"Licentious
Liberty" in a Brazilian
Gold-Mining Region Slavery, Gender, and Social Control in Eighteenth-Century
Sabara, Minas Gerais
Kathleen J. Higgins
1999 | 6 x 9 inches
History
Hardback: Out of Stock
ISBN: 978-0-271-01910-9
Paperback: $29.00 SH
ISBN: 978-0-271-03270-2
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To
studies of Brazilian slavery this book adds a new dimension by showing
how it developed in a region where mining was the chief commercial
activity and how important a role gender played in this frontier setting
in creating opportunities for slaves to achieve some measure of autonomy,
compared with slaves who worked in sugar-cane and coffee-growing areas.
The interactions among masters, slaves, and royal officials were
profoundly shaped by the accessibility and widespread dispersal
of gold deposits, the emergence of small urban centers in which
commercial activities thrived, the sexual division of labor among
slaves working in mining and commerce, and the changing sex ratio
within the population of free white colonists settling in the region.
Focusing attention on the changing status, autonomy, and influence
of nonwhite women, the author argues, is one of the most effective
ways of understanding the economic, demographic, and cultural evolution
of the slave society as a whole.
Kathleen
J. Higgins is Assistant Professor of History at the University
of Iowa.
