Sugar and coffee in São Paulo: Family and household structure in Itu and Areias in 1829Abstract
This essay examines the impact of commercial sugar and coffee exports on household and family structures in two São Paulo’s production centers in the second decade of the nineteenth century. Using manuscript household census records this study also explores how these economies shaped the color, sex, age, civil status, and legal standing of these two distinct populations. In 1829, Areias and Itu were at two different stages of their development in sugar and coffee production. How these differences in economic conditions shaped social structures and domestic life in these prominent production centers of the time is the basic theme of this study.
Keywords:
Brazil; Coffee and sugar; Households; Population structure
Resumo
Este ensaio examina o impacto das exportações comerciais de açúcar e café nas estruturas familiares e domésticas em dois centros de produção de São Paulo na segunda década do século XIX. Usando registros manuscritos de censos domiciliares, este estudo também explora como essas economias influenciaram a cor, o sexo, a idade, o estado civil e a situação legal dessas duas populações distintas. Em 1829, Areias e Itu estavam em dois estágios diferentes de seu desenvolvimento na produção de açúcar e café. Como essas diferenças nas condições econômicas moldaram as estruturas sociais e a vida doméstica nesses importantes centros de produção da época é o tema básico deste estudo.
Palavras-chave:
Brasil; Café; Açúcar; Domicílios; Estrutura populacional
Resumen
Este artículo examina el impacto de las exportaciones comerciales de azúcar y de café en las estructuras domésticas y familiares de dos centros de producción de São Paulo en la segunda década del siglo XIX. Utilizando registros manuscritos de censos de hogares, este estudio también explora cómo estas economías influyeron en el color, el sexo, la edad, el estado civil y la situación legal de estas dos poblaciones distintas. En 1829, Areias e Itu se encontraban en dos etapas diferentes de su desarrollo en la producción de azúcar y de café. Cómo estas diferencias en las condiciones económicas moldearon las estructuras sociales y la vida doméstica en estos importantes centros de producción de la época es el tema básico de este estudio.
Palabras clave:
Brasil; Café; Azúcar; Hogares; Estructura poblacional
Introduction
In this essay we propose to compare and contrast how these commercial exports of sugar and coffee affected the household and family structure in these two classic centers of São Paulo production in 1829. We propose to see how these economies influenced the basic characteristics of the two differing populations in terms of color, gender, age, civil status, and legal standing. We have chosen this year both for the quality and availability of these manuscript records, and because this was a year of major sugar and coffee production in these two municipalities. Later changes in their territory by the breakout of new towns carved out of their territory and the movement of the agricultural frontier to new zones meant that both declined as producers in later years. But in the second decade of the nineteenth century these two centers were still the major producers of their respective commercial crops.
The primary sources used for this study are the manuscript household (fogo) censuses which were carried out within each town over numerous years by the Governor and his agents from the last quarter of the 18th century until the 1840s. Although the primary objective of the census was to register the number of militia members, these censuses also provided details on the sex, color, civil and legal status of all members of the household, and sometimes included data on occupations, origin and agricultural production.1 In 1829, both Areias and Itu were divided into large districts, known as companies (companhias). This was the standard division within most towns and supposedly represented militia companies which could be mobilized on the basis of the local district population.
Areias
It was only in the first decade of the 19th century that coffee was produced in São Paulo, having been first developed in the neighboring province of Rio de Janeiro only in the last decades of the previous century. The first location of these early producers was in the Valley of Paraiba that the captaincy shared with the captaincy of Rio de Janeiro. It was above all in the municipality of Areias and its dependent district of Bananal which was the first major center of paulista coffee production. Areias was the only one, among the twenty-five regions of the province where coffee had been consolidated by 1829. Of the total of 7,286 slaves working in coffee in the province in that year, 65% resided in this municipality.2
The population and economy of Areias underwent a profound transformation in this period due to the introduction of coffee cultivation. Planted coffee trees (pés de café) took an average of 4 years to begin producing beans. Thus previous crops (corn, beans, rice and other subsistence crops) served as the basis of farm income until coffee production matured, allowing for the generation of resources for coffee expansion. Even after coffee trees were producing, the majority of farms still produced these other basic crops. Coffee cultivation, initially developed even on farms without slaves, and radically transformed the productive structure of the locality. Finally this new wealth attracted a large number of migrating families which took up new farming lands.
Although production of all the basic crops being grown in the region increased over time, it was coffee which had the most significant growth. Coffee production went from 82 metric tons (5,559 arrobas) in 1817 to a total municipal output of 1,625 metric tons (110,520 arrobas) in 1829. It accounted for 81% of the value of all agricultural products by 1822, a level of importance that was repeated in 1829 (Luna; Klein, 2003, p. 71). Coffee cultivation emerged as an activity feasible for all farmers, both those with strong economic support, typically evidenced by slave ownership, and those without slaves who relied on family labor. Over time, as coffee farming matured, the size of productive units increased, becoming increasingly reliant on slave labor. As the average size of plantations grew the proportion of farms with slaves expanded, and the slave population’s share of the total population increased. As coffee increased local sugar production declined making Areias a predominately coffee farming center.
By 1829 it was coffee that absorbed most of the slave owners and most of the slaves. Thus 89% of the slaves worked on farms that produced coffee and the slave owning coffee farmers accounted for 70% of the slave owners. But it should be stressed that both coffee producers and non-producers all grew the basic food crops of the region (rice, corn and beans). Those slave owners that did not produce coffee represented 30% of all coffee producers, but held only11% of the slaves working in coffee (Table 1).
But even as slave grown coffee expanded, a substantial number of coffee producers grew coffee without the use of slave labor. Some 239 non-slave owning farms produced coffee in 1829, of which two thirds were owned by whites. They made up 37% of all coffee farmers, but accounted for only 8% of total production. But in all cases the slave owning farmers produced on average much more than the farmers who did not have slaves. But even in this dominant coffee zone, more farmers grew corn, rice and beans than produced coffee. Nevertheless all coffee farms also produced these basic crops. There was no monoculture pattern to Areias farm production. Even after all their trees were producing, farmers still produced the basic food crops of for corn, beans and rice.
In this early development of the industry, new non-producing trees were often more numerous than producing trees which made the planting of alternative food crops even more essential for survival. Fortunately the census taker in the third district (or companhia) of the municipality decided to list the number of coffee trees which the district had as well as their coffee production of the year, the only district to have this information. This provides a useful look at a zone with large numbers of new tree plantings. There were 65 farms which had trees listed, and all but three produced some coffee. By the standards of the region these were still small producers, nevertheless the size of the third companhia farms was impressive, with 26 coffee farms having over 1,000 trees planted. But clearly almost all of these farms were still in the early stages of production with mostly new trees. Thus 35 year old Miguel Guedes da Cunha had 8,000 planted trees, which made his farm the largest coffee farm in the district, but he produced only 350 arrobas of coffee in this year of 1829. Since many of his trees were still not producing he also produced a significant 350 alqueires of corn, along with beans, rice, and even 50 alqueires of manioc flour (APESP “Flash Areias 1829” (3rd Companhia), fogo 114).3 This was typical of many such large coffee plantations in the area.
As coffee moved from being one crop among many to being the central crop, there was an increased reliance on slave labor, an expansion of the size of productive units. But traditional crops continued to be produced even on the largest coffee farms. Probably the most extreme of these multi-crop major slave produced coffee plantations was owned by the 38 year old Calvary Captain Antonio Barboza, of the 5th companhia who with his two white and brown overseers (feitores) and his 101 slaves produced in the year some 6,000 arrobas (87 tons) of coffee, 2,000 alqueires (60 tons) of corn, 300 alqueires (9 tons) of beans, 100 alqueires (2.4 tons) of rice, along with 1,300 arrobas (23.5 tons) of sugar and 11 barrels of aguardente. He earned 18,275 mil reis in that year on sales of these products, of which the coffee sales were the biggest income producing crop and accounted for 68% of his total income (APESP “Flash Areias (5th Companhia) 1829” fogo n. 54). Thus even with the expansion of coffee, there was still no mono-cultural production as even the largest of the coffee planters was still producing significant quantities of other crops.
Not only was the coffee new to the region, but the region itself was a frontier for migrating families. A significant number of homes listed were new residents who had yet to begin production. Thus 174 households or 11% of the total households in the town were listed as being newly established and as yet without any production. Moreover there was little difference in their weight in total households by color, with the 44 of the newly arriving Brown heads of households accounting for 14% of all Brown headed households, the three Black householders making up 11% of all Black households and the 127 whites householders accounting for 10% of all white households in 1829. But the relative size of these new households was small as they were primarily made up only of the immediate family of married couples and children. Males headed 155 of these households and women just 19. Just over two thirds of these new households contained children, for an average of 2.5 children per household. The other third of these homes had a few slaves or other unrelated persons living in the homes. Even with these extra persons, the new migrants had an average size of 3.5 persons (2.9 std. dev.) which household size was half of the average size of the established households in the town and thus they accounted for just 5% of the total town population.
This migration recorded in the 1829 census was part of a major expansion of population. Between 1817 and 1822 the town’s population grew at an annual rate of 5.4% and at 5.6% from 1822 to 1829. The number of households (fogos) also expanded, with the average number of people per household increasing from 6.1 in 1817 to 7.9 in 1829. There was also a significant increase in the percentage of households owning slaves, rising from 26% in 1817 to 37% in 1829. Equally there was an increase in the importance of slaves within the total population which rose from just over a quarter in 1817 to 44% in 1829 (Table 2). This percentage was notably high compared to the standards of the other towns of the São Paulo captaincy, which in the latter year which averaged only around 26% of the households being slave owners (Piza, 1903, p. 700-701).
The free population was of course defined primarily by the 7,926 whites, but there were also 3,573 free persons of color who established themselves in this coffee region. Although the free colored were biased towards males and more weighted toward adults, the dominance of the whites meant that the age pyramid of the free population looked like a more normal age pyramid. Among whites the sex balance was just 107 males per 100 females, whereas among the free colored, the ratio was 149 so that shifted the overall sex ratio to 115 males per 100 females among the free population. For the whites 37% of the population were under 10 years of age, among the free colored the figure was 27% so that for all the free, a third of the total population were in this age category. All this suggests that the new migrants were primarily married couples with children rather than single men as was more common in most migration streams. In Areias only 9% of the households were led by a person who was never married, an unusually low number and one reflective of the dominance of ever-married heads of household. This was probably due to the attraction of migrants to land ownership were the family was the driving force in settlement.
Thus Areias by 1829 had become primarily a non-white town. The population of color, both free and slave made up 58% of the population and whites made up only 42% of the total population of the town. These 5,456 slaves made up an extraordinary 45% of the local population making it the largest slave holdings community among the 33 towns in the province in 1829, and fifth in terms of the ratio of slaves to total population (REAESP, 1900). The 1,382 free colored made up 13% of the total population. Despite the large number of slaves within the Areias population, only a minority of the households owned slaves. Of the 1,562 households listed in the 1829 census, only 578 (or 37%) owned slaves. Moreover whites owned 98% of them, and Browns the rest, with none of the 28 Black heads of households holding any slaves. Male heads of households owned 87% of the slaves. Although there was little different between the average size of the slave holdings between men and women, there was a sharp difference between the average size of the holdings of whites and Browns (Table 3). The majority of the slaves were found in the larger units. Those owning just one slave were a significant 22% of all slave owners, but they owned just 2% of the slaves. The 7% of slave owners who held 31 or more slaves were just 7% of the owners but they held 42% of the slaves.
As expected given the predominance of married couples, there were a significant number of households which contained children. Children of the household head resided in some 72% of the 1,568 households in the town and the average number of children per household was similar for whites and browns. But there was a significant difference between male and female headed households. The later had fewer children on average and this was the same for both whites and browns. But what is impressive is that 73% of all male headed households (out of a total of 1,364 male households) in the town had children and 68% of total of 204 female headed household also had children present (Table 4).
Along with slaves and children, Areias households also contained agregados.4 These were free persons of any color and sex who may have had some type of service relationship to the head of household and received housing as a result. All these persons were free and could be of any color, age, sex or marital status and could have children and sometimes even their own slaves. In older towns they appear to be more important. In the port of Santos they were found in 42% of the homes and represented 14% of the total population and in Sorocaba in 1829 they were 22% of the population. But Areias listed only 237 agregados in the 1829 census (or 4% of the total population) and they resided in only 19% of the homes of the municipality. It would seem the greater availability of new lands reduced the importance of this landless group within the larger population. Equally there were relatively few households which contained other persons who were neither members of the family, children or agregados. Usually these were relatives or sometimes administrators who worked for the head of household. In total only 8 households, all led by whites, had such persons.
With its large numbers of new farms and homes, its extraordinarily high ratio of African born slaves and its high ratio of family units, Areias in 1829 represented in many ways a new boom town. It was a town which went from producing all the standard food crops (corn, beans and rice) to also planting coffee trees and exporting coffee beans into an international market. It was coffee that was the most successful commercial crop ahead of even sugar and aguardente. Moreover in this early stage it was more democratic than sugar, in the fact that even farmers without slaves could plant the trees and produce coffee. The process identified in Areias was gradually reproduced in other areas of the province of São Paulo as the expansion of coffee continued in the rest of the century, which was initially concentrated in the Paraíba Valley in the first half of the 19th century and gradually moved to the interior of the province. At the end of the 19th century, after the abolition of slave labor, the Paraíba Valley lost its hegemony in coffee production to the virgin lands in the west of São Paulo.
Itu
The sugar economy that developed in São Paulo showed some differences from the sugar economy found in the northeast and Rio de Janeiro. Although the size of the units began to approach those of the more traditional colonial sugar producers at the beginning of the 19th century, the structure of the sugar economy in the Oeste Paulista (or West São Paulo) region grew more slowly. Instead of starting out as an export-oriented activity, the sugar cane farms began as multi-product units, producing food crops and animals and consuming locally much of the sugar produced often as aguardiente, or cane alcohol. But as transport infrastructure improved ever more sugar was exported to outside markets, and by 1798 some 70% of the sugar being produced in the province came from the West Paulista region (Rangel, 1993, p. 153). But not even the progressive development of large-scale slave plantation sugar farming in this region displaced other crops. The sugar estates and later the coffee estates of São Paulo systematically produced food beyond the consumption needs of their workforce. Until the arrival of coffee at the beginning of the next century, sugar was the dominant commercial export crop and was unusual within the colonial paulista economy in its predominant use of African slave labor compared to all other agricultural activity (Petrone, 1968; Luna; Klein, 2006; Bacellar, 1987; Luna, 1998; Almeida, 2008).
Itu and its district (bairro) of Capivari were typical of the West-Paulista sugar-producing areas and even as late as 1836, the district was the third largest producer in the state accounting for 16% of the sugar produced in the province (Muller, 1923, p. 124-129). This was not only a sugar center of extraordinary importance, but also a typical representative of São Paulo’s sugar economy in its combination of sugar production with various other products, the most important of which was corn. By 1810 the town was exporting 383 metric tons of sugar, and by 1836 it produced 1,379 tons of sugar as well as 3,474 tons of corn. The 5,107 canadas (or 13,595 liters) of aguardente which it also produced from its sugar cane production accounted for 14% of total provincial production (Bassanerzi, 1998, I, p. 157-158; Zuin, 2007, p. 313).
But Itu was a well-established older town, with its lands fully occupied and its industries well established. It is worth noting that the largest sugar estates in Itu as of 1818 were all purchased, rather than originating in sesmarias, or royal land grants (Petrone, 1968, p. 61). Thus opportunities for younger landless families existed elsewhere as the frontier of the region was continually expanding. This flow of outmigration can be seen in the slow reduction the town’s resident free population, which lost over six hundred persons over the period from 1805 to 1829 (some 468 whites and 174 free colored persons). Some of that loss was also due separation of part of its territory to create the new town of Piracicaba (Constituição) in 1823. The 1828 census for Piracicaba had some 8,300 residents, half of whom were white and it listed an almost equal number of Brown and Black residents (APESP “Flash Piracicaba 1828”). This ratio of whites was much higher than in Itu at this time, where whites accounted for just 37% of the total population. While the slave population grew, the free population declined. The white population declined in this period, from 41% in 1805 to just 37% of the total population in 1829; and the free colored population went from 13% to 11% of the total population (Table 5).
In an 1817 survey of some 39 towns in the province, Itu had one of the very highest ratios of slaves and the lowest rates of free persons (both white and of color) compared to the average of the province in this period where just 24% of the population were slaves, 53% were whites and 23% were free colored (BNRJ, 1817). The origin of the high ratio of males to females in the Itu population is due to distinct patterns of migration between whites and blacks. Overall the sex ratio in Itu was in favor of males, with the sex ratio of the total population going from 109 males per 100 females in 1805 to 116 males per 100 females in 1829. This overall sexual ratio hid two distinct and quite different patterns. The free population had far more women than males, averaging around 80 males to 100 females, whereas the Black slave population was overwhelmingly male with increasing steadily from 148 males to 100 females to 162 males per 100 females in this same period. That the total population was more male than female is due entirely due to the Black slave population which by 1816 was the single largest status and color group in the town and remained so in 1829.
In both groups, free and slave, migration accounted for this sexual imbalance. Free white men seemed to have migrated out of the population in all age groups below 50 years of age. Also the low number of children among free persons is further evidence of the impact of migration affecting population growth in the resident free population. Just like the free population, the largest numbers of slaves were in the working age cohort of 15 to 49 years of age, who accounted for 67% of the slave population in 1829. In general the average age of the male slaves tended to be older than female slaves.
While the African and American born slaves provided the basic manpower of the economy of Itu, it was the heads of households who commanded that economy. Over two thirds of these heads of household in Itu were males in the census of 1829, and three quarters were headed by whites. Itu also had a significant number of households which were led by a person who was single. Of the 23% of household lead by a person who was never married, the majority was women (Table 6). There were 36 homes whose married head lacked a spouse and there was even a married couple where the wife was listed as head of household and the husband was present.
As could be expected the heads of household in general were in their 40s and 50s, and this holds for both sexes and all colors. Widowers tend to be in their 50s and there were far more women than men in this category. This is the norm in all other studies of towns in the province, including the capital. Men clearly remarried far more rapidly than women. Even the wealthiest widows did not remarry.5 Of the 18 women who owned sugar mills, 17 were widows and one was single. Excluding priests, of the 95 men who owned sugar mills, only four were widowers. Married persons in general tended to be a decade younger than widowers, and surprisingly all single headed households were not that different from the average age of married couples
The living arrangements in the homes of Itu were rather complex, ranging from a few unipersonal households, to extended households which contained dozens of persons. Moreover these homes contained not only families, but slaves, agregados, relatives and even some individuals who had no known relationship to anyone in the household. A large share of these households included slaves and agregados. In two cases the census taker registered two free separate households living in one home, each with their own extended households, but this was rare both here and in other municipal censuses of the period.
The nuclear family, defined as all parents and children living in one home, on average was quite small (Samara, 1997; Costa, 1991). This was due to the relatively low number of children to total population and the importance of single headed households where children were less common. Only 630 of the 1049 households listed children of the heads of households being present and the average was less than three children per household with little difference by color of the household head for Whites and Browns. There was a significant difference by the sex of the head of household, with an overall median of 2 children per female headed households and 3 for male headed households. Using just the 631 homes with children, then the average number of children was 2.7 (Table 7).
But this identification of children to the head of household in fact underestimates the number of children who were present in the homes. For aside from the nuclear family of spouses and children, homes in Itu sometimes included the children of slaves or agregados. The census taker would usually associate the child with the mother if the mother was a married woman or widow. Also though there were a few cases of consensual unions (males and females adults of the same age living together), the census taker did not indicate a woman or man as a spouse if they were not married. But in general these were few to be found in the censuses of the period. Finally older heads sometimes had grandchildren as well as children resident. These were counted in the total children. But no children of slaves or agregados were counted for the total, since we were concerned only with children in the nuclear family that led the household.
Taking all households into consideration the result is a family size of 3.2 persons for the 1,046 homes in the municipality in 1829. That is heads, their spouses, if any, and their children, if any. Homes which had children averaged a family size of 4.3 persons (1.8 std dev). But household size was bigger than just the family. The extended household was a major feature of the social organization of Itu. The major participants in these extended households were agregados and slaves. Sometimes poor artisans, especially women, had such agregados and the assumption is they were part of their workshop, and some store owning merchants had their clerks living with them. But few occupations were listed for these agregados and they could be of any color, although the majority was whites. In contrast to Areias, they were to be found in 44% of the homes, over double the rate in the former town, but here as well they represented just 7% of the total population, just 3% more than in Areias. Non-white and female households had a significant number of these agregados in contrast to households were slaves were resident.
It was slaves who most influenced the size of the extended household. Slavery was a fundamental part of this small urban center and these high cost workers could be found in less than half the households (379 out of 1,026). But the average slave holding was quite high at 4 slaves per household. White males owned 78% of the slaves and whites of both sexes possessed 99% of the slaves. The 75 slave owners who owned just one slave were 20% of the slave owners, but they accounted for only 2% of all the slaves. Those who owned 4 slaves or less accounted for half the owners, but only 10 percent of the slaves. Those owning 20 or more slaves represented 17% of the owners but owned 59% of the slaves. Nevertheless the resulting Gini of for slave holding (excluding non-slave owners) was relatively low for such a distribution of property, being 0.59 for those slaves. Typically ownership of farm lands in this period resulted in Gini’s in the 0.70s to 0.80s and total wealth of households in the province of São Paulo in the late colonial period was in the 0.80s (Canabrava, 1972, p. 112). Brown households had less than half the average number of slaves as white households, and female headed households with slaves held almost a quarter of the average male household holdings of slaves (Table 8).
The larger slave holdings were associated with mill owners. Thus the largest slave owner was the Capitão-mor Bento Paes de Barros, a 41 year old white male whose mill was producing 4,000 arrobas of sugar and 200 to 300 canadas of aguardente with his 100 slaves (APESP “Flash Itu 1829”, 1st Companhia). The largest female slave owner, and the third largest slave owner in Itu, was a 56 year old white widow named Dona Maria da Anunciação who lived with her 6 children and 86 slaves. Her sugar mill produced an annual 1,000 arrobas of sugar and 100 canadas of aguardente (APESP “Flash Itu 1829”, 5th Companhia, fogo n. 22). In the distribution of slaves by size of holding, it is evident that the larger slave owners, meaning those who held 21 or more slaves, only made up 15% of the slave owners, but they held 52% of the slaves.
Given the large number of day laborers (jornaleiros) listed in the census, the number of persons renting out slaves in Itu was relatively small compared to such urban centers as São Paulo and Santos. Most of these persons living off the daily labor of the slaves they owned (vive do jornal dos seus escravos) were women. Of the nine heads of household who listed their occupation as living off their slaves, seven were women and only two were men, one was a widower and the other a 78 year old married man. All were white.
Among the local elite were landowners, merchants, government officials and one artisanal activity that was really a major commercial operation and could be ranked more like a wealthy land owner or merchant with his own store than as an artisan. These were the muleteers. These owned and ran mule trains which carried all the goods to and from the world beyond the town. They owned the mules and equipment, had slave workers and also paid wages to free muleteers. In effect they were the primary transport group throughout the colony. There were 19 Mule transport Owners (tropeiros), all but one of whom was married, and that one was a widower. Nine of them had slaves (for a total of 65 slaves) and 6 had agregados living with them. Fifteen were white and 4 were Brown householders, one of whom owned 10 slaves. Along with the owners were listed ten “camarada de tropa”, or mule train workers, half of whom were white and half brown.
Along with the large slave owners owning sugar mills, there were a few farmers producing cane with a large labor force who did not own a mill. One of these was José de Almeida a 39 year old white farmer who was married to 34 year old Dona Antonia de Arruda. They had three children aged 8 to 13 and 40 Black slaves ranging in age from 2 to 38 years of age and all single (APESP “Flash Itu 1829”, 8th Companhia, fogo n. 69). More typical were the farmers (agricultores or lavradores) producing cane, food and commercial crops with just their family laborer on relatively small plots of land. Some had agregados residing, but none had slaves.
In many ways Itu was typical of the sample of 12 sugar producing towns we surveyed from the 1829 census. These West Paulista towns in 1829 had an average of 10 slaves per owner, and Itu the figure was closer to 11. In Itu the average number of slaves per mill (engenho) in 1829 was 27, compared to the sugar zone average of 32 slaves per mill (Luna; Klein, 2003, p. 50). Nevertheless here as well, at least 62% of the slaves in Itu in 1829 worked on sugar estates, and this was quite close to the sample average of 60%. But in terms of slave ownership, however, Itu stands out as an unusual center. Whereas in this 12 town sample we found an average of 27% of the households owned slaves, in Itu the figure was almost double that at 56%. Moreover in Itu slaves represented more than half of the total population, whereas slaves represented on average just 36% of the town populations in our sample. This wider distribution of slave ownership was clearly due to the high ratio of homes owning just a few slaves. Thus half of the slave owning households owned 5 slaves or less, even though they accounted for only 12% of the total slave population.
Similarities & differences
In comparing these two communities, it is evident that Areias represented a new frontier type development and Itu a more traditional and well established community. This is quite evident in the age and sex distributions of the respective free persons in these two communities (Graph 1). In the more established community of Itu, women predominated and the sex ratio was just 80 men to 100 women. In contrast in Areias were children and married families predominated, the sex ratio was more balanced at 115 males per 100 females. This pattern would appear to be due to significant outmigration of men in the case of Itu.
The impact on migration of free persons was quite different in the two towns. Itu registered no new households in the census of 1829. In contrast, Areias listed some 175 households new to the town and had as yet not begun working the lands or practicing an occupation. The impact of external migration was also evident in the opposite direction in terms of the slaves. Only 48% of the slaves in Itu were African born, whereas the figure was 76% African born in Areias. This explains the sex ratio among the Itu slaves of 166 males per 100 females, compared to the 218 males per 100 females ratio in Areias. The Itu slaves were also older, being 25.3 years of age compared to an average of 21.4 years for slaves in Areias. Findings similar to other municipalities of the province (Rocha, 2009). All this is reflected in their different age pyramids (Graph 2).
In their slave holdings, Areias and Itu showed only modest difference in average size of holdings, but were similar in the distribution of slaves by size of holdings, and by the number of slave owning households in the total population. Thus 37% of households owned slaves in Areias and 36% of the households in Itu owned slaves. Those owning just one slave were only modestly different in the two towns (20% of the owners owned just 2% of the slaves in Itu, and 22% of these one slave owners accounted for the same 2% of the slaves). The same patterns showed in those owning 21 or more slaves with these larger units accounting for over half the slaves in each case (Table 9).
As with the slaves, there were other clear indicators of the new versus old pattern in these two communities. Areias had far more family units and fewer agregados and slaves than did Itu. In Areias 91% of the heads of households were more ever-married (married or widowed) compared to just 77% in Itu. This affected not only white headed households, but even more so the free colored, especially the free Brown households. In Areias 92% of the free brown and black heads of household were ever-married compared to only 41% of such households in Itu (Table 10).
In a pattern unusual in the Americas, the slave populations of the Southeastern region of Brazil also had persons who were legally married, although the slave ever-married rates are well below the free population. Given the bias towards males among the slaves, it is no surprise that women were more ever-married than men in both communities (Table 11). But when we breakdown the slave population by origin, the Africans do better than the American born in Itu, but the contrary results occur for Areias.
Why this difference occurs may be due to the question of opportunity. Since slaves married with the consent of their masters and usually selected mates in the same slave holding, the size of the slaveholding is important since it determines the potential availability of marriage partners (Luna, 1988, p. 223). In the case of Areias American born and African born slaves had were equally residing in large estates (11 slaves and above), while in Itu the Africans were far more representative than the American born in these larger estates. Moreover the sex ratio among the Africans residing in these large Areias estates was an extraordinary 323 males to 100 females, while the sex ratio among the American born these estates was almost a third less (Table 12).
As could be expected, the average ages of the householders were different as well in these two communities. In each category of age and sex Itu heads of household were slightly older on average than those same heads of households in Areias, except among the small group of black householders (Table 13).
Areias families also had more children per family and far more households had children. Some 72% of Areias households had children compared to just 60% of the households in Itu, and even the average number of children per household was higher in Areias. Areias had 2.9 children per households compared to an average of 2.7 children in Itu. This meant there was also a difference in family size. In Areias it was 4.7 and 4.3 in Itu (with both coefficients of variation being 42%). The highest family rate was 5.1 for males in Areias.
Areias also relied less on agregados than did Itu. Only 7% of the homes had them in Areias compared to 16% in Itu. The agregados came in all ages, all sexes and all colors, and there seem to be some biases evident. White households tended to have more white agregados, and single women of any color having both white women and women of color more frequently than men (Table 14). In the case of Itu it was seamstresses who tended to have agregada women living with them and in Areias it was more likely women who spun cotton who had these persons in their residence.
But in total household size, that is the number of persons residing in a household regardless of their sex, status or color, there is little difference between these two communities. Areias had an average of 7.6 persons and Itu 7.4 persons per household (with virtually the same standard deviations) in 1829 (Table 15). This is largely due to the slave population in both communities which greatly influenced the average size of the holdings in both communities.
As could be expected, the average age of heads of household in Itu was always older than such age and status persons in Areias. Although widows were always older than single and married persons, in every case the ages were older in Itu (Table 16). This also supports the relative youth of this more newly developed coffee zone, compared to the more well-established community of Itu.
What is common to both cities is that it was the white elite that dominated the heads of households. Also while free persons of color in both communities were well represented in the artisan class, more free brown farmers existed in the frontier town of Areais than in Itu. Nether town had a significant number of free Blacks. Inter-color marriage was quite limited in both communities. The much larger number of free Browns explains the disparities between Blacks and Browns in these mixed marriages (Table 18). Equally mixed race marriage was uncommon in Areias. Of the 167 marriages whose race was known in Itu, only 10 crossed the color line, or 3% of the total. In contrast in Itu, of the 595 marriages where the color of the spouses was known, 6% of the marriages crossed color lines (Table 17). But this seems to be the norm throughout the province, with even the port city of Santos which had the highest rate, had only 10% of marriages being mixed race marriages.
Both communities also had a minority of married households where the spouse was not present or recorded. This was common to all towns, but this was a relatively small ratio of 3% of all households in Areias and 4% in Itu in 1829. As in the other towns of the province, this occurred for both married men and women who headed households. Just over half of these were female headed households, and most of these were women who worked in textiles as rendeiras or costureiras. Since the majority of women who worked in textiles were single or widowed, it would appear that the married title was legitimate. But why their spouses were not present, is not evident. The men who lacked their spouse were artisans, government employees, merchants muleteers or farmers with no particular group being over-represented. In some of these cases, such as those who were in government employment, the lack of a wife is understandable, but in others it is also unclear why the wife was not present. Finally the color of the head of household made only modest difference in the presence or absence of a spouse, with the Black married men having the highest ratio and the whites the lowest. While it might be evident why some husbands might be missing, it is unclear why so many wives are also missing in both communities. Given the equal importance of missing wives in both towns, it is clearly not just husbands traveling for work or serving in the militia.
It is also worth noting that Areias had few illegitimate children, as defined by children living in households headed by a person never married. Only 2% of the children lived in households whose head was single. This compares to a rate of 10% in Itu. There was also a major difference between these two towns in terms of the sex of the single parent. In Areais, this was equally found in male and female headed households. In contrast there were only 3 males with just 3% of such illegitimate children in Itu, which was almost exclusively a female dominated category (Table 18).
Conclusion
As this survey of these two different communities has shown, the new coffee zone of Areias had all the aspects of a new community. It had a high ratio of family run homes and a low incidence of unipersonal homes. It had a large number of new farm owners, and a very high ratio of slaves newly arrived from Africa. In contrast the more established sugar municipality of Itu had fewer heads of households ever-married, with far more unipersonal households. It had an older and far more native born slave labor force which in turn meant a more balanced ratio between men and women in the slave labor force. Itu was the more settled community, and had no new households in contrast to Areias where a large number of new families were listed. It also had a far higher ratio of homeless agregados. Its heads of households were on average 2.8 years older than the average head of household in Areias. Although the distribution of slave ownership was approximately the same in both communities, the sugar estates in Itu meant that there were more larger slave holdings in Itu than in Areias which is reflected in a slightly higher average slave holding on the sugar plantations. But when all the various groups residing in the home are added together, household size was almost identical between the two communities.
Whereas Areias had all the aspects of a newly developing town, it was Itu that would be the model for most commercial agricultural communities in 19th century São Paulo. Areias with its high ratio of families, with both slave owning and non-slave owners producing for the commercial market, was a classic example of an early developing frontier society. Itu with its well established sugar industry defined almost exclusively by slave labor, there was far more diversity of household types a well as far more social stratification. As the coffee industry developed, fewer non-slave holding producers remained in the market, with more long term settlement meant that Itu was in many ways a model for the other commercial agricultural towns developing in the province in this period. It would prove to be typical in terms of the size of its families and its extended households for a society with a large slave population ever more native born to Brazil, and with a significant share of free persons living in the condition of agregados. It would have more unipersonal homes and in general an older and more sexually balanced population. This was to be the norm as more regions expanded into commercial agriculture, not only in sugar, but increasing in coffee production in the next several decades in the province of São Paulo.
References
- ALMEIDA, J. C. F. de. Entre engenhos e canaviais: senhoras do açúcar em Itu (1780-1830). Dissertação (Mestrado) - Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), São Paulo, 2008.
-
APESP - Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo. “Flash Areias 1829” and “Flash Itu 1829”. Available in: https://www.arquivoestado.sp.gov.br/web/digitalizado/textual/macos_populacao
» https://www.arquivoestado.sp.gov.br/web/digitalizado/textual/macos_populacao - BACELLAR, C. de A. P. Os senhores da terra - família e sistema sucessório entre os senhores de engenho do oeste paulista, 1875-1855. Dissertação (Mestrado) - Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas, Universidade de São Paulo (FFLCH-USP), São Paulo, 1987.
- BACELLAR, C. de A. P. Viver e sobreviver em uma vila colonial: Sorocaba, séculos XVIII e XIX. São Paulo: Annablume, 2001.
- BACELLAR, C. de A. P. As listas nominativas de habitantes da capitania de São Pauo sob um olhar crítico. Anais de História de Além Mar, v. XVI, p. 313-338, 2015.
- BASSANERZI, M. S. C. B. (Ed.). Dados demográficos: São Paulo do Passado, 1836. Campinas: Unicamp/ Nepo, 2 vols., 1998.
- BNRJ - Biblioteca Nacional de Rio de Janeiro. Mapa Geral dos Habitantes da Capitania de São Paulo, com especificação dos Nascimentos, Casamentos e Óbitos, reduzidos sobre as Listas da Povoação e Cazualidades do ano de 1817. Manuscrito BNRJ I-32, 10,6.
- CANABRAVA, A. Uma economia de decadência: os níveis de riqueza na Capitania de São Paulo, 1765-67. Revista Brasileira de Economia, v.26, n. 4, p. 95-124, 1972.
- COSTA, I. del N. da. Revistando o domicílio complexo. Estudos Econômicos, v. 21, n. 3, p. 401-407, set./dez. 1991.
- GOMES, L. O conceito histórico de agregado e metodologia em história social (sul do Brasil, virada do século XVIII para o XIX). Tempo, v. 29, p. 65-85, 2023.
- LUNA, F. V. Observações sobre o casamento de escravos em São Paulo (1829). In: VI ENCONTRO NACIONAL DE ESTUDOS POPULACIONAIS. Anais [...]. Olinda: Associação Brasileira de Estudos Populacionais (ABEP), v. 3, 1988.
- LUNA, F. V. População e atividades econômicas em Areias (1817-1836). Estudos Econômicos, v. 24, n. 3, p. 433-463, set./dez. 1994.
- LUNA, F. V. Areias - Posse de escravos e atividades económicas (1817-1836). Cadernos NEHD, n. 2, 1995.
- LUNA, F. V. São Paulo: população, atividades e posse de escravos em vinte e cinco localidades (1777-1829). Estudos Econômicos, v. 29, n. 1, p. 99-169, jan./mar. 1998.
- LUNA, F.; KLEIN, H. S. Slavery and the economy of São Paulo, 1750-1850. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2003.
- LUNA, F. V.; KLEIN, H. S. Ascensão da produção comercial de café em São Paulo no início do século XIX. In: I SEMINÁRIO DA HISTÓRIA DO CAFÉ. Itu: Museu Republicano de Itu, nov. 2005. Mimeografado.
- LUNA, F.; KLEIN, H. S. Ascensão da produção comercial de açúcar em São Paulo no início do século XIX. In: I SEMINÁRIO DA HISTÓRIA DO AÇÚCAR. Itu: Museu Republicano de Itu, nov. 2006. Mimeografado.
- LUNA, F. V. L.; KLEIN, H. S. Evolução da sociedade e economia escravista de São Paulo, de 1750 a 1850. São Paulo: Edusp, 2006.
- MARCÍLIO, M. L. Crescimento demográfico e evolução agrária paulista: 1700-1836. São Paulo: Hucitec, 2000.
- MARCÍLIO, M. L. La Ville de São Paulo: peuplement et population (1750-1850): d’après les registres paroissiaux et les recensements anciens. Paris: Presses Universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 1968.
- MULLER, D. P. Ensaio d’um quadro estatístico da Província de São Paulo. São Paulo: Secção de Obras d’ O Estado de São Paulo, 1923.
- PETRONE, M. T. S. A lavoura canavieira em São Paulo: expansão e declínio (1765-1851). São Paulo: Difusão Européia do Livro, 1968.
- PIZA, A. de T. Relatorio do Anno de 1900 Apresentado em 12 de Janeiro de 1902 ao Cidadão Dr. Bento Pereira Bueno, Secretario do Estado dos Negocios do Interior e da Justiça. São Paulo: Repartição de Estatistica e Archivo do Estado de São Paulo, 1903.
- RANGEL, A. de S. A economia do município de Taubaté: 1798 a 1835. Estudos Econômicos, v. 23, n. 1, p. 149-79, 1993.
- ROCHA, I. P. A demografia escrava em São Paulo em 1829: análise comparativa de estudos demográficos. Ciência et Plaxis, v. 2, n. 3, p. 19-30, 2009.
- SAMARA, E. de M. A família no Brasil: história e historiografia. História Revista, v. 2, n. 2, p. 7-21, 1997.
- SAMARA, E. de M. Os agregados. Uma tipologia. Estudos Econômicos, v. 11, n. 3, p. 59-168, dez. 1981.
- SAMARA, E. de M. Uma contribuição ao estudo da estrutura familiar em São Paulo durante o período colonial: a família agregada em Itu de 1780 a 1830. Revista de História, v. 5, n. 105, p. 33-45, 1976.
- ZUIN, E. de S. L. Por uma nova arithmetica: o sistema métrico decimal como um saber escolar em Portugal e no Brasil oitocentista. Tese (Doutorado em Educação Matemática) - Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, 2007.
-
Funding:
Not applicable.
-
Ethical Approval:
The authors declare that the study did not include human beings or animals.
-
Availability of data and material:
The content is already available.
-
1
These systematic censuses began in 1775 with the re-establishment of the autonomous provincial government and were reformed in 1800 by the new governor Antonio Mello Castro e Mendonça who demanded that the household informaton on births and deaths be checked against the parish registers kept by the church, and that each household be numbered and a detailed listing be given of all persons in the residence by age, sex, legal status as well as the occupation of the head of household (Marcílio, 1968, p. 98-107; Marcílio, 2000, p. 33-40; Bacellar, 2015, p. 313-338).
-
2
1829 provincial census reproduced in Piza (1903, p. 700-701). On Areias see Luna (1994, 1995) and Luna and Klein (2005, 2006).
-
3
APESP “Flash Areias 1829” and APESP “Flash Itu 1829” are complete microfilms divided into the several “companhias” for each year. There are 7 volumes each for Areias denoted by the Companhia or district, for Itu there is only one volume for all the companhias These can be found at https://www.arquivoestado.sp.gov.br/web/digitalizado/textual/macos_populacao.
-
4
Agregados are free persons of any color or age, who in effect are landless and homeless and live “a favor” of the head of the household. They are usually unrelated to the head of households in whose house they are residing and with whom they have some type of dependent relation. This relationship could involve labor or other activities in favor of the head of household. Thus young clerks could be agregados and live in the house of the store owner. Or they could be artisans and work in the workshops of the owner. They probably paid no rent and instead offered some type of service for their housing. (Gomes, 2023; Samara, 1976, 1981).
-
5
A study of the paulista town of Sococaba found that male widowers were remarried in less than two and a half years while widows were remarried on average only after some 5 years (Bacellar, 2001, p. 61).
Data availability
The content is already available.
Publication Dates
-
Publication in this collection
07 July 2025 -
Date of issue
2025
History
-
Received
22 Oct 2024 -
Accepted
08 Apr 2025
Source: Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo (APESP).
Source: Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo (APESP).