Leonor Freire Costa/Maria Manuela Rocha Merchant Networks and Brazilian Gold: Reappraising Colonial Monopolies 1. Introduction In 1737, the receiver-general of Cornwall stated that now and for many years past the importation of Portugal gold coin hath been so great in Cornwall that very little specie of any other kind is to be met with there (Boxer 1969: 469). Such a flow of Portuguese gold coins to England reveals much about the English balance of payments sur- plus with the Iberian Peninsula in general and with Portugal in particular. 1 The question has been dealt with recurrently in the historiography on the subject and is particularly crucial for analyzing the importance of Amsterdam and London in the trading of precious metals, for which there was already a global market in the 18 th century (Neal 1990; Flynn 1996). Since this same global market relied on monopoly rents deter- mined by the State, intended to grant access to strategic goods only to native-born merchants (Buchanan 1980; Ekelund/Tollison 1997), the remark made by the receiver-general of Cornwall underlines both the central importance of the English market and the contradictions gen- erated by such systems of colonial monopoly. Thus, fiscal systems built upon the exclusive right to colonial trade, together with the inte- gration of colonial spaces in international flows, gave rise to a tension that would make illegal trade and smuggling an integral component of the growth in international trade during the Ancien RØgime. This is also an issue that is fully explored by the historiography of the colo- nial empires. 2 However, it is still necessary to come down to the mi- croanalytical level and seek out the business organizations that some- times opposed and, on other occasions, made profitable use of that 1 For a survey of studies estimating the flows of precious metals and a discussion of available data, see Barrett (1999) and Oliva Melgar (2005). 2 See Canabrava (1944); Moutoukias (1988); Pijning (1997); Oliva Melgar (2005). brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by Institutional Repository of the Ibero-American Institute, Berlin