Mapping the documentation referent to the legislative measures of the Portuguese Crown in aguardente production and trading in Brazil and in the African conquests (1640-1695)

• Grant number: 13/17509-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Master's degree
• Start date: December 02, 2013
• End date: March 01, 2014
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - History of Brazil
• Principal Investigator: Claudinei Magno Magre Mendes
• Grantee: Raphael Martins Ricardo
• Supervisor: Pedro Cardim
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Portugal
• Associated to the scholarship: 11/15119-8 - The cachaça on both side of the Atlantic: production, trade and prohibition(1640-1695), BP.MS

Abstract

As being in the middle of a clash of powers, motivated by divergent interests, it makes relevant the study and analysis of the documentation referent to the official measures taken by the Portuguese Crown, which regulated the production and consumption of aguardente during the seventeenth century, sometimes forbidding or releasing it. In this scenario were present the interests involved in the production and trade of Portuguese wine, the interests of slave traders, who used the cachaça as currency, the interests of small and medium producers and farmers, who saw in the cachaça a way of improving their social status, the interests of the lords of the mills, who were against the aguardente producers accused of consuming cane and firewood, supposedly diverting them from the mill. Factors that put the Crown in a delicate situation, since it depended on different sources of income it could not ally itself unconditionally to only one side. By positioning itself in favour to the prohibition of this drink´s production, the Crown would be defending the interests of the producers and traders of wine and sugar, ensuring, this way, their profits from these activities. On the other hand, would ultimately harm those who encountered in the production and trade of the drink one way out of difficulties that were arising from the decrease of the sugar trade during the second half of the seventeenth century, besides of compromise the growing trade established with the African commercial center after the expulsion of the Dutch, in which the cachaça was becoming the main currency for the purchase of slaves, who were vital to the operation of the mills. In this perspective, and within this timeline, we will work more emphatically with documentary collections that keep the Royal Letters, provisions, ordinances and other documents produced by the Portuguese Crown and that deal with the cachaça’s trade and production, as well as analyze the claims of those who positioned themselves for or against the continuation of this trade, through letters that were addressed to the royal authorities in the colonies and in the court. (AU)