Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of women, within and outside colonial structures of power, in colonial Brazil (1807-1823). We’ll focus on Bárbara Garcez, whose life-story oscillated between the discourse of a dependent mother of family, and the reality of a sugar-mill manager, land and slave owner.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the intercultural experience between Portugal and Brazil, from 1807 to 1823, of two families from the Portuguese landed gentry, paying special attention to the intercultural process as lived by women. It sheds light into the role of subalterns, both within and outside structures of power, as in the paradigmatic character of Bárbara Garcez, represented both as a silent and dependent mother of family, and as determined manager of a sugar mill (engenho), an independent slave and land owner.

The letters compiled in the Luso-Brazilian Correspondence (re)construct the polyphonic representation of a movement of personal, family, and social transculturation, that functions as a simultaneous translation of the historical events witnessed. This study articulates the contexts and situated objects of study, in order to understand different historical moments, rationalities and worldviews, as well as the cultural practices that move representations of reality.

Although Bárbara Garcez became an important actor of the imperial society, her social agency was socially constructed, located (and limited) within the boundaries allowed by the structures of feeling and behaviour of the Portuguese overseas empire. Her access to land, slaves, capital, and power was made possible thanks to the peculiar dynamics of the hybrid space of Brazil, on the eve of independence. In this empirically-grounded case-study, European rules about land's administration are reshaped by the imperial territory, where the actual possession of the engenho simply unveils the authority of a woman that had by no means proved powerless in the complex politics of family and society.