The main objective of this paper is to examine the reasons that led to the coinage of provincial currency in Brazil by local mints, between 1695 and 1702. Section 1 analyses the main features of the monetary circulation in Brazil during the second half of the seventeenth century. Section 2 describes the impacts of the Mint Law of 1688, including the so-called "money riots". Section 3 comments on the causes and consequences of the monetary scarcity as perceived by the colonial authorities in the early 1690's, as well as their proposals to overcome this problem. Section 4 presents a brief analysis of the workings of the mints. The final section summarizes the main arguments developed in the paper.
money; economic history; colonial Brazil