Expansion of Brazil's Sugar Economy in the 1610s

Name: Expansion of Brazil's Sugar Economy in the 1610s
Start: 1610
End: 1619

Type Event Region South America Time 1610–1619

In the 1610s, Portuguese colonial sugar plantations in Brazil (especially Pernambuco and Bahia) kept expanding, black slave imports rose, and engenho…

Timeline

1610–1619Pernambuco · Pernambuco StatePortuguese and Creole planters built or expanded engenhos in the Pernambuco river valleys, introducing more efficient crushing and refining equipment; sugar cultivation advanced inland, forming a coastal sugar belt.
1610–1619Bahia—Salvador · Bahia StateAs indigenous corvée labor declined due to epidemic disease and flight, planters increasingly relied on African slaves imported from Angola, Congo, and elsewhere, tightly binding the slave market to the sugar industry.
1610–1619North Atlantic trade network · Transoceanic tradeBrazilian sugar was transshipped via Lisbon or shipped directly to Northern Europe; Dutch West India Company merchants intervened in the supply chain with credit and shipping, sharpening conflict with Portuguese monopoly rights and paving the way for the Dutch occupation of Pernambuco in the 1630s.

Sources

Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 — Richard S. Dunn (1972)
African Slavery in Latin America and the Caribbean — Herbert S. Klein (1986)