Brazil’s export economy is at this time…

Brazil’s export economy is at this time based primarily on a wood that yields red and purple dyes called pau-brasil (from which the country derives its name).

Brazil’s Portuguese settlers have engaged in cutting and shipping brazilwood since the 1520s.

The area around Pernambuco (now Recife) had been one of the first in Brazil to be settled by the Portuguese Crown.

João III of Portugal had divided Brazil into Hereditary Captaincies in 1534: realizing that they had no human or financial resources to invest in such a large and distant colony, the Portuguese had decided to assign this task to private entrepreneurs, called Donatários (this system had already been successful in the settlement of the Portuguese colonies in Africa).

Because of several problems, notably the lack of support from the Portuguese metropolis, most Captaincies failed.

One of the few to prosper has been the Captaincy of Pernambuco, which had been assigned to Duarte Coelho Pereira, the man who had founded Olinda in 1535 and become famous for expressing his enchantment with the beauty of the place, giving the name to the city, an anchorage that handles their exports of sugar and their imports.