O mundo dos negócios na América portuguesa no início do século XVIII : Antonil e Francisco Pinheiro

Abstract

In this work, we analyze the business world in the Portuguese America in the early 18th century. We intend to understand the dynamics of mercantile activity, the demands and obstacles that traders and sugar producers faced. In other words, we studied what the Jesuit André João Antonil and the merchant Francisco Pinheiro considered being necessary to succeed in the market. Our sources are the work Cultura e Opulência do Brasil por suas Drogas e Minas, by Antonil; and the letters exchanged between the Portuguese merchant Francisco Pinheiro and his emissaries, who are gathered in the book Negócios Coloniais, organized by Luis Lisanti Filho. Both, Antonil and Pinheiro, sought, among other things, to guide individuals who would become involved in commercial activities in Brazil. Antonil wrote to those who wished to become masters of sugar mills and Pinheiro to their commercial representatives, who came to establish business in the colony. Our hypothesis is that the search for wealth production through labor was a common ideal between Antonil and Francisco Pinheiro. In this way, this search based the perception of these subjects on the business and the orientations to their receivers. Through the study of Antonil and Pinheiro, we observed that an ethic of mercantile character based certain social relations in that context. In the course of the dissertation, we investigated some questions, such as: A) the influence of the Catholic religion on the life and perception of the subjects analyzed about the business. B) The insertion of these subjects into a hierarchical and aristocratic society. C) The interrelationship between the market and politics. D) The presence of a bourgeois morality in their ideals. D) The relationship of commerce with civility and cordiality. As theoretical contributions, we use Jacques Le Goff. According to him, a document is not a simple source of information, but it is imbued with the intentionalities of those who produced it; and Norbert Elias, for whom human actions and behaviors need to be understood from the set of relationships established between individuals.