This article analyses the specific features of the slave trade to the Amazon region (State of Maranhão) in the seventeenth and beginning of the eighteenth centuries. In order to understand the organization and establishment of slave trade routes to the State of Maranhão, it stresses the role played by three key elements: the epidemics of smallpox, the delicate financial situation of the royal Treasury and the extensive use of Indian labour force in the region.
State of Maranhão; Slave trade; Seventeenth and Eighteenth centuries
