“The Barbarians War”: Colonization and Indigenous Resistance in Brazil (1650–1720)

Abstract

In the second half of the seventeenth century, the expansion of the economy and of colonial frontiers in the captaincies to the north of the Estado do Brasil led to new zones of contact and friction with Indigenous populations. The tensions were exacerbated by the outcomes of the Dutch-Portuguese War (1630–1654), which irreversibly involved a large number of Indigenous populations. From 1651 to 1704, the sertão was the stage of numerous conflicts between Indigenous groups and Portuguese Brazilians. These conflicts were collectively known as Guerra dos Bárbaros, that is, the “Barbarians’ War”. This text seeks to understand this process, considering how the Portuguese settlers and the monarchy interpret the Indigenous war, as well as analyzing the Indigenous strategies of resistance to colonization.