Grão Pará and Maranhão Company

The company greatly increased the volume of trade in Grão-Pará and Maranhão, though after the Marquis of Pombal fell from power Queen Maria I ordered it to be shut down in 1778.

Local elites in Brazil quickly grew to resent the monopoly granted to the company, which the Marquis of Pombal ignored out of a desire to protect his economic interests in the region.

Company merchant ships would leave the colonial settlement of Belém to engage in the triangular trade, transporting rice, cotton, cocoa, ginger, wood, medicinal plants and enslaved Africans between Brazil, Africa and Portugal.

In 1773-4, corrupt company agents played a prominent role in aggravating a deadly famine in Cape Verde, selling scarce food to passing ships for personal profit.

[8] After the death of King Joseph I of Portugal in 1778 and the subsequent fall of the Marquis of Pombal from political power, a period in Portuguese history known as the Viradeira began.