How significant was it? How much did it affect Brazil, and does it continue to do so? Lastly, could anybody provide me with some good books or other sources that discuss this topic? Thanks very much.
Even if you can't answer the question but could point me in a direction to read about it, that would be awesome too!
The book I used in my undergradute studies in Economics could be useful for you. It's called "Formação Econômica do Brasil", written between 1948 (when the first draft, actually his thesis at Sorbonne, was written) and 1959 by Celso Furtado.
https://www.amazon.com.br/Economic-Growth-Brazil-Survey-Colonial/dp/0313244480
https://www.jstor.org/stable/3512626?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
Furtado talks about how Brazil was colonized, making the country basically a big plantation that exported raw products to Portugal and how other countries later filled in for Portugal in that economic relationship (the UK and then the US).
He wrote this book at first with the intention of presenting the Brazilian economy of his time (remember, 1948-1959) to outsiders, going all the way to how Brazil was colonized to show why the country's economy was the way it was.
HI! Could you clarify what you mean by resource expropriation? I am not exactly sure the term applies to colonial period in Brazil.