Slaves in the South of Minas Gerais: Aiuruoca in the last years of slaver

Abstract

Slavery in the South of Minas Gerais was concentrated in the activity at the domestic market, especially for the province of Rio de Janeiro. Aiuruoca was a link in this regional trade network. These activities employed large contingents of captives, but little is known about slavery in the municipality. The objective is to understand the profile of the captives and their property, as well as to analyze some trajectories in the struggle for freedom in the last decades of slavery in Aiuruoca. We use different primary sources, some of them new: the 1872 census, the post-mortem inventories and the slaves' classification lists for freedom from 1874 to 1880. To understand the evolution of the profile of the slaved population in the 1870s, we use the nominative lists from 1830.