Slavery in the Shadows: Slaveholding Patterns and Slave Family in Grão-Pará, Brazil (1810-1888)

Author(s)

Daniel Souza Barroso

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2017-06-29

Examining board members

Jose Flavio Motta; Carlos de Almeida Prado Bacellar; Maisa Faleiros da Cunha; Luciana Suarez Lopes; Antonio Otaviano Vieira Junior

• Advisor: Jose Flavio Motta

Abstract

The socioeconomic relevance of African slavery in the Amazon was an issue in the many interpretations of the region\'s historical formation. From its complete disregard to a notion of premature loss of importance, the role of slaves in the nineteenth-century Pará economy remains in an opaque zone in historiography. This dissertation aims to examine slavery in Grão- Pará throughout the 19th century through a serial analysis based on probate inventories of two core economic and demographic elements of slavery: the slaveholding patterns and the slave family. Given the existence of a mutual conditioning between the economics and the demography of slavery, this study presents the thesis that the endogenous reproduction of slaves represented a primordial element for maintaining the economic importance of slavery in Grão- Pará throughout the 1800s, at least in the cases of the three regions of Pará privileged in this dissertation: the capital Belém and the leading agricultural spaces of Lower Tocantins and the Guajarina Zone. (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 12/21188-5 - Revisiting the economics and the demography of slavery in the nineteenth century Amazon: a study on the slaveholding and the slave family in Grão-Pará, Brazil (1801-1888)
• Grantee: Daniel Souza Barroso
• Support type: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate