Histoires, identités et frontières : Indiens et Africains dans l’Amazonie coloniale

Abstract

Recounting the story of a remarkable case of runaway slaves escaping from Pará towards the Spanish territories on the second half of the 18th century, and based on documentation found in the General Archive of the Indies (Seville) and in the Arquivo Historico Ultramarino (Lisbon), this paper presents the contexts of the world of labor in the colonial Amazonia and analyses the historical conditions of coexistence between the natives and the African origin populations. The story of João da Silva and his comrade in arms Fernando de Rojas, has the virtue of gathering the diversity of actors who composed the history of border regions and also allows to discover other characters that made these same regions even richer by sheding light upon their relations, connections, choices, agreements as well as disagreements.

Keywords

• Colonial Pará
• Slaves
• World of labor
• Indians
• Black population