Os pequenos agentes mercantis em Minas Gerais no século XVIII: perfil, atuação e herarquia (1716-1755)

Abstract

The retail trade was a economic activity of the great importancy in Minas Gerais in its ocupation primordies’, because it was practed by a expressive contingent of the local population and contributed directly to solve the provision problems. In our search we look out to resolve that people envolved in this type of colonial trade by the analisys of the structure ativity in two locals in the first half of the XVIII century: Mariana and its community Camargos. Our analisis was focused in compare these two localities in these follow aspects: the agents profiles and their ways of atuation. In the end we made a study of case of a prominence group of small merchants that were the women who were liberted from slavery. We used the testaments, inventorys and another types of documents to reconstitute the social and economic life of these women tryng to understand their strategies in a society and trade that impune too many restrictions to a social ascention.