Sugar and metals as commodity money in colonial Brazil

Fernando Lima

No 10013, Working Papers from Economic History Society

Abstract: "It has often been suggested that sugar was adopted as commodity money in colonial Brazil because of the limited circulation of metallic currency. This suggestion is correct in the sense that sugar might be considered commodity money insofar as its price was officially set and that it was made legal tender by the colonial authorities. So, sugar became “the objective standard that must correspond to the money of account”, fitting the definition of commodity money given by Keynes. The suggestion is also correct in the sense that shortages of cash occurred, particularly in the second half of the 17th century, not only in Brazil but also in Portugal. However, I believe that is not correct to say that sugar played the role of means of payment in colonial Brazil because of the shortage of coins. Contemporary documents revealing complaints from colonists about the shortage of hard currency may have led most historians to establish a direct link between the lack of coins and the adoption of sugar as means of payment. Instead, I argue that the monetary use of sugar should be understood mainly as a political artifice available to the colonial authorities for the purpose of mediating conflicts between, on the one hand, the owners of the sugar mills and sugarcane planters and, on the other hand, the metropolitan merchants and their agents. The paper begins with a brief description of the means of payment available in the 16th and 17th centuries in Brazil, followed by a review of the literature on possible reasons for the lack of hard currency in that period. Subsequently it presents a chronological account of Brazil’s monetary situation during the 17th century, while discussing the motivations of the colonial authorities in regard to the adoption of sugar as a means of payment. I emphasize three particular instances throughout the period: the mid-1610s, when sugar, possibly for the first time, was imposed as legal tender; the early 1640s, when the first of the several enhancements of the money that characterized the second part of the century took place; and the late 1680s and early 1690s, when the colony implemented the monetary law of August 4 1688 in the midst of a deep economic crisis."

JEL-codes: N00 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010-03
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