Potentados locais e seu braço armado: as vantagens e dificuldades advindas do armamento de escravos na conquista das Minas^*

The present essay explores the advantages, functions, and also disadvantages of using of private militias of armed slaves, organized by local potentates and used by the Portuguese Crown and metropolitan authorities in Vila Rica county in the first half of the eighteenth century.

armed slaves; local potentates; construction of authority; tensions; colonial Minas Gerais