The "Government of the sertões and Indians": Aguardente, Sugar, and Indians in Colonial Amazonia (Seventeenth Century)

This article discusses the role played by the production of sugar and cane liquor (aguardente) in the seventeenth and early eighteenth-century Amazon region. It shows how the development of sugar production had a double significance: sugar plantations had to produce a commodity that could be exported so as to generate revenues for the Royal Treasury, but they also had to produce aguardente for domestic consumption (including by those Indians who worked for the Portuguese). This domestic production provoked distrust on the part of the Crown, since it was believed to threaten sugar production overall. Nevertheless, aguardente production became a central element in the Portuguese dominion of the sertões (or sertão, the hinterland), while continuing to increase the revenues of the royal treasury.