Dotadas de bens: os enlaces matrimoniais no sertão de Piranhas e Piancó (capitania da Paraíba do Norte, século XVIII).

Abstract

In the Old Regime the habits of the dowry was a customary practice in opulent family groups with the purpose of the conservation of its patrimony, serving as strategy of maintainance of a social saving for local power groups. According to the vestiges left in the Notary Books by the pen of the notaries who granted before the law the desires of men and women in the hinterlands of the Capitania da Paraíba do Norte, we aim to review the custom of the dowry in a marginal newborn society into the Lusitanian Empire, the Povoação de Nossa Senhora do Bom Sucesso do Piancó (and from 1772, Vila de Pombal). Notary records enable us to study the custom of marriage arrangements, with the names of their spouses, relaties, and welth, to be able to forge small social networks that build an ethos based on land ownership. We sugget that from a rigid patriarcal society, there was women political and social centrality for the establishing and legitimacy of a local elite in the corners of the Sertão de Piranhas e Piancó in the 18th Century.