Trabalho, família e escravidão: pequenos produtores de São José do Rio das Mortes, de fins do século XVIII a meados do XIX

Abstract

This work discusses the organization of labor on small farms with a inquiry on labor force characterization and occupational structure. It focuses on the parish of São José do Rio das Mortes during the period of transformation in Brazil and Minas Gerais that marked the passage from the 18th to the 19th centuries. Family strategies of household administration and productive diversification were the most common practices of property management, reinforcing the notion of a juxtaposition of family and productive units in pre-capitalist societies. In that way, the composition of slave labor on small farms in the early decades of the 19th century resulted from its complementarities vis a vis family labor, but at the same time, it demonstrates that access to slave labor became more difficult for small producers as the century wore on.