Small and Medium Slaveholdings in the

Coffee Economy of the Vale do Paraíba,

Province of São Paulo

Renato Leite Marcondes

Worldwide growth in demand for coffee during the nineteenth century led to
increased production in many countries. Brazil took on a heightened role in this
market, becoming a major exporter after independence in 1822. Whereas in the
1830s coffee represented 43.8 percent of Brazil’s total exports, by the 1870s it
was more than half.1 During the Empire (1822–89), coffee plantations occupied
large expanses of Brazil’s territory. The largest concentration of production was
in the Vale do Paraíba region, located on the border between the provinces of
São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro, and Minas Gerais, where soil conditions, climate,
altitude, and the proximity of export ports were favorable. Classic Brazilian his-
torians such as Gilberto Freyre, Caio Prado Júnior, and Celso Furtado felt that
large slaveholding monoculture plantations, whose production was destined for
the external market, determined the basis of production in both the colonial
and imperial periods.2 The slave population was concentrated in the hands of
a few large masters, and the Brazilian population was understood to be com-
prised almost exclusively of slave owners and slaves. The greatest exponents of
this view asserted that the coffee economy was based on the use of large-scale
slave labor in the production of goods for export. The work of Stanley Stein and
Emília Viotti da Costa followed the general proposition that most production
was concentrated in export-oriented latifundia with large numbers of slaves,
usually around a hundred people.3

1. Steven C. Topik, “Coffee Anyone? Recent Research on Latin American Coffee

Societies,” Hispanic American Historical Review 80, no. 2 (May 2000): 225–66.
2. Gilberto Freyre, Casa-grande & senzala: Formação da família brasileira sob o regime da
economia patriarcal, 20th ed. (São Paulo: Círculo do Livro, 1986), 68–69; Caio Prado Júnior,
Formação do Brasil contemporâneo, 9th ed. (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1981), 122; and Celso
Furtado, Formação econômica do Brasil, 8th ed. (São Paulo: Ed. Nacional, 1968), 114.
3. Stanley Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee Country, 1850–1900 (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard Univ. Press, 1958). Emília Viotti da Costa, Da senzala a colônia (São Paulo: Difusão
Européia do Livro, 1966).

Hispanic American Historical Review 85:2

Copyright 2005 by Duke University Press

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 260 HAHR / May / Marcondes

A revisionist view has taken hold in recent historiography. First of all, stud-
ies of coffee production in Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, El Salvador, and
Puerto Rico point to labor arrangements very different from those in Brazil,
such as the use of free labor.4 Steven C. Topik provides a more complex pic-
ture of coffee culture in the Americas: in many areas the latifundia was not the
norm, many smallholders were able to retain or obtain land, and there were no
economies of scale in the production of coffee.5
In Brazil, a broad debate has taken place over the last three decades with
regard to the traditional interpretation.6 New works based in local and regional
manuscript sources do not entirely corroborate the general view that coffee pro-
duction was largely in the hands of latifundistas. The growing incorporation
of new sources allows us to qualify or even revise some of the consensual views
of classic texts.7 Still, the revisitionist interpretations have not yet been con-
solidated, and the debate about the importance of slavery in coffee plantation
agriculture continues. Nevertheless, a few pioneering studies have incorporated
these documents and provide new evidence.

4. Vernon Dale Wickizer, Coffee, Tea, and Cocoa: An Economic and Political Analysis
(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1951); Ciro Flamarion Santana Cardoso, “Historia
económica del café en Centroamérica (siglo XIX): Estudio comparativo,” Estudios Sociales
Centroamericanos 4, no. 10 (Jan.–Apr. 1975); Laird W. Bergad, “Toward Puerto Rico’s Grito
de Lares: Coffee, Social Stratification, and Class Conflicts, 1828–1868,” Hispanic American
Historical Review 60, no. 4 (Nov. 1980): 617–42; Laird W. Bergad, Coffee and the Growth of
Agrarian Capitalism in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press,
1983); Frederic Mauro, Histoire du café (Paris: Editions Desjonquères, 1991); and William
Roseberry, “Introduction,” in Coffee, Society and Power in Latin American, ed. William
Roseberry, Lowell Gudmundson, and Mario Samper Kutschbach (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins Univ. Press, 1995).
5. Topik, “Coffee Anyone?” 242–47; Steven Topik and Mario Samper Kutschbach,
“The Latin American Coffee Commodity Chain” (paper presented at the XIII Congress on
Economic History, Buenos Aires, July 2002).
6. João Luís Ribeiro Fragoso and Manolo Garcia Florentino, O arcaísmo como projeto:
Mercado atlântico, sociedade agrária e elite mercantil uma economia colonial tardia, Rio de Janeiro,
1790-1840, 4th ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2001); Ciro Flamarion Santanta
Cardoso, “O trabalho na colônia,” in História geral do Brasil, ed. Maria Yedda Linhares, 9th
ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Campus, 2000), 95–110; and Iraci del Nero da Costa, “Repensando o
modelo interpretativo de Caio Prado Jr.,” Cardenos NEHD 3 (1995).
7. Some of the most relevant contributions have come from the fields of economics and
demography. Historical demography played an outstanding role in this advance; see José
Flávio Motta, “The Historical Demography of Brazil at the V Centenary of Its Discovery,”
Ciência e Cultura, Journal of the Brazilian Association for the Advancement of Science 51, no. 5–6
(Sept.–Dec. 1999): 446–56.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 261

Nominal lists (manuscript censuses) from the beginning of the nine-

teenth century have provided the empirical foundation for many studies of the
slaveholding structure for the Vale do Paraíba in the province of São Paulo.
Lucila Hermann’s 1945 thesis, the first such study to make use of these sources,
pointed to greater complexity in the coffee economy, including the presence
of small coffee producers, in the municipality of Guaratinguetá.8 Later, Maria
Luiza Marcílio verified nonslaveholders in coffee production, and José Flávio
Motta analyzed slave property in Bananal.9 Motta’s study begins in 1801, at
which point non-slaveholders planted coffee. But by 1829, when coffee became
well established in the region, slaveholders came to dominate cultivation. Cof-
fee planters held an average of 13.8 slaves (compared with an average of 11.7
slaves for all slaveholders).10 In Taubaté, Armênio de Souza Rangel found an
average of 7.8 slaves per coffee planter (compared with 5.1 for all slaveholders)
in 1835, at a time when coffee cultivation was less extensive than in Bananal.11
Francisco Vidal Luna’s study of the municipality of Areias found an average of
12.6 slaves per slaveholder in 1836.12 My own research established an average of
6.3 slaves per slaveholder in Lorena in 1829, which at the time was less involved
in coffee than Bananal and Areias.13 The average slaveholding of coffee produc-
ers in Lorena was 10.2 in 1829. A sample of 187 inventories for 1830–79 yielded
an average of 22.5 slaves per coffee-producing unit. Thus, coffee planting in
its early phases (up until the fourth decade of the nineteenth century) appears

8. Lucila Herrmann, Evolução da estrutura social de Guaratinguetá num período de

trezentos anos (São Paulo: IPE/USP, 1986).
9. Maria Luiza Marcílo, Crescimento demográfico e evolução agrária paulista: 1700–1836
(São Paulo: Hucitec / Edusp, 2000), 108. Francisco Vidal Luna’s pioneering study of the
structure of slaveholding analyzed five mining localities for 1718–1804 and pointed toward
a pattern of slaveholding that did not appear to corroborate the traditional historiographic
view. Instead, he found that small slaveholders (one to five slaves) predominated, while large
slaveholding properties were rare; Vidal Luna, Minas Gerais: Escravos e senhores. Análise da
estrutura populacional e econômica de alguns centros mineratórios (1718–1804) (São Paulo: IPE/
USP, 1981), 156–57.
10. José Flávio Motta, “Corpos escravos, vontades livres: Estrutura de posse de cativos
e família escrava em um núcleo cafeeiro (Bananal, 1801–1829)” (Ph.D. diss., FEA/USP,
1990), 122, 137, and 178.
11. Armênio de Souza Rangel, “Escravismo e riqueza: Formação da economia cafeeira
no município de Taubaté (1765–1835)” (Ph. D. diss., FEA/USP, 1990), 205 and 224.
12. Francisco Vidal Luna, “População e atividades econômicas em Areias (1817–1836),”
Estudos Econômicos 24, no. 3 (Sept.–Dec. 1994): 433–63.
13. Renato Leite Marcondes, “A arte de acumular na gestação da economia cafeeira:
Formas de enriquecimento no vale do Paraíba paulista durante o século XIX” (Ph.D. diss.,
FEA/USP, 1998), 72.

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 262 HAHR / May / Marcondes

to have been organized in a slightly differently manner from that described by

the classic historiographers: coffee growers held an average of about 10 slaves, a
number similar to that of the slaveholding population as a whole. Some authors
disagree with this statement. Rangel, for example, states, “[T]he municipality,
in many aspects of its economic and social organization, came close to the model
of the exporting plantation formulated by Caio Prado Júnior.”14
When considering the Vale do Paraíba overall, we should pay attention to
local variations in the economic structure. Some places show a greater propor-
tion of large slaveholders than others: for example, Bananal and Areias in São
Paulo and Vassouras in Rio de Janeiro.15 Researchers have demonstrated the
importance of small and medium producers in other locations, even during the
peak period of coffee cultivation. Maria Celina Whately’s study of nineteenth-
century coffee production in Resende, Rio de Janeiro province, found a greater
proportion of smallholders in comparison with Vassouras.16 Neither does this
location seem unique. Maria Aparecida Chaves Ribeiro Papali (working with
30 inventories from São José dos Campos, São Paulo, from 1870–88) likewise
observed the presence of numerous small and medium growers. Most farmers
had, on average, 10–15 slave workers.17
Aldeci Silva dos Santos observed, based on a sample of 553 inventories, the
presence of small properties even in Vassouras: slaveholders with ten slaves or
fewer comprised 33.5 percent of inventoried decedents between 1830 and 1879.18
The author went so far as to say that “the success of the coffee economy in
the Paraíba Valley [of Rio de Janeiro] owes to the aid of the small property;
when it could no longer reserve sufficient space in its landholdings for subsis-
tence production, it came to depend on external supply [from smallholders] to
meet its needs.”19 João Fragoso examined almost one hundred inventories from
localities close to Paraíba do Sul and found an average of 18.8 slaves per owner

14. Rangel, “Escravismo e riqueza,” 302. Rangel restates his position in an article on
the concentration of land and slave property in Taubaté from 1774 to 1817; Armênio de
Souza Rangel, “Dilemas da historiografia paulista: A repartição da riqueza no município de
Taubaté no início do século XIX,” Estudos Econômicos 28, no. 2 (Apr.–Jun. 1998): 351–68.
15. Stein, Vassouras; and Marcondes, “A arte de acumular,” chap. 3.
16. Maria Celina Whately, O café em Resende no século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: José
Olympio, 1987), 69.
17. Maria Aparecida Chaves Ribeiro Papali, “Vestígios de um cotidiano: Trabalhadores
escravos, lavradores, negociantes e coronéis em São José dos Campos (1870–1888)”
(Masters’ thesis, PUC-SP, 1996), 128–29.
18. Aldeci Silva dos Santos, “À sombra da fazenda: A pequena propriedade agrícola na
economia da Vassouras oitocentista” (Masters’ thesis, PPH/USS, 1999), 58–65.
19. Ibid., 49.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 263

for 1830–50 and 20.7 for 1870–75. Célia Maria Loureiro Muniz studied the
agrarian property structure of the Vale do Paraíba in Rio de Janeiro during
the nineteenth century and found that coffee plantations averaged between 100
and 200 alqueires (roughly 500–1,000 hectares), and many had fewer than 100
alqueires.20 Based on the forms of land appropriation, she showed the size of the
properties: “Many books on the coffee economy speak of ‘large properties’ and
‘enormous latifundia.’ However, these coffee plantations were not so large; they
had an average of 100 to 200 alqueires and many had fewer than 100 alqueires.”21
Did the picture drawn for the valley at the beginning of the nineteenth
century remain stable for the following period? The consolidation of the coffee
plantation, according to Caio Prado Júnior’s model, occurred in a later period,
for which there exist no manuscript censuses. Iraci del Nero da Costa seems to
capture the varied reality of coffee production, stating that “small, medium, and
large owners coexisted in the most varied sectors and quadrants.”22
These reassessments affirm the need to incorporate the small and medium
owner into our analyses of the colonial and imperial economies. In other words,
we should not limit ourselves to studying the great, all-powerful slaveholders.
Other recent research on the economic and demographic importance of non-
slaveholders reinforces this point.23 In this regard, we would expect the slave-
holding structure of the Vale do Paraíba after 1840 (the peak of coffee produc-
tion in the region) to resemble the profile outlined in traditional historiography,
but we should still pay attention to local variations within the valley.
This article focuses on the importance of small and medium slaveholders to
the coffee economy in the Vale do Paraíba. My results corroborate those found
in the revisionist literature discussed above, including Herrmann, Whately,
Papali, Santos, and Muniz. My data suggest the presence of a significant num-
ber of small and medium slaveholders in several different parts of the Vale do
Paraíba—even during the height of the coffee boom. These owners coexisted
with a reduced number of large plantations. Nevertheless, the proportion of
large slaveholders varies at different locations. I will also describe the slave pop-
ulation of Vale do Paraíba, relating its attributes to the size of slaveholdings.

20. Célia Maria Loureiro Muniz, “Os donos da terra: Um estudo sobre a estrutura
fundiária do vale do Paraíba fluminense, no século XIX” (Masters’ thesis, ICHF/UFF,
1979), 160.
21. Muniz, “Os donos da terra,” 135. One alqueire is equivalent to 4.84 hectares in Rio
de Janeiro.
22. Costa, Repensando, 18.
23. Hebe Maria Mattos de Castro, Ao sul da história: Lavradores pobres na crise do
trabalho escravo (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1987); and Iraci del Nero da Costa, Arraia-miúda:
Um estudo sobre os não-proprietários de escravos no Brasil (São Paulo: MGSP, 1992).

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 264 HAHR / May / Marcondes

In this comparative analysis, I make use of the 1872 census, the registers
(matrículas) for 1871–72, and Emancipation Fund classification lists that have
been unearthed for the municipalities of Bananal (1874), Lorena and Cruzeiro
(1874), Paraibuna (1874), São José dos Campos (1874), São Luís do Paraitinga
(1874), and Taubaté (1872).24 The Emancipation Fund dated from November 13,
1872 and was created based on the Lei do Ventre Livre (the Free Womb Law),
issued September 28, 1871. The law declared children born to slave mothers to
be free persons. The regulation mandated that the fund’s resources be allocated
first for the freeing of slaves with certain categories of relatives, and later for
others. Family preference was shown in the following order: (1) married couples
owned by different owners; (2) couples who had children under the age of eight
that were born free by virtue of the Free Womb Law; (3) couples who had free-
born children under the age of 21; (4) couples with minor slave children; (5)
mothers with minor slave children; and (6) couples with no minor children. The
remaining slaves would be shown preference in the following order: (1) moth-
ers or fathers of free children not included in the categories above; and (2) any
remaining slaves between the ages of 12 and 50, beginning with the youngest
females and the oldest males (see Collecção das Leis do Império do Brasil de 1872,
1873, vol. 2, p. 1059). Not all slaves fit into these categories; for example, indi-
viduals over 50 with no relatives would not be included in the classification lists.
Slaves younger than 12 or older than 50 were most likely to be omitted.
I will compare demographic information on the slave population—sex, age
group, and family attributes—in order to determine the representativeness of
my sample. I then present a more detailed analysis of the slave cohorts named in
the classification lists. Finally, I analyze the slave property in these locations and
compare it with the results of other research for the beginning of the nineteenth
century. There appears to be a relationship between property size and certain
demographic characteristics of the slaves. Thus, we have been able to compare
the reality of slavery emerging from the nominal lists of inhabitants for the
first three decades to the situation in 1870 and determine whether there were
changes in the pattern of slave ownership during the nineteenth century.
The available evidence does not permit detailed analysis of the economic

24. The census was finished in São Paulo on January 30, 1874. The lists are to be
found in the Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo, Arquivo Municipal de Bananal, Arquivo
Municipal de Ribeirão Preto, Arquivo do Fórum de Paraibuna, Arquivo Municipal
de Taubaté “Dr. Felix Guisard Filho,” and Cartório do Registro Civil de São Luís do
Paraitinga. Additional information was drawn from certain inventories deposited in the
Arquivo Municipal de Lorena.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 265

activity of all the slaveholders residing in the locations studied. However, the
regional economy might be characterized as a coffee economy. That is, almost all
economic activities were related, directly or indirectly, to coffee production.
Many people found themselves directly linked to coffee production, while oth-
ers produced goods and services for the coffee sector, even in the urban areas.
As Sergio Silva notes, “The coffee economy and capital extended far beyond the
plantations.”25 Several studies point to the interdependent growth of coffee pro-
duction and subsistence production. Aldeci Silva dos Santos remarks, “The small
proprietor is quite engaged, even if indirectly, in the coffee economy—often not
as a direct producer but with the important role of supplying large producers.”26
Finally, the dividing line between coffee producers and other growers is unclear,
especially for smallholders. Some authors refer to these plantations as mixed.

Slavery in the Vale do Paraíba

The expansion of coffee cultivation, which reached its height in the Vale do
Paraíba in the 1870s, was conditioned by and conditioned itself to demographic
growth, especially of slaves. In the Vale do Paraíba, 27.9 percent of the popula-
tion was enslaved. Although this percentage is slightly smaller than that found
in the central region of São Paulo (36.1 percent), it dwarfed the percentage of
slaves in the provincial capital, the Vale do Ribeira, and the coast.27
The six locations selected for our study account for 46.0 percent of the
slaves on the registers for the São Paulo portion of the Vale do Paraíba. In the
1872 census, counting both the slave and free populations, Taubaté was the most
populous municipality of our six locations, with 20,000 inhabitants. The rest
maintained a total population of about 15,000 citizens. Bananal’s slave popu-
lation of 8,281 is the largest in the sample, while Taubaté had only half that
number. According to the census, slaves were a significant percentage of the
total population. The percentage of Bananal’s population that was enslaved,
53.1 percent, was higher than anywhere else in the province of São Paulo. The
proportion in Paraibuna and São José dos Campos was a little over 9 percent,
despite their emphasis on coffee production in the second half of the nineteenth

25. Sergio Silva, Expansão cafeeira e origens da indústria no Brasil, 8th ed. (São Paulo:
Alfa-Omega, 1995), 53.
26. Santos, “À sombra da fazenda,” 48.
27. We compared our results with those of Armênio de Souza Rangel for the regional
divisions of the province of São Paulo in 1835. This comparison indicates that the valley’s
share of the total slave population in the province increased during this period, from 30.1%
to 32.7%; Rangel, “Escravismo e riqueza,” 196.

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 266 HAHR / May / Marcondes

century. Perhaps the lower percentages are due to the greater presence of free
Brazilians, since there were no large numbers of foreign immigrants at the time.
In Lorena and Cruzeiro, São Luís de Paraitinga, and Taubaté, slaves accounted
for 14.8, 15.0, and 19.8 percent of the total population, respectively—still much
lower than the percentage in Bananal.28 Thus, the relatively greater presence of
slaves in the municipalities correlated with the extent of coffee production, with
the exception of São Luís do Paraitinga.29
Although the transatlantic slave trade ended definitively in 1850, the slave
population of these municipalities grew around 88 percent between 1836 and
1872, with the highest rate of growth in Bananal (138 percent) and São José dos
Campos (211 percent). Increased internal slave trade—largely originating in the
Brazilian Northeast and South—and natural reproduction help to account for
this increase, in the absence of trafficking from Africa.30
Various reports on the slave population in the first half of the 1870s reveal
differences in their totals and their composition. Table 1 presents information
from the three available sources on slaves in each location. The 1872 census
showed a slave population smaller than that recorded in the registers of 1871–72
for five of the six municipalities analyzed. The exception was Bananal. The big-
gest differences occurred in Lorena and Cruzeiro and Paraibuna.31 The classi-

28. Slaves comprised 20.4% of the total population in the selected localities, slightly
higher than percentage found in the province as a whole (18.7%). This represents a decrease
from the proportion found by Francisco Vidal Luna in 1829, when slaves comprised about
one-third of the total population (Luna, São Paulo: População, 104).
29. In 1854, Bananal was the largest coffee producer in the province of São Paulo
(554,600 arrobas). Taubaté produced 354,730 arrobas, Lorena 125,000, Paraibuna 118,320,
São José dos Campos 60,000, and São Luis Paraitinga 41,000. The relationship between the
number of slaves and levels of coffee production is strong, with the exception of Paraitinga,
which had a significant slave population engaged in agricultural production destined for the
internal market. The localities studied produced 53.8% of the coffee in the valley for that
year. See Sergio Milliet, Roteiro do café e outros ensaios (São Paulo: Departamento da Cultura,
1939), 52.
30. See José Flávio Motta, “O tráfico de escravos na Província de São Paulo: Areias,
Silveiras, Guaratinguetá e Casa Branca, 1861–1887,” Anais do VII Encontro Nacional de
Economia Política / II Colóquio Latino-Americano de Economistas Políticos (Curitiba: SEP, 2002).
31. These significant differences between the two populations (from the census and the
registers) are perhaps due to the exclusion of part of the slave population in the first survey.
Robert Slenes notes the high possibility of underrepresentation in the census, especially
of children and women; “O que Rui Barbosa não queimou: Novas fontes para o estudo da
escravidão no século XIX,” Estudos Econômicos 13, no. 1 (Jan.–Apr. 1983): 117–49. Since the
classification was itself based on the registers, we used this number in elaborating the size of
the sample in table 2.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 267

Table 1. The Slave Population According to the Census, the Registers, and the
Classification Lists (1872–74).
Percent of slave
register population
Slave Classifi cation included in
Municipalities Census registers lists classifi cation lists

Bananal 8,281 8,256 7,536 91.3

Lorena and Cruzeiro 2,080 3,097 2,501 80.8
Paraibuna 1,402 2,159 1,685 78.1
São José dos Campos 1,390 1,599 1,110 69.4
São Luís do Paraitinga 2,089 2,415 2,079 86.1
Taubaté 4,122 4,278 4,165 97.4
Total 19,364 21,804 19,076 87.5

fication lists I located report 19,076 slaves—87.5 percent of the slave population
recorded in the registers.32
Bananal, São Luís do Paraitinga, and Taubaté showed a closer match
between the slave population listed in the registers and that in the classification
lists. In Paraibuna, São José dos Campos, and Lorena and Cruzeiro, the classifi-
cation list totals were about three-quarters of population noted in the registers.
Taken together, the samples can be considered sufficiently representative of the
total number of persons who inhabited the localities.

Data and Methodology

We surveyed the slave classification lists for Bananal, Lorena and Cruzeiro,
Paraibuna, São José dos Campos, São Luís do Paraitinga, and Taubaté. These
documents contained the register number, name of the slave (from which we
inferred sex), color, age, marital status, aptitude for work, profession, value,
observation, and a field called “family members” that mentioned parents, chil-
dren, or conjugal partners. Other information was included for some locali-
ties but not for others. For example, the prices of slaves were recorded only in
Lorena.33 The field of “family members” was completed only in Lorena and

32. The fact that the beginning and end pages were missing from the Taubaté lists
results in the underrepresentation of children (listed at the beginning of the document) and
childless couples (listed at the end). This also made it impossible to determine precisely the
date of the document. Since the total number of persons listed was close to the information
on the registers, we believed it is of similar antiquity.
33. See the attached article with respect to a comparison of prices of slaves on the
classification lists and in the registers of buying and selling (See Motta and Marcondes,
Família escrava).

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 268 HAHR / May / Marcondes

São José dos Campos.34 The lists note the names of slave owners, and we were
thus able to reconstruct the holdings of individual owners whose slaves were
dispersed throughout the various categories.
It appears that some slaves (with the same register number, owner, and
similar ages) were registered in two or more documents. For example, one slave
was registered on one list as the father of a freeborn child and on another list
in the category of individuals between 12 and 50 years old. The rate of such
duplications varied from place to place. While we found no duplicate entries
in Bananal and Paraibuna and only three in Taubaté, in São José dos Campos
we found (and eliminated) 181 duplicate listings, 138 in Lorena and Cruzeiro,
and 50 in São Luís do Paraitinga. In some cases, we were able to establish fam-
ily ties between slaves listed by means of the field “family members,” especially
relationships between siblings.
We were able to supplement information on some owners by consulting
the Almanak da província de São Paulo para 1873.35 Cross-checking the informa-
tion on owners in the Almanak with that from the classification lists allowed us
to record the economic activity of the cross-listed slaveholders. However, only
a small number of the slave owners named in the classification lists appeared
in the Almanak, and many individuals listed in the Almanak did not appear on
the classification lists—especially artists, artisans, professionals, and merchants,
who usually did not own slaves.
Our sample analyzes a significant proportion of all slaves present in the
Vale do Paraíba at the beginning of the 1870s. However, slavery was not uni-
formly distributed throughout the region. The areas most involved in coffee
production generally had a larger proportion of slaves in relation to the free
population. The uneven distribution of the slave population seems to constitute
only the most easily perceived difference between municipalities. We needed
more detailed information on the slaves and their owners to carry out an in-
depth analysis of the slave population; we found this information in the classifi-
cation lists. The next section uses information from these lists to offer a better
understanding the demographics of slavery in the region. We should remember
that although the lists present a wide range of information on a large number of
slaves, they do not include the entire slave population. In particular, the slaves

34. In Bananal and São Luís do Paraitinga, we managed to establish family ties by
means of the information in the field called observations.
35. Antonio José B. Luné and Paulo Delfino de Fonseca, Almanack da província de São
Paulo para 1873 (São Paulo: Impresa Oficial do Estado / Arquivo do Estado de São Paulo,
1985).

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 269

Table 2. Sex Ratio According to Age Groups, 1872–74.

Age groups

Municipalities 0–14 15–49 50+ Total

Bananal 106 144 225 140

Lorena and Cruzeiro 125 124 253 131
Paraibuna 95 118 170 115
São José dos Campos 80 124 175 119
São Luís do Paraitinga 113 120 186 121
Taubaté 131 146 185 146

Note: The sex ratio is defi ned as the number of males per 100 females.

included in the classification lists show a demographic profile somewhat differ-

ent from that observed for the population recorded in other sources.

Demographic Profile of Slaves

As expected, the majority of slaves were males, due to the preponderance of

male captives in the transatlantic traffic prior to 1850. Taubaté and Bananal
recorded the greatest gender imbalance. Age range is another important factor
in explaining the sex ratio among slaves. Table 2 shows a significant increase in
the male-to-female ratio among older slaves for the locations in question. This
result is not due to a difference in mortality rates. Instead, we should probably
attribute this increase to the higher proportion of African-born slaves in the
older cohorts, especially 50 or older, due to the preponderance of male slaves in
the transatlantic trade.
Individuals between 15 and 49 years old predominated in the sample—
about two-thirds of the total slave population (see table 3).36 In São José dos
Campos, the prevalence of this age range was even greater, at 73.4 percent.37
São Luís do Paraitinga exhibited a lower number of slaves 50 years old or older,
just 5.8 percent of the total. On the other hand, slaves younger than 15 were a

36. The Free Womb Law, which mandated the classification lists, prioritized slaves
with certain family ties and those between the ages of 12 to 50, whether or not they
had family relations. Children younger than 12 and adults over 50 are thus significantly
underrepresented in these documents. In addition, classifiers may have listed children 12 or
older in the general 12–50 category rather than in the family members category, although
they may have still been living with their parents.
37. We found 106 slave children in São José dos Campos, of which 104 were children
of slaves—most probably younger than 15.

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 270 HAHR / May / Marcondes

Table 3. The Slave Population According to Age Groups, 1872–74.

Age groups
0–14 15–49 50+ Total

Municipalities No. % No. % No. % No. %

Bananal 1,924 25.5 4,675 62.1 932 12.4 7,531 100.0

Lorena and Cruzeiro 730 29.2 1,561 62.5 208 8.3 2,499 100.0
Paraibuna 442 26.2 1,092 64.8 151 9.0 1,685 100.0
São José dos Campos 196 17.7 815 73.4 99 8.9 1,110 100.0
São Luís do Paraitinga 538 25.9 1,421 68.3 120 5.8 2,079 100.0
Taubaté 1,115 27.0 2,467 59.7 550 13.3 4,132 100.0
Total 4,945 26.0 12,031 63.2 2,060 10.8 19,036 100.0

Note: The documents did not list age information for all slaves.

little more than a quarter of the total number of slaves in Bananal, Lorena and
Cruzeiro, Paraibuna, São Luís do Paraitinga, and Taubaté.
Because the Free Womb Law that gave rise to the classification lists gave
preference to slaves with certain family ties and did not cover other categories of
slaves (such as those over 50 without relatives), the slaves classified maintained
a significant network of family ties among them (see table 4). In São Luís do
Paraitinga, only 44 percent of slaves had family ties, while in Bananal it reached
54.5 percent, in Lorena and Cruzeiro 54.6 percent, and in São José dos Cam-
pos 61.5 percent.38 The largest percentage of slaves with family ties occurred in
Paraibuna (63.8 percent). Perhaps this difference results from a lower degree of
representativeness of classified slaves in the total on the registers of these last
three localities (see table 1) and the impossibility of establishing the relation-
ships between siblings for the first two locations. In Bananal, the proportion of
men in the 15-and-older group was higher, making the constitution of families
more difficult.39
We should also point out that kinship ties between slaves and nonslaves
were on the rise, due to changes in the law and the spread of the abolition move-
ment. We identified 43 ingenuos (children born of slave mothers after the Free

38. We did not include Taubaté in table 9 due to the lack of information on the
relationships between parents and children in its classification list. Here we found 707
married slaves and 66 widows/widowers, corresponding to 18.6% of the slave population. In
São Luís do Paraitinga we noted that youths between the ages 11 and 20 were not listed as
family members.
39. In Bananal we found more than 20 widowers without slave children. In São José
dos Campos, on the other hand, we found a high number of single mothers living with their
parents—typically with one, or at most two, children.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 271

Table 4. The Slave Population According to Some Attributes of Marital Status

(1874).
Lorena and São José dos São Luís do
Attributes Bananal Paraibuna Cruzeiro Campos Paraitinga

Married 20.4% 14.6% 26.4% 20.5% 17.7%

Widowed 4.4% 1.4% 2.8% 2.7% 2.3%
Legitimate children 14.4% 11.0% 16.0% 10.4% 5.7%
Singles with children 5.4% 10.4% 6.6% 16.8% 6.8%
Natural children 9.9% 15.1% 12.0% 10.7% 11.5%
Siblings — 2.1% — 0.4% —
Other singles 45.5% 45.4% 36.2% 38.5% 56.0%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Note: The family relationships include couples, living children accompanying at least
one parent (mother or father), single mothers, widows, widowers, and siblings.

Womb Law) in Lorena and Cruzeiro, with 63 in Paraibuna and 87 in São José
dos Campos.40 Although the number of ingenuos in Bananal is uncertain, our
survey found 467 free persons born of slave parents in this municipality. Of
these, probably 185 were ingenuos. In addition, there were 22 free couples in this
city and 43 free parents.41 In São Luís do Paraitinga, we found 25 ingenuos and
5 married couples that included a free woman. Thus, we can say that a signifi-
cant number of slaves maintained family relationships with free individuals.42
We can also classify the slave occupations, a list that includes a rich variety
of artisan activities, commercial activities, and domestic work, in addition to tra-
ditional agriculture. Nonetheless, about two-thirds of all slaves were employed
in agriculture in Bananal, Lorena and Cruzeiro, Paraibuna, and São José dos
Campos.43 In São Luís do Paraitinga, agriculture was the profession of a slightly

40. For information on the slave families in Lorena and Cruzeiro, see José Flávio
Motta and Renato Leite Marcondes, “Família escrava em Lorena and Cruzeiro (1974),”
População e Família 3 (2001).
41. The 1872 census noted the existence of 172 free Africans in Bananal.
42. We find examples of this situation in the documents from São José dos Campos,
which list, for example 46-year-old Florentina, the mother of a minor daughter named
Fermina, whose father, Firmino “belongs to the same master and lives in Resende, and thus
is not classified here.” Two other notations also caught our attention, since they revealed the
first step in the conquest of freedom. The first refers to a married slaved named Efigenia,
who possessed 100$000 réis “in benefit of her freedom.” The other case mentions, without
going into details, a slave named Conrad who was partially manumitted.
43. We didn’t include Taubaté in this analysis due to a lack of information for this
location: no occupation was listed for more than nine-tenths of the slaves.

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 272 HAHR / May / Marcondes

smaller number (66.5 percent). This is a result of the lower numbers of women
engaged in agriculture (38.2 percent of all female slaves), a smaller percentage
than that of cooks (40.1 percent).
In addition to the preponderance of agricultural activities, we also note
an occupational specialization according to gender. Some professions were pre-
dominantly masculine—such as tailor, animal packer, basket maker, wrangler,
carpenter, cart driver, delivery man, coachman, butler, foreman, blacksmith,
fireworks maker, ant exterminator, vegetable producer, day laborer, miller,
musician, child caretaker, farmhand, mason, shoemaker, sawyer, tile maker, and
animal driver. Agriculture was also dominated by men, even though it was also
listed as the occupation of a significant number of female slaves—from one-
third to two-thirds of the total, depending on the location. On the other hand,
certain professions were predominately female: caretaker, seamstress, cook,
candy maker, starcher, spinner, laundress, chambermaid, midwife, lace maker,
domestic worker, and weaver. In addition, some professions stood out as requir-
ing greater skill or training—for example, carpenter, musician, mason, shoe-
maker, and animal driver.44

Slaves as Property

Treating slaves as property permits an analysis of the amount and distribution

of wealth in each location. The slave population can be considered (within lim-
its) as a proxy for the fortune of individuals and even of the region, especially
for the time periods considered here.45 On the other hand, uneven distribu-

44. There were two very interesting cases in Paraibuna of a machinist and machinist’s
assistant, although we aren’t told what the machine was.
45. In making such an analysis, we must be aware of three limitations (See Marcondes,
“A arte de acumular,” methodological appendix). The first is the period of the study,
when the viability of slaves as a long-term investment clearly beginning to falter. The
legislation of 1850 and 1871 showed this tendency. For this reason, most individual wealth
was allocated to other assets (shares, land, public bonds, etc.). Zélia Cardoso de Mello
highlights this change in allocation in working with 746 inventories for the city of São
Paulo. According to the author, slaves were reduced from 32.3% of total wealth in 1845–50
to 7.8% in the period 1872–80; Zélia Cardoso de Mello, Metamorfose da riqueza: São
Paulo, 1845–1895 (São Paulo: Hucitec / Prefeitura do Município de São Paulo / Secretaria
Municipal da Cultura, 1985), 159. Meanwhile, we should emphasize the distinct nature of
the city of São Paulo city in relation to the rest of the province, which both functioned as
capital and displayed the highest degree of urbanization. In Franca, in the province of São
Paulo, for example, Lélio Luís de Oliveira observed that slaves declined as a percentage
of total wealth from 37.1% to 26.7% between 1822–30 and 1875–85; “As transformações

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 273

Table 5. Statistical Indicators of Slave Property, 1872–74.

No. of No. of Standard Coeffi cient
Municipalities owners slaves Average deviation of variation

Bananal 498 7,536 15.2 39.0 2.6

Lorena and Cruzeiro 376 2,501 6.7 11.1 1.7
Paraibuna 249 1,685 6.8 12.7 1.9
São José dos Campos 244 1,110 4.6 6.8 1.5
São Luís do Paraitinga 383 2,079 5.4 9.6 1.8
Taubatéa 663 4,164 6.3 11.6 1.8
Total 2,413 19.075 7.9 20.5 2.6
a There was one slave for whom it was not possible to determine the owner.

tion of slaveholdings can best be understood if compared over time and space.
We attempted to contrast our data with that from other studies for other loca-
tions in this period (mostly those based on similar sources) and with research
on these exact municipalities at other points in time based on nominal lists of
inhabitants.
Table 5 shows some statistical indicators based on the classification lists.
Analysis of the slaveholding structure reveals very different behavior from place
to place. The average slaveholding in the 1870s was more than 15 in Bananal,
while in São José dos Campos and São Luís do Paraitinga the figures were closer
to 5.46 In Lorena and Cruzeiro, Paraibuna, and Taubaté, the average slavehold-
ing was a bit higher than 6 slaves. These last three localities were thus somewhat
intermediate in their average slaveholding, although they were closer to the
smaller municipalities than they were to Bananal. In none of the other munici-
palities does the development of coffee and of the slave population seem to have
come close to the size of Bananal. The average for the entire six municipalities
was 8, with a Gini index of 0.689.
The distribution of slaves also followed the pattern of average number of

da riqueza em Franca no século XIX” (Masters’ thesis, FHDSS/UNESP, 1997), 73). The
second limitation refers to persons occupied in nonagricultural activities who used slave
labor much less than agricultural producers with equivalent patrimony. Finally, the third
refers to indebted persons, who generally maintained slaves in proportions much greater
than their net wealth.
46. Robert Slenes, studying Campinas slave families based on various registers from
1872 annexed to inventories, estimated the average number of slaves at 12.7; “A formação da
família escrava nas regiões de grande lavoura do Sudeste: Campinas um caso paradigmático
no século XIX,” População e Família 1, no. 1 (Jan.–Jun. 1998): 77.

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 274 HAHR / May / Marcondes

slaves, whether viewed as a coefficient of variation or through the Gini index.

Using the Gini index, the most uneven distribution is found in Bananal (0.759),
and the most balanced is found in São José dos Campos (0.570).47 This result
corroborates existing regional differences observed at the beginning of the
nineteenth century discussed in the introduction of this article; these regional
differences do not change significantly in the second half of the century. The
other localities have intermediate indexes: 0.611 for São Luís do Paraitinga,
0.624 for Lorena and Cruzeiro, 0.638 for Taubaté, and 0.649 for Paraibuna.
We compared the average and Gini indexes we calculated with those
reported by other researchers for the same localities at the start of the nineteenth
century, based on the nominal lists of inhabitants of the time.48 Tables 6 and 7
indicate average slaveholdings and the Gini indexes for the earlier time period.
All the data we found indicate larger average slaveholdings and a higher degree
of inequality in Bananal than in the other locations in the nineteenth century.
Lorena and Cruzeiro and Taubaté maintained Gini indexes close to each other,
except for the period 1829/30. Still, when we compare the results from 1872/74
with those from the beginning of the nineteenth century, we do note some
changes. Bananal, Lorena and Cruzeiro, Paraibuna, São José dos Campos, and
Taubaté show higher average slaveholdings for the period 1829/35–1872/74,
mainly for the first. Finally, São Luís do Paraitinga followed a unique course of
development: both average slaveholdings and inequality in distribution decreas-
ing during this period.49

47. The value of the index in Bananal did not reach that obtained by Zélia Cardoso
de Mello based in the inventories for the city of São Paulo for 1872–80 (0.880). In the
provincial capital, a large number of small owners engaged in urban commerce, artisan
trades, domestic tasks, slave liveries, and small agriculture. Although the average
slaveholding was lower than in Bananal, the predominance of urban occupations seems to
help explain the high degree of concentration found in the city of São Paulo.
48. Lorena’s territorial extension was reduced when Silveiras (including a large parcel
of coffee production) was separated off and raised to the status of independent municipality
in 1842. Likewise, Caçapava was separated from Taubaté in 1855. For Paraibuna, we have
used the reports from the municipality of Jacareí (to which it was subordinated until 1832)
for 1804 and 1829. These three localities were included in the calculation of the statistical
indicators for the beginning of the nineteenth century. These territorial changes might
produce a certain bias when comparing 1829–32 and 1872–74, since coffee growing was
better developed in the areas (Jacareí, Silveiras, and Caçapava) that were no longer part of
the data for the second period.
49. According to all indicators, São Luís do Paraitinga showed a significant increase
in the average number of slaves at the beginning of the century, as it geared up an economy
based on the production of goods for the internal market—for example, tobacco, bacon,

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 275

Table 6. Average Number of Slaves in the Nineteenth Century.

Municipalities 1801–04 1817–18 1829–30 1835 1872–74

Bananala 9.1 8.4 11.7 — 15.2

Lorena and Cruzeirob 5.6 5.9 6.3 — 6.7
Paraibunac 3.7 — 5.6 — 6.8
São José dos Camposd 4.3 — 4.2 — 4.6
São Luís do Paraitingad 5.6 — 7.6 — 5.4
Taubatée 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.1 6.3

Sources:
a for 1801, 1817, and 1829: Motta, Corpos escravos, 142 and 158.

b for 1801: Iraci del Nero da Costa and Nelson Hideiki Nozoe, “Elementos da estrutura

de posse de escravos em Lorena no alvorecer do século XIX,” Estudos Econômicos 19, no.
2 (May–Aug. 1989), 328; for 1818 and 1829, Marcondes, “A arte de acumular,” 80–91.
c for 1804 and 1829: information referring to Jacareí was used: Francisco Vidal Luna,

“Estrutura de posse de escravos e atividades produtivas em Jacareí (1777 a 1829),” Revista

do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 28 (1988): 23–35).
d Francisco Vidal Luna, personal communication.

e Rangel, Escravismo e riqueza, 205–7.

If the trajectory of coffee produced identical patterns in the different loca-

tions in the valley, we would expect the results obtained for Bananal to have
occurred in the other localities, since coffee was introduced across the frontier
with Rio de Janeiro. In this context, the differences between the municipalities
should be only a question of time. All the municipalities would have approached
Bananal’s figures for average slaveholding and unequal distribution for a deter-
mined time. However, since the differences in these indicators are steady over
time, we must explain the particularities of each locality.
Considering the situation by grouping the size of slaveholdings in the dis-
tribution of slave property allows us a better vision of the similarities and dif-
ferences among localities. The total number of slaveholders and slaves increased
for all the locations between 1829/35 and 1872/74.50 Over the course of the

and other products. The locality benefited from its geographic situation along the route
to the coast that served as a market route for some areas of the valley. The construction
of railroads across the Vale do Paraíba redirected mercantile flows during the 1870s and
reducing the importance of the intermediate localities such as São Luís do Paraitinga.
50. For 1829–35 we find 195 owners of slaves 2,282 in Bananal, 410 owners of 2,561
slaves in Lorena, 232 owners of 1,298 slaves in Jacareí, 78 owners of 327 slaves in São José
dos Campos, 159 owners of 1,208 slaves in São Luís do Paraitinga, and 444 owners of 2,255
slaves in Taubaté.

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 276 HAHR / May / Marcondes

Table 7. Gini Index for the Nineteenth Century.

Municipalities 1801–4 1817–18 1829–30 1835 1872–74

Bananala 0.631 0.649 0.657 — 0.759

Lorena and Cruzeirob 0.536 0.506 0.554 — 0.624
Paraibunac 0.48 — 0.57 — 0.649
São José dos Camposd 0.451 — 0.489 — 0.570
São Luí do Paraitingad 0.604 — 0.621 — 0.611
Taubatée 0.513 0.513 0.498 0.479 0.638

Sources:
a for 1801, 1817, and 1829, Motta, Corpos Escravos, 142 and 158.

b for 1801, Iraci del Nero da Costa and Nelson Hideiki Nozoe, “Elementos da estrutura

de posse de escravos em Lorena no alvorecer do século XIX,” Estudos Econômicos 19, no. 2
(May–Aug. 1989), 328; for 1818 and 1829, Marcondes, “A arte de acumular,” 80–91.
c for 1804 and 1829, information referring to Jacareí was used: Francisco Vidal Luna,

“Estrutura de posse de escravos e atividades produtivas em Jacareí (1777 a 1829),” Revista

do Instituto de Estudos Brasileiros 28 (1988): 23–35).
d for 1804 and 1829, Francisco Vidal Luna, personal communication.

e for 1803, 1817, 1830, and 1835, Rangel, Escravismo e riqueza, 205–7.

nineteenth century, we see growing numbers of slaveholders with small slave-

holdings in all municipalities, especially in Bananal (see table 8). Despite this
increase, the share of the total slave population owned by smallholders decreased
in all localities except Lorena and Cruzeiro. On the other hand, the holdings of
large slaveholders increased, and their slaves represented a greater proportion
of the entire slave population.50 This corroborates the result obtained via the
Gini index.
There were some differences among the localities under consideration. In
1874, 61.5 percent of slaveholders in Bananal owned 1–5 slaves, while 70.7 per-
cent of slaveholders in Lorena owned 1–5 slaves. The slaves this group owned
represented 8.1 percent and 23.1 percent of all slaves, respectively. Thus, Bananal
had both the smallest proportion of smallholders and the smallest proportion of
slaves owned by smallholders. These indicators were similar in Lorena and Cru-
zeiro, Paraibuna, São José dos Campos, São Luís do Paraitinga, and Taubaté.
The professions of almost two-thirds of the slave population, as mentioned
earlier, were in agriculture. By cross-referencing the slaveholders who regis-

50. This can also be observed in Zélia Cardoso de Mello’s study of São Paulo
(Metamorfose da riqueza, 108). In Campinas, perhaps as a result of the bias toward larger
slaveholdings, we verified an increase only in the number of slaves belonging to the largest
slaveowners; Slenes, A formação da família, 76–77.

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 Table 8. Structure of Slaveholding.
% of all slaveholders % of all slaves

No. of slaves owned 1829 1874 1829 1874

Bananala
1–4 49.7 58.6 8.6 7.1
5–9 21.0 13.7 12.3 6.1
10–19 14.9 11.6 16.9 10.2
20–39 6.7 7.4 13.3 13.6
40+ 7.7 8.6 48.9 63.0
Lorena and Cruzierob
1 26.3 31.6 4.2 4.7
2–4 32.9 32.5 14.6 13.3
5–9 22.0 18.1 23.9 17.4
10–19 14.4 10.9 31.7 22.3
20–39 2.9 4.0 11.5 16.6
40+ 1.5 2.9 14.1 25.7
Paraibunac
1–5 71.1 75.5 28.7 24.6
6–10 18.1 9.6 23.6 11.0
11–15 4.3 5.6 10.2 10.4
16–20 2.2 0.8 6.3 2.0
21–40 2.6 5.6 13.1 24.0
41+ 1.7 2.8 18.1 28.0
São José dos Campos d
1 37.2 37.3 8.9 8.2
2–4 29.5 38.1 18.3 23.4
5–9 21.8 14.3 37.9 21.5
10–19 11.5 5.3 34.9 15.5
20–39 — 4.1 — 22.7
40+ — 0.8 — 8.6
São Luís do Paraitingad
1 26.4 36.3 3.5 6.7
2–4 37.1 35.2 12.9 17.9
5–9 11.3 14.6 9.0 17.4
10–19 14.5 8.4 24.9 20.4
20–39 7.5 4.2 28.8 22.1
40+ 3.1 1.3 20.9 15.4
Taubaté e
1–5 73.4 71.2 33.4 22.0
6–10 16.2 12.8 23.5 13.8
11–20 7.0 8.9 18.7 19.1
21–40 2.5 4.4 13.3 18.5
41+ 0.9 2.7 11.1 26.6

Sources:
a1829, Motta, Corpos escravos, 168.
b1829, Marcondes, “A arte de acumular,” 91.
c1829, Luna, Estrutura da posse, 7.
d1829, Francisco Vidal Luna, personal communication.
e1835, Rangel, Escravismo e riqueza, 206.

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 278 HAHR / May / Marcondes

Table 9. Average Number of Slaves by Activity, 1872–74.

Lorena São José São Luís
and dos dos
Main activity Bananal Cruzeiro Paraibuna Campos Paraitinga Taubaté

Coffeea 78.8 20.4 — 13.3 15.7 24.5

Sugar caneb — 11.5 — — — —
Agriculture 11.7 — 21.6 — — —
Merchants 2.6 3.4 2.1 2.0 1.7 4.8
Arts, industries, and crafts 3.0 2.0 — 3.0 4.3 1.0
Liberal professions 4.8 3.8 2.5 2.7 3.8 3.0
Money lendersc — — 3.0 — 51.2 12.3
a Includes cases of joint production of coffee with other agricultural goods (sugar cane,

tobacco, cotton, and corn).

b Includes one case of commercial activity and sugar cane, exclusive production of sugar

cane with coffee.

c Includes cases of agricultural production also in São Luís do Paraitinga and Taubaté.

tered their slaves on the list with those individuals reported in the Almanak da
Província de São Paulo para 1873, we were able to establish the activities of some
of the owners on the list.52 For the owners where we were able to obtain infor-
mation on profession, agricultural activities predominated: these represent 87.6
percent of the slaveholders in Bananal, 77.6 percent in São José dos Campos,
71.7 percent in Paraibuna, 68.7 percent in Lorena and Cruzeiro, 67.7 percent
in Taubaté, and 60.6 percent in São Luís do Paraitinga. According to this data,
agriculture appears to have been more important in the localities of São José
dos Campos and especially in Bananal. Agriculturalist owners had larger slave-
holdings, on average, than did merchants, artists, and professionals (see table
9). In São Luís do Paraitinga, 67.2 percent of the slave population was owned
by agriculturalists engaged in coffee production; 79.4 percent in Lorena and
Cruzeiro, 78.2 percent in Bananal, 86.7 percent in Taubaté, and 96.3 percent in
São José dos Campos. “Capitalists” (moneylenders) had average slaveholdings
similar to those of agricultural producers and sugar millers. Finally, as expected,
Bananal’s coffee growers had the largest average slaveholdings—around three
times larger than the second-largest slaveholders.

52. Luné and Fonseca, Almanack da província de São Paulo para 1873. Out of all slaves in
each locality, we managed to establish occupations for 80.2% in Bananal, 35.6% in Lorena
and Cruzeiro, 50.5% in Paraibuna, 47.5% in São José dos Campos, 48.1% in São Luís do
Paraitinga, and 29.4% in Taubaté.

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 279

The distribution of slave property among coffee growers varied, since some
growers owned just one slave, while other plantation owners possessed hun-
dreds. Bananal can be contrasted with the other localities analyzed. The Alma-
nak lists 40 slaveholding coffee growers in São José dos Campos; of these, 57.5
percent had fewer than 10 slaves.53 In contrast, of 57 slaveholding coffee growers
in Bananal, only 9 (15.8 percent) had fewer than 10 slaves. Another data point on
coffee producers in Bananal can be obtained from a 1868 list of coffee planta-
tions, compiled when a railroad was projected from the Rio de Janeiro coast to
the Paraiba Valley.54 Crossing that classification with our other data indicates
68 coffee growers who produced 310,000 arrobas of coffee and owned 4,029
slaves (53.5 percent of the total slave population). The 16 growers (23.5 percent)
who owned less than 10 slaves harvested 34,500 arrobas of coffee, a little more
than a tenth of the total harvest. Thus, the small slaveholders remained directly
involved with coffee production at the beginning of the 1870s, ranging from
around one-tenth to one-half of the coffee producing slaveholders.55
Despite certain differences at the beginning of coffee development, Tau-
baté, Paraibuna, and Lorena converged on very similar patterns of average slave-
holdings and unequal distribution by the 1870s. Our data do not indicate great
differences between them, aside from the total number of slaves. On the other
hand, the size of slaveholdings and degree of unequal distribution developed
more slowly in São José dos Campos and remained lower than the other munici-
palities in the 1870s. Bananal most closely approximated the traditional model.
It displays the largest contingent of slaves and the largest and most concentrated
slaveholdings. Nevertheless, even Bananal witnessed a significant number of
owners with fewer than five slaves—about half of all holdings. Thus, although
we do not have reports for all the localities in the Vale do Paraíba, we can see

53. Other locations presented lower values, closer to those of São José dos Campos.
In São Luiz do Paraitinga, the percentage was 38.1%, in Taubaté 24,5% and in Lorena e
Cruzeiro 52.2%.
54. Waldick Pereira, Cana, café & laranja: História econômica de Nova Iguaçu (Rio de
Janeiro: FGV, 1977), 56–70.
55. Aldeci Santos stressed that in Vassouras, “small and medium size properties were
not devoted exclusively to growing grain and raising small animals for slaughter.” Instead he
found that many “dedicated time, effort, and attention to producing a little coffee”—this, he
felt, “perhaps because, even in small quantities, coffee was the product that provided social
status and the term ‘farmer’ [lavrador], which was widely used at the time, did not make
a distinction about what was produced; it could, therefore, refer to a coffee grower, even
though in general the number of plants was not more than 15,000.” Santos, “À sombra dos
cafezais,” 100–101.

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 280 HAHR / May / Marcondes

that the diffusion and distribution of slave property was remarkably heteroge-
neous there during its golden period of coffee cultivation.

Conclusions

In contrast to the image gleaned from classical historiography, the data I have
presented clearly demonstrate the importance of small and medium slavehold-
ers during the height of coffee production in most of Vale do Paraíba of São
Paulo. In the 1870s, such small and medium slaveholders accounted for more
than nine-tenths of owners and owned more than half of the slave population
of the areas studied.
We do see significant differences in patterns of slaveholding between the
six locations studied, but these did not change over the course of the nineteenth
century. Of the 18 slaveholders who owned more than one hundred slaves, 17
resided in Bananal. Bananal thus comes closest to the model proposed in the
earlier literature. Patterns of coffee production and slaveholding in the Vale
do Paraíba of São Paulo should, however, not be deduced from those found
in Bananal, which was exceptional in our sample, but from the totality of
municipalities. And even in Bananal we found a significant number of small and
medium slaveholders, including many owners with only one slave. Such small
and medium slaveholders were not only involved in production for the internal
market but also produced coffee in significant quantities.56 Thus, the economic
and demographic dynamism of the Vale do Paraíba was not restricted just to the
members of the large coffee plantations.
Our data indicate that slaveholdings, like other property, became more
concentrated as coffee production expanded during the nineteenth century. In
this process, many smallholders could have been excluded. Still, the process
also allowed many people of modest resources to remain in the region and ben-
efit from the coffee economy. Even at the point of greatest inequality in prop-
erty distribution, small and medium holders still were very important to the
economy. The increased concentration that accompanied the development of
the coffee economy did not exclude small and medium slaveholders from pro-
duction, and it is wrong to ignore them. On the contrary, the economic diver-
sification that accompanied the expansion of coffee created opportunities for
less fortunate people both in coffee cultivation and also in other occupations,
agricultural or otherwise.

56. Marcondes, “A arte de acumular.”

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 Small and Medium Slaveholdings in Vale do Paraíba 281

Coffee production generated monetary income for small and medium

owners through export agriculture, subsistence agriculture, or even in nonag-
ricultural occupations. They exercised their purchasing power even in relation
to slave labor. Our results point to the importance of the small and medium
property holders in the coffee economy. Scholars have noted similar patterns
in other export-producing regions of Latin America (including tobacco and
cotton): even where we would expect the predominance of large plantations,
researchers have found that smallholders participated in export production.57 A
significant portion of Brazil’s free population owned some wealth in the form
of land and slaves, which strengthened the internal Brazilian market. Analyz-
ing the distribution of slaves in the Vale do Paraíba of São Paulo offers some
insight into the overall distribution of wealth and income, a factor in fostering
the development of an important internal market.

57. See Bert Barickman, A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar,Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in
the Recôncavo, 1780–1860 (Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1998), 144; Jean Baptiste Nardi,
O fumo brasileiro no período colonial: Lavoura, comércio e administração (São Paulo: Brasiliense,
1996), 60; and Ana Cristina Leite, O algodão no Ceará: Estrutura fundiária e capital comercial
1850/1880 (Fortaleza: SECULT, 1994), 57.

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