The need for good works in English on Brazil has been keenly felt by all who teach its history. Professor Boxer has been doing much to fill that need. This is a worthy addition to his other valuable studies.
Basing himself on the principal books and published documents, and on much archival material, and writing in an easy and readable style, he has admirably covered the period of Brazil’s gold rush. His work is the more valuable in that he has not rigidly confined himself to the 1695-1750 period given in his title, but has picked up the antecedents before 1695 and has carried through to the development of many events after 1750.
The structure of the book is essentially that used in standard histories. But Boxer’s work has a feature that is too seldom found: he interweaves skillfully the pertinent European, African, and Brazilian history. That Portugal’s domestic or European problems would have more to do with a decision affecting Brazil than the conditions needing attention in Brazil was often the case, but not often noted clearly by historians. Attention to this phase of Portuguese-Brazilian history, among other things, distinguishes Boxer’s book.
Beginning with what he calls the “Empire of the South Atlantic,” in which he examines the condition of Brazil in the latter part of the seventeenth century, he takes up in turn the gold rush to Minas, the rivalry of the Paulistas and Emboabas, the two French invasions of Rio de Janeiro in 1710 and 1711, the war of the Mascates in Pernambuco, 1710-1715, life in Bahia, Ouro Preto, and Diamantina, the cattle industry, the expansion of Portuguese boundaries to the south (Colonia do Sacramento) and to the west (Mato Grosso), and the penetration of the Amazon by missionaries and laymen. He concludes with an examination of Brazil at mid-eighteenth century.
He has also included valuable appendices showing commodity prices, the revenues of Minas Gerais, statistics on the Quinto (Fifth) and capitation taxes, a register of slaves in Minas, contracts and tolls in Minas, the cargoes of Brazilian fleets in 1749, tables of Portuguese money, weights, and measures, chronological tables showing the rulers of Portugal and of the various viceroys and captains of Brazil, biographical sketches of some of the interesting figures, a glossary, more than fifty pages of notes with supplemental material, and an ample bibliography.
All in all this book is not merely entertaining reading but will take its place as a standard reference. If some may question interpretations (this reviewer cannot accept the benevolence of Portuguese kings to the extent Boxer does), and if some may pick on small flaws or allow misprints to bother them, the worth of the book is but slightly damaged by those found by this reviewer. June 31 (instead of July 31) for the death of João V in 1750 (p. 293) may bother some, but to this reviewer adds piquancy. While such an error could easily escape a fallible historian, how did it go through undetected by several infallible, gimlet-eyed editors? Have they never heard “Thirty days hath September”?
