The role of the slaved child and their trade in the west paulista region, 1861-1869

Abstract

In this article, we shed light on the importance of the slave child in the ambit of the coffee
expansion in São Paulo. Therefore, in addition to recovering part of the relevant bibliography
on the subject, we mobilized secondary data and a large primary database resulting from deeds
of purchase and sale of certified slaves in an important coffee-growing center in the State
of São Paulo (Rio Claro), from 1861 to 1869. We sought to understand the relevance of the
captive child and economic and demographic aspects related to the dynamics of the internal
trafficking of this group, such as: volume of purchase and sale transactions occurring over
the time period elected; dynamics of the sale price; the interaction between prices and sex,
age, typology of domestic trade and experience / occupation; volume of children transacted
individually or within groups of slaves; the participation of slave families in the scope of the
negotiations we had access to.