A economia do gado no Maranhão e no Piauí Coloniais (1750-1779)

Abstract

This doctoral thesis focuses on livestock farming, which was the main economic activity in the eastern valley of Maranhão and Piauí during the Pombaline period. The research seeks to adopt a perspective that values the different aspects that involved the cattle economy, such as territoriality, transportation, supply and export. Using primary sources from various documentary collections, we analyzed the different inter-regional and international economic circuits and connections of cattle ranching. This means understanding, at first, as a hypothesis defended in this work, that the formation of towns, the increase in population and the expansion of cattle ranches over indigenous territories were key elements in increasing the productivity of this economy in the region. To the point where this process was legitimized and regularized through the sesmarias system, which aimed to grant land only to those who were able to take advantage of the land economically, laying the foundations and conditions for the establishment and expansion of their meat and cattle supply markets. In this second moment, we see how this market was established based on other economic dynamics, both with the state of Brazil (Salvador, Recife, Rio de Janeiro) and with the state of Grão-Pará and Maranhão (Belém and São Luís), in order to supply the population with meat, which was one of the main foods consumed by the populations of these cities during the colonial period. We also tried to demonstrate the importance of leather as an export product that placed Maranhão among the main producing and exporting captaincies (Pernambuco, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro) during the 1760s and 1770s. This fact allows us to conclude that the eastern valley of Maranhão and Piauí was one of the main breeding areas of the time, presenting important connections in the regional and Atlantic scenario during this period, as one of the main suppliers and exporters of cattle byproducts, meat and leather.