Searching for the Slave Family in Colonial Brazil

Abstract

This article reconstructs slave family life in a rural town in which a large number of slaves married, slave women had high fertility, and slaves lived primarily in nuclear families. The marriage and fertility rates of slaves lag behind those of the free population, but do not differ radically from them. This portrait of slave family life contrasts with the common portrayal of slave families in Brazil in which historians report that few slaves married and slave fertility was low. Despite the demographic similarities between slave and free families, the key differences between the slave and the free populations rested on the master's legal right to own slaves as property. Because slaves were property, the Portuguese laws of inheritance mandated the division of slaves among the heirs of the deceased master. Probate judges and heirs often broke up slave families; thus the mortality of masters severely affected the ability of slave families to survive over time.