1788–89 a group of local notables, poets and officers, inspired partly by the American Revolution, plotted a revolt and perhaps a republic. The plot was betrayed before it began. Most conspirators were exiled, but Joaquim José da Silva Xavier, a junior officer and part-time dentist nicknamed Tiradentes (“tooth-puller”), was hanged in Rio on 21 April 1792 and his body quartered. Forgotten for decades, he was turned into a Christ-like martyr by the republicans after 1889.
- A Concise History of Brazil — Boris Fausto and Sergio Fausto, Cambridge University Press (2014)
- Brazil: A Biography — Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling, Allen Lane (2018)
- Brazil: Five Centuries of Change — Thomas E. Skidmore, Oxford University Press (2010)
Why it matters today
The baroque towns of Minas Gerais, like Ouro Preto, are among Brazil's proudest heritage, and the day Tiradentes was hanged, 21 April, is a national holiday. The gold era also moved Brazil's centre of gravity to the southeast, where it still lies.