O caminho novo: ocupação do solo e produção rural, 1700-1831

Abstract

The occupation of the territory crossed by the New Way started simultaneously with its own opening , right after the discovery of auriferous veins at the mines . This road became the foremost route traffic of people, and gold and commodities transport between the mines and Rio de Janeiro. The first people to occupy this area - corresponding to the parishes of the New Way or the Bush New Way, and Simon Pereira - were dedicated to farming and livestock supply to travelers. For this reason, they also maintained inns and ranches. This parish has seen its agricultural income decline with gold fall. However, with the expansion of agriculture for the ―Zona da Mata‖, due to the redirection of its production, this region achieved a astonishing growth. This happened thanks to the expansion of coffee plantations in the period between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. This paper aims to investigate this transition process, and seeks to identify the characters involved in the transformations of this period. For that, we rely on a source very little explored until now: the records of tithing. They are the most important core for being, so far, the best source that we have to determine the fluctuations of agricultural production. We assort a full series of books, belonging to the collection of House of Tales, which allows us to perform the monitoring by periods of land occupation by parish. Basically, we work in order to direct the spotlight on the major taxpayers, in other words, those that contributed with the largest amounts. With that, we can establish the continuities and ruptures that occurred in the region that now constitutes the city of ―Juiz de Fora.