The housewives of power: economy, population and material

life of women in Maranhão colonial (1755 – 1822)

Marize Helena de Campos

Universidade Federal do Maranhão

When we thinking in economics in the colonial period in Portuguese America we have

in mind activities directed exclusively by men. This idea was driven by the vision Freyriana that

throughout his works crystallized women in profile of submissive housewives who passed their

days lying down and giving orders to slaves. Assuming this assumption this communication

focuses on the Maranhão colonial, specifically between 1755 – 1822, years that were marked as

large centre producer and exporter of cotton and rice. By the installation Company Trade of

Grão Pará Maranhão, and interested in investigating the activities of women in socio-economic

dynamics as owning real estate slaveries, jewelry, etc., in agriculture and livestock, requesting

sesmarias (uncultivated lands) to install ploughing, creating the nation's cattle and fulfilled his

assets to heirs. The analysis was performed from data collected in letters of sesmarias, wills,

inventories post-mortem of women, period of 1755-1822 in Maranhão, located on the Public

Archive of the State of Maranhão – APEM, Archive of the Court of Justice of Maranhão – ATJ

and Historical Archive Overseas which allowed achieving AHU and detailed information about

the object and the period. In that scenario are historys of women who now break the siege of a

historiography that for so long the barred. Ladies of possessions, strategies, wills, trained, brave,

Battlers, that far from spend days in dreamers networks, to thick and warm air of Maranhão,

were caring for their crops, ensuring the possession of their lands, accounting for their stock,

anyway, acting in the social and economic dynamics that were inserted.

Keywords: Portuguese America; Economic History; Maranhão Colonial; Women's

History