Strategies of small farmers of color to meet the challenge of expanding slave-based sugar plantations Campinas: 1779-1836

Author(s)

Laura Candian Fraccaro

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2018-09-21

Examining board members

Robert Wayne Andrew Slenes; Henrice Altink; Rafael de Bivar Marquese; Aldair Carlos Rodrigues; Carlos de Almeida Prado Bacellar

• Advisor: Robert Wayne Andrew Slenes

Abstract

The expulsion of small farmers in frontier market by major export-oriented slave masters is a classic subject in Brazilian historiography. Nevertheless, there are few studies of Social History which seek to address the issue, and fewer that try to focus the analysis on the perspectives and strategies of smallholders. This paper aims to do this, using the township of Campinas, São Paulo State, at the turn of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth as a case study. The research methods of micro-history and nominative record linkage chosen on this research allow to reconstruct the biographies of individuals and kin groups, to sense their economic and social strategies. The township of Campinas, called Villa de San Carlos between 1797 and 1842, went through a very fast and intense growth in the last decades of XVII. The free population, between 1789 and 1801, had an impressive growth of around 18 % per year. This constant population growth of Campinas had a sudden change in the period between 1814-1829. The population in this period remained virtually stagnant, revealing a very different scenario of growth presented years before. The rapid expansion of sugar production, concentrated in slave properties dedicated to this crop, indicates that such farms invaded the lands of many families, causing a large exodus. This research aims to study the relationship between the free small producers, especially those of color, and the expanding sugar production plantations, seeking the strategies outlined by these small farmers due the prospect of having their land "expropriated" by the lords of those developments. This research will look for the meaning of the small productions for those smallholders and the chances of survival or even enrichment in a plantation economy society. The period 1779-1836 was chosen because it includes the previous expansion of sugar production time and extends to the Lists of Inhabitants, when the township of San Carlos has presented itself as a significant exporter of sugar. The nominative record linkage method purpose is to follow over the years and on all kinds of documentation, food producers described as farmers of color in the census so that we can analyze the strategies designed at different periods of the expansion of plantation. Their households, also described in the census, will be followed over the years so that any changes in their compositions are analyzed and related to other documentation (AU)

• FAPESP's process: 14/01016-0 - Strategies of small farmers of color to meet the challenge of expanding slave-based sugar plantations: Campinas, 1779-1836
• Grantee: Laura Candian Fraccaro
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Doctorate