Measurement the levels of literacy in the northeast region of Bahia (1857-1878)

Abstract

In this paper we analyze, in an exploratory fashion, ecclesiastical and parish records of land ownership, and municipality council notebooks from three localities in the Northeast region of Bahia: Bom Conselho (1857-1859), Tucano (1865-1869) and Itapicuru(1875-1878), opposing the occurrence of alphabetical signatures or the delegation of signatures with the variables “geographic origin” and “sex” of those involved in the documentation, in order to measure the levels of literacy in this region of Bahia in the nineteenth century.In order to contribute with the process of diffusion of writing practices in the bahian rural society in the threshold of the non census period , by the critical application of what is called “method of the computation of signatures” to documental sources produced by the Law of Lands (1850). The results show that the ability of that type of proprietors in the documentation is relatively high in the cities we´ve investigated: Itapicuru, 86,36%, Tucano, 50,80%, and Bom Conselho, 45,91%. This is a different result if we´re comparing to the remaining population shown in the Census of 1872, once it seems to indicate a specific group, with ownerships, representing a specialization of writing ability and, also, texts mostly written by men (64,08%). Those sources include part of the rural population, specifically the proprietors of lands, and offer an approximate census survey of the ability to write signatures in the context of the regulation of lands. The main objective is to contribute with the history of the Portuguese language in the inland of Bahia, through one of the ways proposed by Houaiss (1985), the penetration of the written language in Brazil.