Individual trajectories: a methodology for the study of traders in eighteenth-century Minas

Abstract

Paying attention to the economic expansion promoted by mining in Minas Gerais since the dawn of the eighteenth century, which both benefited from trade as the economic and social rise of merchants, we verified the transience of merchant class which served from this trade. A feature that, in large measure, imposes limitations to historians to the prosopographical study of their agents and consequently trade experienced in the region. With this paper we analyze some cases that shed light on this condition and also evaluate alternative sources that allow advancing on this issue.