Paper short abstract:

Whale hunting was a Portuguese royal monopoly between 1614 and 1801 with an impact on economic, social, cultural and scientific levels. I intend here to make a revision about whaling in Brazilian shores, between the 17th and the 18th centuries, using different kinds of historical sources.

Paper long abstract:

The appropriation of natural elements within the Portuguese Expansion is well documented, namely in what concerns to plants and minerals. Sugar, tobacco, later gold and diamonds were natural valuable resources that, in many ways, acted as fuel for the colonization of the new world, and namely Brazil. Among them, but not so often studied, was the whale, a marine mammal that could be transformed into oil for a multitude of purposes. The whale was not per se a novelty, like other animals observed for the first time, but the quantity of whales probably was, in a region that we know now as being one breeding area for baleen whales. Given the abundance of this resource, and the need for oil to illumination and pitch production, it was soon understood that those whales should be exploited. Whaling in the Brazilian shores started, at least, in the beginning of the 17th century and was a royal monopoly from 1614 to 1801. The whale and its products were of major economic importance to the Portuguese crown and entrepreneurs. The activity had also a social impact considering slave work to perform the most difficult tasks, a cultural value since whaling techniques circulated between Europe and south Atlantic, and a scientific significance by observing and describing whales' behaviour and, somehow, its ecology. In this work I intend to make a revision about shore based whaling in Brazil, between the 17th and the 18th centuries, using different kinds of sources as cartography, iconography and written sources.