Families, Manumission, and Freed People in Urban Minas Gerais in the Era of Atlantic Abolitionism

Bibliographic Data

ID9968286
AuthorsM Dantas (0000-0003-2691-5033, Florida State University, corresponding author), Mariana L R Dantas, Douglas Cole Libby (0000-0001-9810-4737, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume65
IssueS28
Pages117-144
Publication date2020-03-04
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
PublisherCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859020000152
OpenAlexW3010222760
LanguageEN
Citations received4
References cited43

Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Minas Gerais was heavily reliant on its slave labor force and invested in the social order shaped by slavery. The main systematic challenge to slavery was discrete negotiations of manumission that resulted in the freedom of a few individual slaves. This practice fueled the expansion of a free population of African descendants, who congregated most visibly in the captaincy's urban centers. Through an examination of manumission stories from two African-descendant families in the towns of Sabará and São José, this article underscores the relevance of family ties and social networks to the pursuit and experience of freedom in the region. As slavery remained entrenched in Brazil, despite Atlantic abolitionist efforts elsewhere, urban families’ pursuit and negotiation of manumissions shaped a historical process that naturalized the idea and possibility of black freedom

Abolitionism · Ancien regime · Descendant · Economic history · Genealogy · Negotiation · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Population · Social science · Sociology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Demography · Gender Studies · History · History of Colonial Brazil · Law