author

José de Sá Bettencourt

d. 1828

An Enlightenment-era Brazilian writer and naturalist, he wrote practical studies on agriculture and mineral resources at a time when science was closely tied to colonial reform. His surviving work offers a vivid glimpse of late eighteenth-century Bahia and the economic questions that shaped it.

1 Audiobook

Memória sobre a plantação dos algodões e sua exportação sobre a decadencia da lavoura de mandiocas, no termo da villa de Camamú, Comarca dos Ilhéos, Governo da Bahia

Memória sobre a plantação dos algodões e sua exportação sobre a decadencia da lavoura de mandiocas, no termo da villa de Camamú, Comarca dos Ilhéos, Governo da Bahia

by José de Sá Bettencourt

About the author

Born in Caeté in 1752 and dead in 1828, José de Sá Bettencourt Accioli was educated at the University of Coimbra, where he studied natural sciences and philosophy. Sources describe him not only as an author, but also as a naturalist connected to official scientific work in Portuguese America.

He is best known in the book record here for Memória sobre a plantação dos algodões, a study centered on cotton cultivation, export, and the decline of cassava farming in the Camamu region of Bahia. The work shows his interest in careful observation and in the practical use of knowledge for agriculture and local development.

Biographical sources also link him to government commissions in Bahia, especially mineralogical investigations and the inspection of saltpeter mines. Even in a brief surviving profile, he comes across as part of a generation of Luso-Brazilian men of letters who moved between science, administration, and writing.