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