Abstract
This article analyzes the North American whaling expansion that took place between the late eighteenth century and the first half of the nineteenth, towards the Brazilian coast. Sources have been scrutinized in two New England archives and museums, the Mystic Sea Port and the Whaling Museum. In the first, we refer to whaling relations that occurred between the second half of the eighteenth century until 1920. We also listed separate documents, letters of sailors and commanders, boat relations and information about the ports of the region. At the Whaling Museum we analyze Brazil travel logbooks, nautical charts, maps and single sources. In the New Bedford Gazette, we collected information on expeditions from 1843 to 1845 to the Brazilian coast, the balances of whale oil production, sperm whale sperm, and whale bones. Names of commanders, boats and directions of each of them were analyzed. As a result, we present the number of whales and cetaceans slaughtered on the Brazilian coast, the results of production and how the American whaling industry stood out in a state of affirmation of capitalism and economic globalization.
Keywords
Whaling; capitalism; industrialism; slavery; sperm