The Slave Population in Pernambuco, Brazil, 1560-1872: A macrodemographic reconstruction

摘要

This paper exposes a demographic model to represent the evolution of the population of African slaves brought to the province of Pernambuco, Brazil, from 1560 to 1872, including their descendants. The main conclusion at this stage of the research is the confirmation that realistic combinations of mortality and fertility parameters, within the wide intervals acknowledged by the literature, do, in fact, generate populations in size and – more importantly – with the sex and age distributions uncovered in the first nation-wide census for Brazil, in 1872. Such combinations of parameters also reinforce the thesis that the slave trade was the main motor for the growth of the slave population and its descendants.