Fuelwood in Colonial Brazil: The Economk and Social Consequences of Fuel Depletion for the Bahian Recôntavo, 1549–1820

Among the various tasks that constituted the daily routine of Brazil's sugar economy, collecting fuel from the colony's plentiful forests was among the most extensive. In addition to preparing land for planting, cutting cane at harvest, and refining it at the mill, African slaves through four centuries had the additional burden of gathering the crucial energy source that fuelled the sugar mill. This article is in part a study of that resource's depletion and of sugar production's detrimental effect on Brazil's Atlantic forest. But it is more immediately an examination of the impact that the forest's retreat had on the fortunes of the colonial capital, Bahia, located in northeastern Brazil.' Fuel's increasing scarcity increased labor and capital costs related to fuel supply, exacerbated elite social conflict, multiplied petitions to the Crown, and eventually dictated the adoption of more efficient firing technology. Moreover, activities that vied with the sugar mill's furnaces for fuel contributed to the contest, in which all colonists participated, for one crucial natural resource: wood.