Abstract

CHAMBOULEYRON, Rafael; BARBOSA, Benedito Costa; BOMBARDI, Fernanda Aires  and  SOUSA, Claudia Rocha de. 'Formidable contagion': epidemics, work and recruitment in Colonial Amazonia (1660-1750). Hist. cienc. saude-Manguinhos [online]. 2011, vol.18, n.4, pp. 987-1004. ISSN 0104-5970.  http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S0104-59702011000400002.

The text analyzes the extent to which smallpox and measles epidemics provoked transformations in the ways in which workforces were acquired and used in colonial Amazonia from the mid-seventeenth to mid-eighteenth century, with an increase in slave raids on the indigenous population and the attempt to organize a trade route in African slaves to the region. It also explores how indigenous mortality rates at the end of the seventeenth century led to a concern with the region's defence and prompted the recruitment of soldiers from the Madeira islands.

Keywords : epidemics; work; recruitment; Amazonia [Brazil]; seventeenth-eighteenth centuries.