Community and tension in São Paulo’s agrarian frontier (Limeira during the 1840s)

• Autor(a) principal: Lima, Carlos Alberto Medeiros
• Data de Publicação: 2017
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Anos 90 (Online)
• Texto Completo: https://seer.ufrgs.br/index.php/anos90/article/view/58505
• topic: Escravidão; Fronteira agrária; Província de São Paulo; Século XIX; Lavoura canavieira; Cafeicultura; História; Escravidão; 2o quarto do século XIX; Slavery; Agrarian frontier; São Paulo province during the 19th century; Sugar production; Coffee production

The case of Limeira, SP, and that of the province’s western frontier along the second quarter of the nineteenth century is useful to understand various tracts of this period. Besides political instability, strong changes occurred in the institutional conditions to establish estates and to acquire and own slaves. Manuscript censuses, as well as death and baptism records are used in order to understand conditions prevalent in this new kind of frontier dedicated to sugar production, with signs of a transition to coffee production. Slave and free population, as well as the slave trade, grew fast, but there were signs that inhabitants were already migrating to areas located further west. An impetus toward community building was also in operation, coupled with the preservation of some aristocratic practices, but increasing inequality depressed mechanisms of social mobility and enhanced the distance between social groups, conducing to a partial withdrawal of hierarchical sociability.