Emboabas' War

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Emboabas' War (Portuguese: Guerra dos Emboabas), was a war waged in the early 18th century between two generations of Portuguese settlers in the vice-kingdom of Brazil, then merely the Capitaincy of São Vicente.

Starting from the village of São Paulo dos Campos de Piratininga, the Bandeirantes had explored all of current Brazil, effectively taking advantage of the union of the Crowns of Portugal and Spain from 1580 to 1640 to incorporate all the former Spanish territories then west of the Tordesilhas Line, now part of Brazil. Their goal was to capture new Indian slaves -- this put them in conflict with the Jesuit Reductions --, recapture runaway slaves and mainly find precious metal and stones.

Their search was rewarded in a then-inaccessible area just north of their original Capitania that was to become Minas dos Matos Gerais. The problem was that the mines, if rich, were in a vast area they couldn't effectively settle, so it attracted a gold rush from Portugal. The new arrivers, called Emboabas after a local tree, found an alternative, shorter route to the sea, the Caminho Novo das Minas dos Matos Gerais to São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, at the Bay of Guanabara, bypassing and alienating the original discoverers.

The Bandeirantes, or simply Paulistas, tried to assert rights of precedence, but were defeated. As a result the provinces of Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro were formed, their capital cities of Vila Rica do Ouro Preto and São Sebastião do Rio de Janeiro, respectively, became the new centers of power in the vice-kingdom of Brazil. São Sebastião (later shortened to its present name of Rio de Janeiro) became the capital city of the vice-kingdom, later to become the capital too of the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves.