The history of slavery in Minas Gerais, Brazil, is unique in comparative perspective for two reasons. First, it may very well be the only large-scale Latin American or Caribbean slave system that successfully made the transition from monocultural export economic structures to a diversified economy oriented largely toward domestic markets. Through this transformation, slave labor not only remained a central aspect of economy and society, but the slave population steadily expanded. The first Brazilian national census of 1872 revealed that the province had more slaves than any other Brazilian region, and that the slave population had doubled since 1819. The dynamic of slave population growth is the second feature that makes the history of Minas slavery so extraordinary. Convincing documentary evidence indicates that the impressive demographic increase of Minas slaves during the nineteenth century was largely the result of natural slave reproduction, rather than imports via the African slave trade. There is no other known example of any large-scale Latin American and Caribbean slave society where this was the case, and this pattern was in all likelihood unique to the history of slavery in Brazil.

The discovery of extensive gold and diamond reserves in the late seventeenth century converted Minas Gerais into Brazil's most prosperous capitania and the colony's principal center of slavery during the first half of the eighteenth century.