The colors of the conquest: dyeing products and indigo blue in Maranhão and Grão-Pará (17th Century)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to understand the Iberian conception about the dyeing products in the northern conquest of the Portuguese America - the Maranhão and Pará state – during the 17th century. It is to understand how Portuguese saw in the Amazonian dyeing products important genres to exploration and organized, from the 1670s, attempts to their processing, especially, of the indigo blue.