Frontier of Expansion, Frontier of Settlement: Cacao exploitation and the Portuguese colonisation of the Amazon region (17th & 18th Centuries) Rafael Chambouleyron & Karl-Heinz Arenz

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The Amazon region was conquered by the Portuguese at the beginning of the 17^th century. From the 1640s onwards, the Portuguese “discovered” many forest products, known as “drogas do sertão” (spices from the hinterland, literally) and begun to incentivize settlers, missionaries and authorities to exploit them. This interest followed the decline of Portuguese domain in Asia, marked by the loss of the Oriental colonies and the control over its spices market. Thereupon, the Lusitanians saw the Amazon region as a substitute of India. The Amazonian spices, as well as the discovery of wild cacao trees in the vast hinterland, engendered the construction of an economy based on the exploitation of these forest products, using mainly Indian labour force for their gathering. Moreover, influenced by the success of the Spanish colonies in America, the Portuguese crown spurred the cultivation of cacao in an agricultural area close to one of the main cities of the region (Belém do Pará). Thus, from the late 17^th century onwards, cacao was both cultivated and extensively gathered by Indians for the settlers, clerics and authorities. The specificity of Amazonian cacao exploitation by the Portuguese connected its economic exploitation with the establishment not only of an internal frontier of settlement (by cultivation), but also with the expansion of the Portuguese dominion up the Amazon river. In fact, the gathering of cacao (as well as bark-clove, sarsaparilla and parsley) and the increasing demand of Indian slaves and free labourers, pushed the Portuguese westwards in the search of new supplies of spices and labour force. This paper analyses the connection between cacao exploitation and the construction of Portuguese Amazonian frontiers, in the late 17^th and first half of the 18^th centuries.

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