Abolition of Slavery in Brazil
Seminar Questions
- What main reasons have historians given for the abolition of slavery in Brazil?
- What was the role of gradual legal emancipation; the Paraguayan War; ideas about backwardness/ 'progress'?
- How has the historiography changed over about the last 3 decades?
- Where were the centres of the abolition movement?
- What role did enslaved people/ free Afro-Brazilians/ women play?
- Was abolitionism similar or different to other Atlantic abolitionist movements?
- How much changed in 1888?
Readings
For a general overview, have a look over Thomas Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change,
Then choose at least ONE of:
- Barbara Weinstein, in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North, eds. Gilbert Joseph, Emily S Rosenberg, Emilia Viotti da Costa, and Steve Stern, Duke University Press 2001 [useful historiographical overview]
- Drescher, Seymour. 鈥淏razilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective.鈥� Hispanic American Historical Review, 68:3 (August 1988): 429-60 [useful on transnational comparisons and connections]
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[useful on microhistory, enslaved agency, post-emancipation]
- Cowling, Camillia. 鈥淒ebating Womanhood, Defining Freedom: The Abolition of Slavery in 1880s Rio de Janeiro.鈥� Gender & History, 22:2 (August 2010): 284-301 [useful on gender, enslaved agency and its connections to wider abolition campaigns]
Further reading
Robert Edgar Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (1972) [multiple copies in library; one is on short loan] (older, but recommended for a fuller narrative account of abolition)
Chapter 6: 鈥淭he Emancipation of the Newborn鈥�
Chapter 12: 鈥淭he Abolitionist Movement: Second Phase鈥�
Chapter 16: 鈥淭he Conversion of S茫o Paulo鈥�
Celso Castilho, Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Citizenship
Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought(1993)
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- Chapter 1: 鈥�The Intellectual Context of Abolition in Brazil,鈥� pp 1-37
CUP 2021
Celso Castilho and Camillia Cowling, Luso-Brazilian Review, 47:1 (2010)
Celso T. Castilho ," in Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations, edited by Whitney Nell Stewart, and John Garrison Marks, University of Georgia Press, 2018.
Castilho, Celso. Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship. University Press of Pittsburgh, 2016.
Camillia Cowling Conceiving Freedom: Women of Colour, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro 2013
Maria Helena Machado "" Hispanic American Historical Review 2006
Rebecca J Scott, ed. Duke University Press, 1988
If you're researching an essay on slavery and abolition in C19 Brazil, here are some wider readings on this period; they are not all directly related to abolition but will be useful for context:
Abreu, Martha. 鈥淪lave mothers and freed children: emancipation and female space in debates on the 鈥楩ree Womb鈥� Law, Rio de Janeiro, 1871.鈥� JLAS, 28:3 (1996): 567-80.
George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in S茫o Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (1991)
Beattie, Peter M. The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honour, Race and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.
Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the slave trade question, 1807-1869 (1970)
Kim D Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition S茫o Paulo and Salvador (1998)
Berbel, M谩rcia Regina, and Rafael Bivar Marquese. 鈥淭he Absence of Race: Slavery, Citizenship and Pro-Slavery Ideology in the Cortes of Lisbon and the Rio de Janeiro Constituent Assembly (1821-4).鈥� Social History, 32:4 (November 2007): 415-33
Chalhoub, Sidney. 鈥淭he Politics of Disease Control: Yellow Fever and Race in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro.鈥� Journal of Latin American Studies, 25:3 (Oct 1993):441-463.
________. 鈥淭he Politics of Silence: Race and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.鈥� Slavery & Abolition, 27:1 (April 2006): 73-87.
Primary sources:Robert Edgar Conrad, ed. Children of God鈥檚 Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton University Press (1984)
Grinberg, Keila. 鈥淔reedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and the United States.鈥� Slavery and Abolition, 22:3 (December 2001): 66-82.
Izeksohn, Vitor. Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State-Building in the United States and Brazil. University of Virginia Press, 2014.
Kittleson, Roger A. 鈥淐ampaign of All Peace and Charity: Gender and the Politics of Abolitionism in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1846-1888.鈥� Slavery & Abolition, 22 (2001): 83-108.
Lauderdale Graham, Sandra. 鈥淭he Vintem Riot and Political Culture, Rio de Janeiro, 1880.鈥� HAHR, 60:3 (August 1980): 431-49.
________. 鈥淪lavery鈥焥 Impasse: Slave Prostitutes, Small-time Mistresses, and the Brazilian Law of 1871.鈥� Comparative Studies in Society and History, 33 (1991): 669-94.
Machado, Maria Helena. 鈥淔rom Slave Rebels to Strikebreakers: The Quilombo of Jabaquara and the Problem of Citizenship in Late-Nineteenth-Century Brazil.鈥� HAHR, 86:2 (2006): 247-74
Needell, Jeffrey. 鈥淭he Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in 1850: Historiography, Slave Agency and Statesmanship,鈥� Journal of Latin American Studies, 33:4 (Nov. 2001): 681-711
Nishida, Mieko. 鈥淢anumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888.鈥� HAHR, 73:3 (August 1993): 361-91.
Joaquim Nabuco, Abolitionism, trans. by Robert Conrad (1977)
A J R Russell-Wood, The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (1982)
Santos, Martha. Cleansing Honour with Blood: Masculinity, Violence and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845-1889. Stanford University Press, 2012.
Rebecca Scott (et. al.), The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil (1988)
Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought (1993)
Scott, Rebecca. 鈥淓xploring the Meaning of Freedom: Postemancipation Societies in Comparative Perspective.鈥� HAHR, 68:3 (1988): 407-28.
Schwartz, Stuart. 鈥淩ecent Trends in the Study of Slavery in Brazil.鈥� Luso-Brazilian Review, 25:1 (Summer 1988): 1-25.
Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee Country, 1850-1900 (1957)
Robert Brent Toplin, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (1972)