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In our introduction to this Special Issue on early modern cities and globalization, we explore the current place of cities before 1850 in global urban history and address the promise of a greater focus on their role. We argue that the interplay between the large scale and the small scale in the imperial global city is an essential dialogical force in the formation of each city's relationship to the wider early modern world. Furthermore, early modern global urban history can help explain the creation of spaces that facilitated connections between distant, global locations, as well as illuminate the emergence of networks of exchange between city communities around the globe. Yet, it also reveals the tense, messy negotiation of the meaning of these urban spaces, as well as the incredibly diverse communities they harboured.

The current scholarship on the history of slavery and Black freedom in the Atlantic World has moved us well past studies content to examine the impact of enslavement and emancipation, as societal p...

Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Minas Gerais was heavily reliant on its slave labor force and invested in the social order shaped by slavery. The main systematic challenge to slavery was discrete negotiations of manumission that resulted in the freedom of a few individual slaves. This practice fueled the expansion of a free population of African descendants, who congregated most visibly in the captaincy's urban centers. Through an examination of manumission stories from two African-descendant families in the towns of Sabará and São José, this article underscores the relevance of family ties and social networks to the pursuit and experience of freedom in the region. As slavery remained entrenched in Brazil, despite Atlantic abolitionist efforts elsewhere, urban families’ pursuit and negotiation of manumissions shaped a historical process that naturalized the idea and possibility of black freedom.

Larissa Brewer-Garcia ends her book with a coda in which she discusses a speech Pope Francis gave in 2017 in Cartagena de Indias, Colombia, celebrating Saint Pedro Claver. The speech highlighted th...

The intellectual history of the early modern Atlantic world is populated by a great number of white European men and their male descendants. White women, indigenous American men and women, and indi...

During the eighteenth century, the Rodrigues da Cruz and the Vieira da Costa families rose to relative prominence in thecomarcaof Rio das Velhas, a judicial district of the captaincy of Minas Gerais (Figure 1). Both families had as their patriarch a wealthy Portuguese man whose fortune was built on the gold-mining industry that dominated the regional economy in the early part of the century. Both families were also the product of relationships between Portuguese gold miners and slave women. The second and third generations of the two families similarly comprised freed or free persons of mixed European and African descent whose own standing in society relied in part on their families' ability to manage the social and legal implications of the circumstances of their birth. The Rodrigues da Cruz and Vieira da Costa families were thus part of a large and rising population ofpardos(light-skinned persons) ormulatos(persons of mixed descent) in eighteenth-century Minas Gerais—not of solely Portuguese origin or descent (brancos), solely African origin (preto), nor solely African descent but born in Brazil (crioulo). Their ambiguous social standing could lie somewhere between the elite status of most brancos and the slave status of most pretos or crioulos.

Resumo: Esse artigo examina a mobilidade social de pessoas de ascendência africana na vila e termo de Sabará, Minas Gerais, no século XVIII, a partir do questionamento da possibilidade de ascenção social disponíveis a mulheres negras e seus descendentes. Através da análise de documentos cartoriais (inventários, testamentos, escrituras de venda, etc.) e documentos da Câmara Municipal de Sabará, esse estudo investiga as oportunidades de sucesso econômico disponíveis às mulheres de cor e os limites da mobilidade social; os efeitos do processo sucessório na transferência de vantagens sócio-econômicas de uma geração para outra; e as estratégias usadas por mulheres negras para garantir que a sucessão de bens pudesse se traduzir em vantagens (e ascensão) sociais para seus filhos. Abstract: Through a critical examination of the possibilities of social improvement available to black women and their descendants, this article discusses social mobility among Afro-descending people in the town and precincts of Sabará, Minas Gerais, in the eighteenth century. Using various notarial documents (inventories, wills, deeds of sale, etc.) and papers from the municipal council of Sabará, this study investigates the types of economic success enjoyed by women of Afro-descent and the limits to their social mobility; the impact of inheritance procedures on the transfer of socio-economic resources from one generation to the next; and the strategies black women employed to ensure that transmission of their property to their children would translate into social advantages.

The history of black political activism in the Americas is not, as scholars of the African Diaspora often remind us, a recent development. The Atlantic slave trade and plantation slavery threatened...

Although Portuguese laws protected women’s right to property, the process of succession that followed a husband’s death in colonial Minas Gerais often threatened women’s economic well-being. Widows of African descent, moreover, were regularly denied custody of their children, having to defer to court-appointed guardians in matters regarding their property and education. In this context, some couples contracted the sale of the dying spouse’s meação to the surviving spouse. This understudied strategy of transmission of property empowered widows of African descent to act as heads of household and guardians to their children in ways that were not guaranteed by law.

When, in 1720, the Municipal Council of Sabara prepared the assessment list for the capitacao de escravos (slave head tax), it recorded not only the number of slaves owned per household in the town and its precincts, but the number of forros (freed slaves) as well. Thus Izabel forra, a resident of the district of the Ponte da Igreja Velha (Old Church Bridge) was listed, a note next to her name indicating that she was the former slave of Salvador Carvalho. Maria Cavallo, another forro resident of that district, also appears in the record; she was assessed for a slave and for sua pessoa (her person). Finally, among the taxpayers listed in the district of the Igreja Matriz (Main Church) were Bartolomeu, preto forro, and his wife.1 A total of ninety-four forros were listed that year. Each of these individuals was required to pay an annual head tax of twelve oitavas (forty-three grams of gold), the same tax that was charged per slave in the captaincy. Forros were again assessed in this manner when the capitacao was reinstated in 1735 to collect the Royal Fifth, the crown’s rightful share of the wealth generated in its dominions.2 Though the returns for the town are not available, those for the Comarca do Rio das Velhas (the judicial district in which Sabara was located) show 576 forros in the region.3 Given that the Town of Sabara counted the largest population of the three towns in that comarca, it is likely that a large portion, if not the majority, of this forro population resided in that town or in its precincts.4

By the turn of the nineteenth century, the Town of Sabara, in the Brazilian captaincy of Minas Gerais, and the city of Baltimore, in the state of Maryland, had become important and well-developed urban centers within their respective geographical regions. Documents from this period reveal a picture of local urban life that was both vibrant and diverse. The Baltimore city directory published in 1800, for instance, provides evidence of a dynamic and highly diversified economy, one counting over one hundred merchant houses; nearly seventy stores; numerous tradesmen and service providers, ranging from blacksmiths and carpenters to hair dressers; and a large array of manufacturing businesses, from shipyards to watch- and clockmakers. The Baltimore City tax assessment list of 1804 points to large urban property holdings, such as that of merchant Robert Gilmor (assessed at 6,214 pounds), as well as holdings of lesser value, such as those of saddler David Armour (1,045 pounds) and anchor maker Richard Lawson (242 pounds), indicating diversity in the economic standing of city residents. Moreover, the general list of all dwelling houses submitted with the tax assessment list of 1798 included several brick houses, some two stories high, a significant departure from the wood-framed houses that once predominated in the town.1

In 1761, Edward Cook, recently arrived in Baltimore Town, wrote to his brother John Cook in England describing the labor situation in the region. Interested in exploring the promising business of wheat production and trade, Edward Cook was concerned about the labor options available to him. He informed his brother that servants were “hard to be got. Convicts you pay … from £12 to £15 sterling for seven years of servitude. Negroes from £40 to £60 sterling and sometimes more for life.” To hire wage workers was too expensive and, according to Edward, they were usually paid two shillings and eight pence for a day’s labor and had to be provided with three meals. Edward requested John’s help in this matter, suggesting that he find some men willing to cross the Atlantic to serve in Baltimore as servants.1 John’s reply was discouraging. He wrote: “Servants wages they are now very high … and it is very hard to get them for ready hands is [sic] very scarce.”2 Indeed, historians have pointed out that economic and social changes in England and British America in the early eighteenth century diminished the appeal of servitude and, in turn, reduced the supply of such workers. This development contributed to increase the demand for slave labor in the British North American colonies.3 Demographic and economic conditions in other parts of the Americas during the eighteenth century similarly encouraged a rising demand for slaves and, consequently, the growth of regional and local slave populations.

In 1749, Tome Gomes Moreira, member of the Portuguese Overseas Council, presented to his fellow councilors a detailed report on the inadequacies and evils of the capitacao. Calculated on the basis of the number of working-age slaves owned by each tax payer, this per capita tax, as Moreira explained, was based on the erroneous assumption that “all slaves, of one or other sex, that live in Minas Gerais currently engage in mining activities.”1 Notwithstanding the fact that mining entrepreneurs did represent ownership of a large portion of the region’s slaves, persons involved in other sectors of the local economy also held slaves who were employed in a wide range of activities. Moreira argued that, because these slaves did not collect gold, their owners should be exempt from the capitacao. Moreover, because farmers, merchants, and tradesmen were liable to pay taxes associated with their occupations, he found it unjust to subject them to yet another form of taxation because they relied on the labor of slaves. Finally, by demanding payment from families of lesser means, whose well-being depended on the income generated by their slaves through hired work, frequently in non-mining activities, the crown was contributing to increasing poverty in the region. Among the various activities performed by slaves in Minas Gerais that Tome Gomes Moreira listed in his report were farming, mechanical trades, domestic work, sugar manufacturing, and marketing activities.