Gold, pigs, slaves and coffee: the origins of nineteenth century fortunes in São Pedro de Cantagalo, Rio de Janeiro (last decades of the eighteenth century and first of the nineteenth century)

Abstract

The municipality of Cantagalo in the state of Rio de Janeiro is historically linked to gold exploration, the breading of pigs and to the production of food for the domestic market and of coffee by slaves for export markets. I will analyze the construction of the material daily life of the region “Novas Minas dos Sertões de Macacu” or “Cantagalo”, as it was named at the end of the eighteenth century. Later, it became known as the city of São Pedro de Cantagalo, in 1814, it retained this name through the last decades of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century. The documental basis used are post-mortem inventories, official correspondence exchanged between colonial and metropolitan authorities, parochial records of baptism, marriage and death and newspaper articles of the Rio de Janeiro press.