Colônia do Sacramento - Livro 5o. De Batismos (1763-1777)

Founded in 1680, Colônia do Sacramento was the Portuguese effort to re-establish commercial routes between Brazil and Río de la Plata that once thrived during the Iberian Union (1580-1640). Colônia do Sacramento’s fast-paced growth was anchored in the expanding commerce and slave trade between Spanish- and Portuguese-America. The city developed into the main entrepôt for European manufactures and Luso-Brazilian products (spirits, sugar, tobacco) and was also a gateway for thriving slave trade. In 1705, the Spanish conquered Colônia do Sacramento during the War of Spanish Succession; the Treaties of Utrecht (1715), however, stipulated the return of the town to Portugal. After the Portuguese resettlement in 1716, the town quickly developed a population in excess of three thousand inhabitants, of whom forty percent were enslaved in 1760. The Livro 5o. de Batismos da Igreja Matriz (5th Book of Baptisms of the Matriz Church) transcribed here provides a unique view of Colônia in its latest period. Because the Livro 5o. de Batismos was used only in extraordinary moments, such as military sieges, religious authorities recorded free and enslaved baptisms alongside each other, making this the only ecclesiastical source of Colônia do Sacramento to record free and enslaved people together. The Livro 5o.presents two snapshots of Sacramento’s society, one from 1763 to 1764, during the Spanish occupation of the town; and from 1774 to mid-1777, the last years of the Colônia under Portuguese rule.