author

André João Antonil

1650–1716

An Italian Jesuit who made colonial Brazil vividly legible, he is best remembered for a landmark account of the country’s plantations, trade, and mining world. Writing under the name André João Antonil, he left behind one of the key books for understanding Brazil in the early 1700s.

1 Audiobook

Cultura e opulencia do Brasil por suas drogas e minas : com varias noticias curiosas do modo de fazer o assucar; plantar e beneficiar o tabaco; tirar ouro das minas, e descubrir as da prata; e dos grandes emolumentos que esta conquista da America Meridional da' ao Reino de Portugal, com estes, e outros generos, e contratos reaes

Cultura e opulencia do Brasil por suas drogas e minas : com varias noticias curiosas do modo de fazer o assucar; plantar e beneficiar o tabaco; tirar ouro das minas, e descubrir as da prata; e dos grandes emolumentos que esta conquista da America Meridional da' ao Reino de Portugal, com estes, e outros generos, e contratos reaes

by André João Antonil

About the author

Born Giovanni Antonio Andreoni in Lucca in 1649, he later became known by the pen name André João Antonil. He joined the Society of Jesus, trained in law, and moved to Salvador, Brazil, in 1681, where he spent the rest of his life.

Antonil is chiefly remembered for Cultura e Opulência do Brasil por suas Drogas e Minas, published in Lisbon in 1711. The book offers a detailed picture of colonial Brazil’s sugar economy, tobacco, cattle raising, and gold mining, and it remains an important source for readers interested in the period’s social and economic life.

He died in Salvador in 1716. Although little survives about his personal life in the modern biographical sense, his writing has endured because it captures the workings of colonial Brazil with unusual clarity and practical detail.