War of the Emboabas

The War of the Emboabas (Guerra dos Emboabas, lit. “war of the newcomers”) was an internal conflict in colonial Brazil fought between 1707 and 1709 over control of newly discovered gold fields in the interior of the Captaincy of São Vicente. It opposed, on one side, paulista bandeirantes—who had pioneered the exploration of the region and claimed priority or even exclusivity in exploiting the deposits—and, on the other, a heterogeneous group of outsiders from other Brazilian captaincies and from Portugal, pejoratively called emboabas.

The war unfolded in several mining districts of what would later become Minas Gerais, such as Sabará, Cachoeira do Campo and the Arraial Novo do Rio das Mortes. Among the paulistas, one of the main leaders was the former bandeirante Manuel de Borba Gato. The emboabas coalesced around figures such as the baiano landowner and miner Manuel Nunes Viana. The conflict ended with the victory of the newcomers and a decisive intervention by the Portuguese Crown, which reorganised the administration of the mining region and curtailed paulista predominance.

Traditionally interpreted as a regional civil war between “old settlers” and “newcomers”, the War of the Emboabas has attracted renewed historiographical interest as an episode that illuminates the formation of colonial elites, disputes over royal authority and the emergence of distinct regional identities in Portuguese America.