Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T05:26:31.220Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

After the Mining Boom: Demographic and Economic Aspects of Slavery in Mariana, Minas Gerais, 1750–1808

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 October 2022

Laird W. Bergad
Laird W. Bergad*
Affiliation:
Lehman College and Graduate and University Center, City University of New York
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

Slavery in the interior state of Minas Gerais has been a focal point of the voluminous historiography appearing on Brazilian slavery in the past twenty years. During the mineral boom of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, Minas was the key region of the colonial Brazilian economy and the largest slaveholding capitania. The older literature on Brazilian history recognized the centrality of slave labor to the eighteenth-century mining sector but concluded that as the mining boom waned after 1750, slavery began to disintegrate. The history of Minas Gerais after the boom was interpreted as a long period of economic stagnation accompanied by reversion to cattle raising and subsistence agriculture, slow demographic growth, and the transfer of the Mineiro slave population during the nineteenth century to the more dynamic coffee-growing areas in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.

Type
Research Article
Information
Latin American Research Review , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , 1996 , pp. 67 - 97
Copyright
Copyright © 1996 by the University of Texas Press

Footnotes

∗

I would like to thank the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and the Fulbright Commission for providing a research and teaching fellowship during the fall and winter of 1992–1993 at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais. I would also like to express my gratitude to Professor Douglas Cole Libby for his hospitality and cooperation during my stay. Kátia Napoleão, director of the Arquivo Histórico Casa Setecentista de Mariana, provided invaluable assistance in all phases of this project, particularly in deciphering eighteenth-century Portuguese and readying the inventarios for each day's research. Special thanks also to Elizabeth Botero, who helped me read the inventories from 1750 to 1800, and to Carlo G. Monti, Elizabeth de Freitas Neves, and Tereza C. P. Marcondes, who extracted the data for 1801 to 1808. I also want to thank Stanley Engerman and three anonymous LARR readers for their comments on the original draft of this article.

References

Alden, Dauril 1968 Royal Government in Colonial Brazil. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Alden, Dauril 1987 “Late Colonial Brazil, 1750–1808.” In BETHELL 1987, 284–343.Google Scholar
Alden, Dauril 1990 “Price Movements in Brazil before, during, and after the Gold Boom, with Special Reference to the Salvador Market, 1670–1769.” In JOHNSON AND TANDETER 1990, 335–71.Google Scholar
Alden, Dauril, AND Dean, Warren, EDS. 1977 Essays concerning the Socioeconomic History of Brazil and Portuguese India. Gainesville: University Presses of Florida.Google Scholar
Arruda, Jose JOBSON DE A. 1980 O Brasil no comércio colonial. São Paulo: Atica.Google Scholar
Barbosa, Barbosa WALDEMAR DE 1971 A decadência das minas e a fuga da mineração. Belo Horizonte: Imprensa da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais.Google Scholar
Barickman, B. J. 1994 “A Bit of Land, Which They Call Roça': Slave Provision Grounds in the Bahian Recôncavo, 1780–1860.” Hispanic American Historical Review 74, no. 4 (Nov.):649–87.Google Scholar
Bastide, Roger 1978 The African Religions of Brazil. Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Bergad, Laird W., Garcia, Fe IGLESIAS, AND Barcia, Maria DEL CARMEN 1995 The Cuban Slave Market, 1790–1880. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bethell, Leslie 1970 The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bethell, Leslie, ED. 1987 Colonial Brazil. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boxer, C. R. 1962 The Golden Age of Brazil, 1695–1750. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buescu, Mircea 1973 300 anos de inflação. Rio de Janeiro: APEC.Google Scholar
Cano, Wilson, AND Luna, Francisco VIDAL 1984 “La reproducción natural de los esclavos en Minas Gerais: Una hipótesis.” Revista Latinoamericana de Historia Económica y Social 4, no. 2 (1984):129–35. (published in Lima).Google Scholar
Cardoso, Fernando HENRIQUE 1962 Capitalismo e escravidão no Brasil meridional. São Paulo: DIFIL.Google Scholar
Chalhoub, Sidney 1990 Visões da liberdade: Uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na corte. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras.Google Scholar
Conrad, Alfred H., AND Meyer, John R. 1958 “The Economics of Slavery in the Antebellum South.” Journal of Political Economy 66 (Apr.):95–130.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Robert 1972 The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Conrad, Robert 1986 World of Sorrow: The African Slave Trade to Brazil. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press.Google Scholar
Costa, Costa EMILIA VIOTTI 1966 Da senzala à colônia. São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA 1979 Vila Rica: População (1719–1826). São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas.Google Scholar
Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA, Slenes, Robert W., AND Schwartz, Stuart B. 1987 “A familia escrava em Lorena.” Estudos Econômicos 17, no. 2:245–95.Google Scholar
Dean, Warren 1976 Rio Claro, A Brazilian Plantation System, 1820–1920. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Dornas FILHO, JoÃO 1957 O ouro das gerais e a civilização da capitania. São Paulo: Editora Nacional.Google Scholar
Eltis, David 1987 Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Peter 1974 The Sugar Industry in Pernambuco, 1840–1910. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Engerman, Stanley L. 1967 “The Effects of Slavery upon the Southern Economy: A Review of the Recent Debate.” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, 2d ser., Vol. 4, no. 2 (1967):71–97. Reprinted in Did Slavery Pay? Readings in the Economics of Black Slavery in the United States, edited by Hugh G. J. Aitken. Boston, Mass.: Houghton Mifflin, 1971.Google Scholar
Evans, Robert JR. 1962 “The Economics of American Negro Slavery, 1830–1860.” In Aspects of Labor Economics, edited by Universities-National Bureau Committee for Economic Research, 185–243. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert WILLIAM, AND Engerman, Stanley L. 1974 Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert WILLIAM, AND Engerman, Stanley L., EDS. 1992a Without Consent or Contract: Markets and Production, Technical Papers. Vol. 1. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Fogel, Robert WILLIAM, AND Engerman, Stanley L., EDS. 1992b Without Consent or Contract: Conditions of Slave Life and the Transition to Freedom, Technical Papers. Vol. 2. New York: Norton.Google Scholar
Freyre, Gilberto 1966 The Masters and the Slaves. Translated by Putnam, Samuel. New York: Knopf (originally published in 1933).Google Scholar
Furtado, Celso 1965 The Economic Growth of Brazil. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Gorender, Jacob 1980 O escravismo colonial. São Paulo: Atica.Google Scholar
Goulart, Mauricio 1975 Escravidão africana no Brasil (das origens a extinção do tráfico). São Paulo: Alfa-Omega (originally published in 1950).Google Scholar
Gutierrez, Horacio 1987 “Demografia escrava numa economia não exportadora: Paraná.” Estudos Econômicos 17, no. 2:297–314.Google Scholar
Gutierrez, Horacio 1988 “Crioulos e Africanos no Paraná, 1798–1830.” Revista Brasileira de História 8, no. 16:161–88.Google Scholar
Higgins, Kathleen JOAN 1987 “The Slave Society in Eighteenth-Century Sabará: A Community Study in Colonial Brazil.” Ph.D. diss., Yale University.Google Scholar
Iglesias, Francisco 1958 A economia política do governo provincial mineiro, 1835–1889. Rio de Janeiro: Ministério da Educação e Cultura.Google Scholar
INSTITUTO BRASILEIRO DE GEOGRAFIA E ESTADISTICA 1990 Estadísticas históricas do Brasil: Series económicas, demográficas e sociais, 1550 a 1988. Rio de Janeiro: IBGE.Google Scholar
Johnson, Harold B. JR. 1973 “A Preliminary Inquiry into Money, Prices, and Wages in Rio de Janeiro, 1763–1823.” In The Colonial Roots of Modern Brazil, edited by Alden, Dauril, 231–83. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Johnson, Lyman L., AND Tandeter, Enrique, EDS. 1990 Essays on the Price History of Eighteenth-Century Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Karasch, Mary C. 1987 Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Kiernan, James PATRICK 1976 “The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Paraty, 1789–1822.” Ph.D. diss., New York University.Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert S. 1984 “The Population of Minas Gerais: New Research on Colonial Brazil.” Latin American Population History Newsletter 4, nos. 1–2:3–10.Google Scholar
Libby, Douglas COLE 1988 Transformação e trabalho em uma economia escravista: Minas Gerais no século XIX. São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Libby, Douglas COLE 1991 “Proto-Industrialisation in a Slave Society: The Case of Minas Gerais.” Journal of Latin American Studies 23, pt. 1 (Feb.):1–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lima JUNIOR, Augusto DE 1943 A Capitania das Minas Gerais. Rio de Janeiro: Zélio Valverde.Google Scholar
Lima JUNIOR, Augusto DE 1945 História dos diamantes nas Minas Gerais. Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro: Dois Mundos.Google Scholar
Lima JUNIOR, Augusto DE 1978 A Capitania das Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL 1981 Minas Gerais: Escravos e senhores. São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Cano, Wilson 1985 “Economia Escravista em Minas Gerais.” Cadernos IFCH-UNICAMP no. 10 (Oct.):2–12.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA 1973 “Ocupação, Povoamento e Dinâmica Populacional.” In Minas colonial: Economia e sociedade. São Paulo: Fundação Instituto de Pesquisas Econômicas.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA 1979 “Algumas características do contingente de cativos em Minas Gerais.” Anais do Museu Paulista 29:79–97.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA 1982 Minas colonial: Economía e sociedade. São Paulo: Instituto de Pesquisas Económicas.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Costa, Iraci DEL NERO DA 1984 “Demografia histórica de Minas Gerais no período colonial.” Revista Brasileira de Estudos Políticos, no. 58:15–61.Google Scholar
Luna, Francisco VIDAL, AND Klein, Herbert S. 1991 “Slaves and Masters in Early-Nineteenth-Century Brazil: São Paulo.” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 21, no. 4 (Spring):549–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mansuy-DINIZ SILVA, Andree 1987 “Imperial Re-organization, 1750–1808.” In BETHELL 1987, 244–83.Google Scholar
Martins, Roberto BORGES 1980a “Growing in Silence: The Slave Economy of Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais, Brazil.” Ph.D. diss., Vanderbilt University.Google Scholar
Martins, Roberto BORGES 1980b A economia escavista de Minas Gerais no século XIX. Belo Horizonte: CEDEPLAR.Google Scholar
Martins, Roberto BORGES 1994 “Minas e o tráfico de escravos no século XIX, outra vez.” Texto para Discussão no. 70. Belo Horizonte: UFMG and CEDEPLAR.Google Scholar
Martins FILHO, Amilcar, AND Martins, Roberto BORGES 1983 “Slavery in a Non-Export Economy: Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais Revisited.” Hispanic American Historical Review 63, no. 3 (Aug.):537–68.Google Scholar
Martins FILHO, Amilcar, AND Martins, Roberto BORGES 1984 “Slavery in a Non-Export Economy: A Reply.” Hispanic American Historical Review 64, no. 1 (Feb.):135–46.Google Scholar
Mathias, Herculano GOMES 1969 Um recenseamento na Capitania de Minas Gerais (Vila Rica 1804). Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional.Google Scholar
Matos, Raimundo JOSE DA CUNHA 1979 Corografia histórica da provincia de Minas Gerais (1837). 2 vols. Belo Horizonte: Imprensa Oficial.Google Scholar
Mattoso, Katia M. DE QUEIROS 1989 To Be a Slave in Brazil. Translated by Goldhammer, Arthur. Rutgers, N.J.: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Mattoso, Katia M. DE QUEIROS, Klein, Herbert S., AND Engerman, Stanley L. 1986 “Trends and Patterns in the Prices of Manumitted Slaves: Bahia, 1819–1888.” Slavery and Abolition 7, no. 1 (May):59–67.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Maxwell, Kenneth 1973 Conflicts and Conspiracies: Brazil and Portugal, 1750–1808. Cambridge: Cambridge University PressGoogle Scholar
Mello, Pedro C. De 1977 “The Economics of Labor in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1850–1888.” Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago.Google Scholar
Mello, Pedro C. De 1992a “Rates of Return on Slave Capital in Brazilian Coffee Plantations, 1871–1881.” In FOGEL AND ENGERMAN 1992a, 63–79.Google Scholar
Mello, Pedro C. De 1992b “Expectation of Abolition and Sanguinity of Coffee Planters in Brazil, 1871–1881.” In FOGEL AND ENGERMAN 1992b, 629–46.Google Scholar
Mello E Souza, Laura De 1982 Desclassificados do ouro: A pobreza mineira no século XVIII. Rio de Janeiro: Graal.Google Scholar
Miller, Joseph C. 1992 “The Numbers, Origins, and Destinations of Slaves in the Eighteenth-Century Angolan Slave Trade.” In The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies, and Peoples in Africa, the Americas, and Europe, edited by Inikori, Joseph E. and Engerman, Stanley L., 77–116. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Motta, Jose Flavio 1988 “A família escrava e a penetração do café em Bananal (1801–1829).” Revista Brasileira de Estudos de População 5:71–101.Google Scholar
Nishida, Mieko 1993 “Manumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808–1888.” Hispanic American Historical Review 73, no. 3 (Aug.):361–91.Google Scholar
Paiva, Clotilde Andrade, AND Libby, Douglas Cole 1992 “The Middle Path: Alternative Patterns of Slave Demographics in Nineteenth-Century Minas Gerais.” In El poblamiento de las Américas, 3 vols., 1:185–232. Veracruz, Mexico: International Union for the Scientific Study of Population.Google Scholar
Pinto, Virgilio Noya 1979 O ouro brasileiro e o comércio anglo-português. São Paulo: Editora Nacional.Google Scholar
Reis, JoÃO Jose 1986 Rebelião escrava no Brasil: A história do levante dos malês (1835). São Paulo: Brasiliense.Google Scholar
Rodrigues, Raymundo Nina 1932 Os africanos no Brasil. São Paulo: Editorial Nacional.Google Scholar
Russell-Wood, A. J. R. 1982 The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil. New York: St. Martin's.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell-Wood, A. J. R. 1987 “The Gold Cycle, 1690–1750.” In BETHELL 1987, 190–243.Google Scholar
Saint-Hilaire, Auguste De 1975 Viagem pelas provincias do Rio de Janeiro e Minas Gerais. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1974 “The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia, 1684–1745.” Hispanic American Historical Review 54, no. 4 (Nov.):603–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1985 Sugar Plantations in the Formation of Brazilian Society: Bahia, 1550–1825. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Schwartz, Stuart B. 1992 “Recent Trends in the Study of Brazilian Slavery.” In Schwartz, Slaves, Peasants, and Rebels: Reconsidering Brazilian Slavery, 1–38. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Slenes, Robert W. 1976 “The Demography and Economics of Brazilian Slavery, 1850–1888.” Ph.D. diss., Stanford University.Google Scholar
Slenes, Robert W. 1985 “Os múltiplos de porcos e diamantes: A economia escravista de Minas Gerais no século XIX.” Estudos Econômicos 18, no. 3 (Sept.-Dec.):449–507.Google Scholar
Steckel, Richard H. 1992 “Children and Choice: A Comparative Analysis of Slave and White Fertility in the Antebellum South.” In FOGEL AND ENGERMAN 1992b, 369–92.Google Scholar
Stein, Stanley J. 1957 Vassouras, a Brazilian Coffee County, 1850–1890. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Toplin, Robert Brent 1972 The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil. New York: Atheneum.Google Scholar
Vasconcelos, Diogo De 1974 História antiga das Minas Gerais. 3 vols. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Verger, Pierre 1987 Fluxo e refluxo: Do tráfico de escravos entre o Golfo do Benin e a Bahia de Todos Os Santos dos séculos XVII a XIX. São Paulo: Corrúpio (originally published in French in 1968).Google Scholar
Von Eschwege, W. L. 1979 Pluto brasiliensis. 2 volumes. Belo Horizonte: Itatiaia.Google Scholar
Woodman, Harold D., ED. 1966 Slavery and the Southern Economy. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World.Google Scholar
Zemella, Mafalda P. 1951 O abastecimento da Capitania das Minas Gerais no século XVIII. São Paulo: Universidade de São Paulo.Google Scholar