The Revista de fontes is a bi-annual peer-reviewed journal that publishes documentary sources in the form of the transcription or the translation of documents to Portuguese, and the publication of research instruments, that will this way be available to academia in digital support. Revista de fontes also publishes authoral texts about documents types and sets, providing methodological subsidies for the exploration of these sources. Revista de fontes does not charge for submission or access.
Revista de Fontes está licenciada com uma Licença Creative Commons Atribuição 4.0 Internacional.
Sources for a Social History of Property
Copyright (c) 2025 Carmen Alveal, Claudia Damasceno Fonseca https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Echos of the Past or the History of a Mutiny (1624)
The National Archives in The Hague houses thousands of documents concerning Dutch Brazil, 1624-1654. Most of these documents are written in Dutch, which remains a barrier to accessing these sources. It was previously believed that all sources related to the occupation of Salvador from 1624 to 1625 had been discovered. However, in 2022, testimonies from military personnel who were investigated after returning to the Republic were found. To make these sources more accessible to Brazilian and Portuguese researchers and stakehouders, the translation of one of these testimonies is presented here. Keywords: Dutch Brazil, Mutiny, Salvador
Copyright (c) 2025 Lucia Furquim Werneck Xavier https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
What I Left Behind: The Will of Sabina da Cruz, "Whistlebower" of the Revolta dos Malês
In the 19th-century slave society of Bahia, enslaved and freed africans sought to adapt to the impositions of the New World, and despite the adversities they faced, they succeeded in establishing social networks whose support was essential to their survival. The aim here is to transcribe the will of Sabina da Cruz, african, freedwoman and a "whistlebower" of the Revolta dos Malês — the most significant insurrection involving enslaved and freed people in 19th-century Bahia. Sabina's will, dated August 13, 1868, is notable for revealing the social network in which she was embedded. This document serves as a source of information for reconstructing her life trajectory and raises possibilities for understanding what motivated her actions.
Copyright (c) 2025 Erika Cristina Damião https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Book of Records and Demarcation Invention: the Widow Ana and the Paraibuna Estate (18th and 19th Centuries)
This article examines a book of records (livro de tombo) created to delimit the Paraibuna farm, in Rio de Janeiro, which belonged to an important potentate. The aim is to show the new possibilities for research that open from this documentary archive, dating from the end of the 18th century, for analyzing the invention of demarcation in colonial areas. I seek to unravel the efforts of the descendants - not all of them successful - to secure, bequeath or sell the lands occupied by the individuals and founders of the family. This text is motivated by recent discussions about the connection between the formation of large families, kinship networks and land conflicts in the Americas.
Copyright (c) 2025 Márcia Motta https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Edition of Livro 1º do Provimento do Pão (AML-AH, Provimento do Pão, Livro 1º do Provimento do Pão, doc. 1–32)
The article presents the complete edition of the thirty-two documents that comprise Book I of the Bread Provision (AML-AH, Provimento do Pão, Livro 1º do provimento do pão, docs. 1 to 32). Composed of various documents issued by Portuguese kings and regents to the city of Lisbon between the years 1380 and 1489, the book records the measures adopted to ensure the supply of cereals. This edition contributes to the study of the history of food, provisioning, commercial, diplomatic, and religious relations, as well as forms of governance in fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Portugal.
Copyright (c) 2025 Thiago Henrique Alvarado https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“An imaginary Possession”: Property Rights and Social Hierarchies in the Captaincy of Pernambuco. The Case of the Former Slave Serafina (17th and 18th Centuries)
This article analyzes a complex conflict over the ownership of a sugar mill in the captaincy of Pernambuco, between the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century. A captive of a “mestre de campo”, Serafina later married his master, Francisco Dias Ferreira. After her husband's death, she became the mistress of the sugar mill. However, the marriage was contested by the Ecclesiastical Court through a complaint by her mother-in-law, Clara das Neves, who was under pressure to pay a large debt to the Benedictines of the Monastery of São Bento da Paraíba, contracted by her husband during the Dutch domination. The dispute, analyzed through the action brought by the monastery for possession of the mill, published by the magazine of the Public Archive of the State of Pernambuco Jordão Emerenciano in 1946, makes it possible to question property rights in Portuguese-Brazilian society. It is understood that the complex social hierarchy of that society provided different access to the legal regime, especially in a context of dispute.
Copyright (c) 2025 Ana Lunara Morais https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Dynamics of Land Ownership in French Guiana under Portuguese Occupation (1809-1817)
The aim of this work is to analyze the ownership of land in French Guiana between 1809 and 1817, when this territory was under Portuguese occupation. Using a set of documents by the land grant registry, the notary’s office and the civil registry of Guiana, we tried to understand both the formation of rural property and who owned it. The study of land’s question allows us to reflect on the free society of the time by evaluating the dynamics of land deals carried out by white and non-white people.
Guiana Francesa; sociedade; posse da terra
Copyright (c) 2025 Ivete Machado de Miranda Pereira https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Urban Property Tax (Décima Urbana) and Geoprocessing: Contributions to Urban Studies of 19th Century Rio de Janeiro
The 19th century in Rio de Janeiro was marked by significant urban transformations. In this scenario, the urban property tax played a central role in urban organization, delimiting areas and encouraging the occupation of new ones. The Décima Urbana documentation, available at the Arquivo Geral da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro, provides information on the location, value and profile of the owners and residents of the properties considered to be within the urban limits. Integrating the source into historical cartographies using geoprocessing allows for investigations focused on socio-economic aspects and the social history of property in the city.
Copyright (c) 2025 Gustavo Nascimento Rocha Dias, Letícia Bedendo Campanha Pires https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“Good Crumb”: the Confiscation of the Mercedariam Farms in Belém
In 1850, Brazil passed the Euzébio de Queirós Law, which banned the trafficking of enslaved Africans. In 1864, Brazil was going through a serious economic banking crisis. Seeking to contribute to the National Treasury, Councillor Doctor Zacharias de Góes e Vasconcellos, then Minister of Finance, understood that the assets of the extinct Mercedarian religious could serve as a “good crumb”. When these religious were expelled, their cattle ranches in Grão-Pará totaled more than 40,000 head of cattle. After 60 years, they had been reduced, by bad management, to just over 25 thousand. What could be done to avoid this waste? How could these assets be used to deal with the economic difficulties of the 1864s? Góes de Vasconcellos had his own ideas and he sets them out in this letter.
Copyright (c) 2025 Fernando Henrique Marques Brito https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Battles For Real Estate Property in the Construction of the Metropolis: Sources and Tools in the Research on Occupied Buildings in Downtown São Paulo
This article presents theoretical and methodological reflections that emerged from the research on the history of vertical buildings occupied by housing movements in downtown São Paulo. Assuming that the moments of construction, abandonment, and occupation are extremely significant markers of this history, various sources and tools were mobilized in the study. Geoprocessing, historical cartography, and primary sources were used to understand the construction of the buildings. The uses of the buildings, before their emptying, were known by relating the primary sources to newspaper records, especially commercial advertisements. The phenomenon of abandonment was the most difficult to document, as the removal of activities from a building and its closure are not usually reported in the media and are not recorded in processes found in municipal archives. Information from bibliographies and digital media was used to understand the dates, context, and popular organizations involved in the occupation of the buildings by housing movements. This article focuses on the debate about continuities and ruptures in the use of urban land as a tool for capitalist accumulation and urban dynamics in downtown São Paulo at the beginning of
Copyright (c) 2025 Vitor Mendes Monteiro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Dispute Among “Settlers”: Territorial Conflicts in the Village of São Luiz do Paraitinga, Captaincy of São Paulo (1776-1798)
This article aims to analyze a land conflict that occurred in the village of São Luiz do Paraitinga between the 1770s and 1790s, in the northern region of the Captaincy of São Paulo, as observed in a set of requests available at the Arquivo Público do Estado de São Paulo. We sought to identify the connections and relationships established between the town and its residents with the govern of the captaincy of São Paulo and the Portuguese Empire. From a macro to micro analysis, we consider the tensions of the historical process, especially the policies to encourage settlement in the 18th century, as well as the strategies and agencies of the arguments presented.
Copyright (c) 2025 Laís Charleaux https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Central African Religions From the Perspective of a Capuchin: Rituals, Sacred Objects and Priesthoods in Istorica Descrizione (1687), by Giovanni Cavazzi
The document that we now translate and transcribe consists of a description of Central African religions in the mid-17th century, made by the Italian Capuchin missionary Giovanni António Cavazzi da Montecúccolo. We reproduce in full the subtitles “Da Idolatria” and “Dos Sacerdócios”, from the First Book of Istorica Descrizione De' Tre' Regni Congo, Matamba, et Angola, a work originally published in Italian in 1687. The aforementioned sections of this work are of great interest to scholars of African religions, as practiced in the Congo-Angolan region during the 17th century, but also those who dedicate themselves to the analysis of the so-called “calundus” practiced in colonial Brazil.
Copyright (c) 2025 Daniel Precioso https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
"Your Friend and Brother Barroso": A New Letter From the Baron of Amazonas
The document now transcribed is a letter from Francisco Manoel Barroso da Silva - the later Baron of Amazonas -, dating from 9 May 1865, one month and two days ahead of the Naval Battle of Riachuelo. The distintive character of such document is due both to the fact that it has been discovered inadvertently therefore lacking any sort of cataloguing, as well as to the information it brigs regarding the difficulties and strategies faced and crafted by admiral Barosso respectively. Furthermore it allows one to get to know the sort of nourishment demanded by the troops as well as to realise the category "barbarianism" as employed to describe the paraguayans who were being zoomophised as part of a discourse whose goal was to legitimise the war.
Copyright (c) 2025 Pedro Henrique de Souza Ribeiro https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Transcription and Translation of Thomas Adesina Jacobson Ogunbiyi’s Through the Jungles Overland into Niger River (1902)
Missionary action in West Africa during the colonial period has been the subject of investigation and scrutiny in recent African/Africanist historiography, particularly aiming to problematize the forms of intercultural contact, and notably, the role of African intermediaries in processes of conversion and Christian education. Concerning the Niger River region (present-day Nigeria), figures such as Reverend Thomas Adesina Jacobson Ogunbiyi, in the service of the Church Missionary Society (C.M.S.), left significant documentation regarding the "contact zones" (an expression of M.L. Pratt) resulting from colonialism, mainly through travel accounts.
Copyright (c) 2024 Evander Ruthieri da Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The "Brief History of Portugal of 1577": Context and Hypotheses of Authorship of a Manuscript Held by the Library of the Institut de France
The library of the Institut de France (an institution belonging to the French Academy) holds a manuscript titled "Historia brevissima delli Re di Portogallo d'un certo autore. Anno 1577". The primary aim of this article is to publish the first transcription of this document in Italian, accompanied by a Portuguese translation, as well as to discuss its main contents. A brief introductory study discusses the possible authorship, the reasons for writing the writing of this manuscript, the sources used by the author and the reasons why the it is important. It is argued that the manuscript in question is part of a larger topic that still needs further study: the circulation of manuscript histories of Portugal in 16th century Europe.
Copyright (c) 2025 Nuno Vila-Santa https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Slave Trade in Fragments. The Commerce of Enslaved People in the Casa da Índia's Customs Departure Registers
This text presents the data from the outbound records of the Casa da Índia (Lisbon customs), which reveal the trade of enslaved individuals leaving Portugal for various overseas Portuguese territories. The material allows us to assess Portugal's role, mainly Lisbon, as a place for the commercialization of enslaved people overseas.
Copyright (c) 2024 Rafael Chambouleyron https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
“Nothing That is Human is Foreign to Me”: Considerations on Indigenous People by Antonio Pires da Silva Pontes Paes e Leme
The transcribed document contains a lecture by the geographer Antônio Pires da Silva Pontes at the Royal Academy of Sciences in Lisbon in 1792. As a scientist and colonial ruler, Silva Pontes presented several criticisms of indigenous peoples' governance in Portuguese America. In addition, he exposed essential concepts about human nature, the Portuguese nation, science, and, above all, the good government of American Indians.
Copyright (c) 2024 Adriana Pereira Campos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
"A Pioneer Work": Notes of Meetings Held During the Guerrilla Training of the VPR in the Vale do Ribeira (1970)
The presented document is the "Jaraguá Notebook," which contains records of meetings held by militants of the Popular Revolutionary Vanguard between March 27 and April 3 of the same year, during guerrilla training in the Vale do Ribeira. It was seized by security and repression agencies from a former VPR militant and attached to a police inquiry, which later became a case against other members of the group. This is the only record made during the training, found to this day.
Copyright (c) 2024 Juliana Marques do Nascimento https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
A Letter of Robert Cecil, Secretary of State of England, on the False Sebastian of Venice (1601?)
This paper presents a letter from Robert Cecil, an English courtier and aristocrat who served as Secretary of State, to Piero Pellegrini, Secretary of the Council of Ten of the Venetian Republic. Cecil questions the veracity of the news about Sebastian of Venice, an impostor who was said to have returned as King Sebastian of Portugal after his 'disappearance' at the Battle of Ksar El-Kibir in 1578. The letter is known to exist in two copies, one in English and one in Italian, both of which have been fully transcribed in semi-diplomatic editions for the first time. Additionally, this paper aims to verify the letter’s date.
Copyright (c) 2024 Luís Filipe Silvério Lima https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The ”Discourse of ‘Gêneros for commerce, from Maranhão and Pará,’’ by Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, and the colonial exploitation in the Portuguese Amazon Rain Forest
Written by Duarte Ribeiro de Macedo, a Portuguese diplomat, in a context of economic dispute, this document introduces various of the native and exotic “gêneros” that were collected and cultivated in the State of Maranhão and Grão-Pará, in the 17th century. In this document, Macedo talks about native and exogenous plants, detailing known uses, economic advantages, and how some of them were exploited by the colonizers of the territory.
Copyright (c) 2024 Talles Manoel da Silva https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
The Holy Office and the Criminal Case Against Paula Molina (1776)
In the city of Lima, during the second half of the XVIII century, the zamba Paulina Molina, alias Pan y Queso, was accused by the Court of the Holy Office for superstitious, deceitful, and boastful. Our character was resident of Callao Port and had established a network of clients that requested her spiritual work as a way to hold beloved people. These women, who were Afrodescendant, approached Paula either on recommendation or because they knew her from long time ago, which makes us assume that there was an interaction between the common individuals and spiritual wisdom that was against Christianity.
Copyright (c) 2024 Renato Gomes Di Iorio, LUIZ https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Sources for Biographies of Subalternised in the 20th Century
Copyright (c) 2024 Antonio Liberac Cardoso Simões Pires, Caio Giulliano Paião, Rosy de Oliveria https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Listening the Silences, Rethinking History and Generating Knowledge about the Past of Black Women in Brazil: the Case of Rita Cesarino
In this article I analyze trends in studies on Black women in Brazilian historiography. I compare aspects of this landscape with the research agenda outlined by Black intellectuals in Brazil and the United States, which has been incorporated into historiography. Additionally, I examine issues that have been sidelined in historiographical approaches and have given rise to stereotypes about Black women. Guided by this discussion, I demonstrate how these perceptions have influenced the production of research on black women. I also present the theoretical and methodological resources that I employed in conducting a study on three generations of women from the Cesarino family, addressing issues such as social mobility, racial, gender, and class inequalities in the 19th century.
Copyright (c) 2024 Taina Silva Santos https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Following a Life Tracks: a Reflection From the Trajectory of the Militant and Congresswoman Irma Passoni
Irma Passoni has worked like congresswoman and was a Brazilian Cost of Living Movement (Movimento do Custo de Vida) (MCV) founder in 1973. When we researched about her life, we had access to documents that helped us to thinking about her carreer and the São Paulo periferic movements history, in the 70s and 80s. In this sense, this article has the aim to think about documents used to analyse Irma Passoni’s life and its challenges and potentialities. By the way, we should to talk about the ways to colect this documents with the objective to help researches that want to work with similar lifes.
Copyright (c) 2024 Roger Camacho Barrero Junior https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Biographical Research Methods: A Case Study of a “Man of Color” from the Post-Abolition Era
This article uses the experience of researching the life of a “man of color” – who was born after the free womb law (1871) and lived into the mid-twentieth century – to demonstrate how historians can combine primary sources with methodologies to build biographies. The paper is divided into four sections: it first illustrates the importance of understanding Black individuals from that era as part of a subaltern category. In the second part, it outlines strategies that can enable researchers to extract novel meaning from primary sources, such as the Black press in São Paulo, that have already seen extensive use. It then provides practical examples of how other textual and visual documents unveil the concealed presence of individuals of color in the past. After considering the field of historical biography’s ongoing debates, it concludes that studies employing microhistorical methods have the distinct capacity to center agency in ways that complement macro-historical interpretations.
Copyright (c) 2024 Livia Tiede https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Português Police Sources from the Kingdom of Italy for the Biographical Study of Italian Migrants Who Took Part in the Labor Movement in São Paulo, c.1870-c.1930
Starting from a theoretical and historiographical part dedicated to the progressive insertion of micro-historical methodology and biographical studies so as to understand the individual agency of workers involved in the mobilizations and organizations of the labor movement, the article presents a methodological analysis of Italian police sources preserved in the National Archive of the Italian State (Archivio Centrale dello Stato) and the State Archive of Rome (Archivio di Stato di Roma), both based in the Italian capital. These sources, as also evidenced by the examples of biographical trajectories presented in the text, provide an important, and often unique, set of information for the biographies of the many Italian workers who worked in the labor movement in the state of São Paulo in part of their lives.
Copyright (c) 2024 Luigi Biondi https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From Belém do Pará to Rio de Janeiro: the Trajectories of Militant Workers Through Digitised Newspapers (1910-1930)
This article intends to make some presentations – very brief, due to space limitations – of the trajectories of some worker activists who worked in Brazil throughout the 1910s and 1920s. – and mainly – of the workers' newspapers, were of fundamental importance, which made another underlying objective of this text to be to discuss the use of digitized copies of the newspapers made available in online collections as historical sources for the reconstitution of the trajectory of these subjects.
Copyright (c) 2024 Marcos Lucas Abreu Braga https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
From “Mono” to Benedicto: the Presence of Black Workers at Companhia Antarctica Paulista Between 1920 and 1930
This article is part of the research carried out about the presence of black workers in the industry of São Paulo in the post-abolition period through the analysis of hiring forms of Companhia Antarctica Paulista between 1920 and 1930. This documentation opens up possibilities for numerous researches, including the beginning of writing a biography of a black worker. The relationship between a photograph and a functional file was able to transform a “monkey” into a citizen.
Copyright (c) 2024 Michele Silva Joaquim https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Exchange of Letters Between Robert Simon And Pietro Maria Bardi About the Attribution Given to the Painting “The Portrait of a Florentine Fidalgo”, at MASP
The article brings the transcription of four letters exchanged between Robert Simon, a researcher at the Department of European Works at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, United States, and Pietro Maria Bardi, one of the founders and then director of the Museum of Art of São Paulo (MASP) that changed the attribution given to one of the works in the institution's collection. This is the painting "The Portrait of a Florentine Nobleman (Piero de Medici?)", today attributed to Alessandro Allori and his studio, but which in the past was given as a work by Agnolo Bronzino and Francesco Salviati. All are Italian painters of the mannerist school.
Copyright (c) 2023 Janaína Angélica Simões https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0
Coast Guards and Traps: Critical Transcription of Three Regiments to Fight Dutch Privateers on the Coast of Pernambuco (1656 and 1661)
The handwritten copies of naval expedition regiments used to combat Dutch privateers are found in the Conde dos Arcos Collection at the Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra. These documents were created by Pernambuco governors delegating power to commanders leading these expeditions. They offer insight into the context of disputes following Dutch capitulation in 1654, and standardize two types of naval expeditions: coast guards and traps. Critical transcriptions accompany an initial presentation outlining these expeditions' contexts, with explanatory notes referencing other sources and events mentioned therein. Ultimately, analyzing these regiments provides key insights into both Pernambuco's coastal defence situation as well as effective strategies employed against Dutch Privateers.
Copyright (c) 2024 Hugo André Flores Fernandes Araújo https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0