Forros and cativos: law, practices and concepts of free and slave labor in Maranhão and Pará (1680-1798)

Abstract

Until the mid-eighteenth century, labor in the Amazon region was mainly performed by Indians, slaves or free workers; few of them were Africans slaves. Women represented 60% of all indigenous slaves and, added to those children (boys under 14 years old), reached 82%. It does not mean that adult Indian men did not work. Our hypothesis is that there were different sets of work, between free and slave, indigenous and African, male and female, that, in addition to co-exist, were complementary. Therefore, we are interested in to heighten the knowledge of the working world in the Amazon region during the colonial period. The aim is to describe the practices of work in this region by analyzing different kinds of sources (legislation, chronicles, reports and administrative documents). Second, we seek to grasp the wide range of situations between free and forced labor, both in legal terms as the perception of the agents, like judges, civil and religious administrators or workers themselves, captives or free, Indians, blacks, and mestizos. For this analysis, we must cover two periods: first, the late seventeenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century, especially the period during the height of the enslavement of indigenous people; then the time when African slaves began to arrive in a systematic way, modifying therefore the labor relations in the region. Within that second period, it is necessary to highlight the transition, evident by the administration of Mendonça Furtado, Pombal's brother (1751-1757). The result must be, therefore, to apprehend how indigenous and African labor, free and slave, was managed before and after his arrival; and, on the other hand, the boundaries between free and slave labor, in legal terms and in the perception of masters and workers, also in these two different times. (AU)