At the Core of Africanization: Black and Colored People in Population Maps of Colonial Maranhão, Brazil (1798-1821)

Abstract The study analyzes the demographic boom of African slave populations in the plantation areas from the Mapas de População of Maranhão. In particular, we focus on the parish of Rosário do Itapecuru using other sources - post-mortem inventories and parish baptismal records. The maps from 1798 and 1821 made it possible to evidence the gender, age, ethnicity and legal status of the resident population as well as show the importance of slave population in cotton and rice crop areas, reaching almost 80% of residents. These populations, in turn, presented certain peculiarities in relation to other plantation areas in the State of Brazil, such as the sex ratio marked by the almost parity between men and women.