BLACK SOCIABILITIES IN SLAVE PARAÍBA: SOCIETY, ECONOMY AND RESISTANCE

Abstract

This article aims to present a synthesis of how the slave society in Paraíba was organized between the 18th and 19th centuries. Recent slavery studies have expanded and allowed to identify some aspects related to trafficking in enslaved people, to the experiences of forming captive families and to communities formed by fugitives and fugitives from captivity. In this work, we highlight socio-demographic and economic traits, as well as some experiences of life and resistance built by Africans and their descendants in the territory that, from the 16th century on, became known as Paraíba. For this, we used several sources, such as separate documents from the Overseas Historical Archive (AHU/PT/BR) digitized by the Rescue Project, baptism records from the parish of Nossa Senhora das Neves, wills and inventories in the Note Book of the city of Paraíba, in addition to the data systematized by the Transatlantic Slave Trade Database (TSTD) and the bibliography on the topic. Thus, we exposed some cracks of freedom of this social group and its social relations in an adverse context.