The slave society in eighteenth-century Sabara: A community study in colonial Brazil.

摘要

This dissertation addresses the nature of the slave society which developed in the mining region of colonial Brazil, especially in one sub-region known as the comarca of Sabara. During the eighteenth century, Portuguese and Brazil-born miners extracted gold from the auriferous streams and rivers of Minas Gerais by exploiting African slave laborers. These laborers served not only in the extractive process itself, but also worked in the numerous commercial and artisanal positions generated by the development of small urbanized mining communities. The nature and profitability of gold-mining, the economic diversity of urban life, and the frontier setting of this mining community are all factors which contributed to the unique opportunities for slave autonomy in this society. The ability of slaves to earn and spend an income tended to blur the divisions between slaves and the population of free poor in the comarca and contributed to the potential ending of their captivity altogether. The demographic characteristics of the free population also allowed for the blurring of lines separating masters and slaves as allegiances could emerge when free men sought slave women as concubines and often recognized the paternity of their mixed-race progeny. Both the economic and demographic sources of slave autonomy in Sabara are reflected in the results of a quantitative analysis of manumissions which also demonstrates that the practice of freeing slaves changed in relation to the rise and decline of the gold-mining economy. The conflicts between colonial officials and slave holding miners also contributed to the "licentious liberty" enjoyed by captives in Sabara since slaves took advantage of the lack of unity among masters and the relative inability of the colonial administration to govern even the slaveholders in this captaincy.