Brazilian gold rush

The first great gold rush of the modern era began in the 1690s in the mountains of Minas Gerais, and it ran on forced labor: about 500,000 enslaved Africans were brought into the region. Its showpiece, Vila Rica, later renamed Ouro Preto, served as the capital of Minas Gerais from 1720 to 1897 and is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Read it first if you want to compare rushes. This is the one where gold built a whole colonial society of churches, towns and roads rather than a frontier camp, and the one where the human cost is hardest to look past.