Bandeirantes (explorers from São Paulo) discovered substantial gold deposits in the mountains of the interior, leading to the 'Minas Gerais' (General Mines) gold rush. This discovery shifted the economic center of gravity in colonial Brazil away from the coast. The gold boom funded Portuguese luxury and industrialization, while driving immense African slave imports to the mines.

The gold rush produced a uniquely colonial Brazilian literary culture, centered on the 'Escola Mineira' (Minas School) of poets. The most famous of these, Tomás Antônio Gonzaga, wrote lyric poetry while imprisoned for his role in the Inconfidência Mineira (Minas Conspiracy), a failed revolt against Portuguese taxes on gold. The tension between the beauty of the 'golden' landscape and the brutality of extractive slavery became a coded subtext in the neoclassical verse of the region, as seen in Gonzaga's 'Marília de Dirceu'.