A consolidação das fronteiras na América Portuguesa: assentamento dos lavradores de cana na expansão para o Oeste (Campinas, SP, 1790-1810)

Abstract

The frontiers of Portuguese America were in movement throughout the colonial period, as occurred in Minas Gerais. However, after the revolution of enslaved people in Saint-Domingue in 1791 and the consequent increase in sugar prices in international markets, there was an intense migratory flow to the colony’s unoccupied, uninhabited regions. It was in this historical framework that Campinas, countryside of São Paulo, witnessed its free population increase by more than five times in addition to the slave population being increased by ten times. Thus, this article aims to investigate the migration of sugar producers to Campinas and to understand how the origins of these individuals explain the formation of this sugar production complex. In this sense, there was a considerable migration of descendants of the colonial elite, especially those born in Itu and Minas Gerais