ABSTRACT
The chapter contextualises the port of Rio de Janeiro within the global history of mercantilist accumulation. Accordingly, the port played a central role in the integration of Brazil into world capitalism through the export of primary products, the import of manufactured goods and the trade of hundreds of thousands of enslaved Africans (about two million in three centuries). It received the highest number of enslaved Africans in the entire American continent, making it the largest market for slaves the world has ever known. Apart from satisfying the consumption needs of the city of Rio de Janeiro, which increased enormously when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred to Rio de Janeiro (1808–1821), the port functioned as a warehouse for humans to be resold in the remaining provinces of the Southeast and South of Brazil to work in the gold mines, in the coffee and sugar plantations and also as domestic workers.
