Citizens of nowhere

Illegal slavery and racial silence in the African and Indigenous histories of Postcolonial Brazil

Bibliographic Data

ID5153161
AuthorsYuko Miki (0000-0003-0621-0044, Fordham University, corresponding author)
Year2021
Volume25
Issue4
Pages474-490
Publication date2021-05-19
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCitizenship Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1362-1025 • E-ISSN: 1469-3593
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/13621025.2021.1926093
OpenAlexW3164098122
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

Brazil, the largest slave society in the Americas, proposed a citizenship in its 1824 Constitution that had no race-based criteria. The nation remained steadfastly committed to slavery, however, importing nearly 800,000 enslaved Africans illegally after the transatlantic slave trade was abolished in 1831. The silences and ambiguities in Brazil’s terms of citizenship were precisely what enabled the nation to exclude Africans and keep many in illegal captivity. I focus on two groups of Africans, those who remained illegally enslaved, and those who had been ‘rescued’ from illegal slave ships and granted special status as ‘Free Africans.’ I compare their condition to that of indigenous Brazilians who were similarly enslaved illegally and excluded from citizenship on implicitly racial terms. By revealing how citizenship denial is integral to the history of freedom, their condition offers a necessary critique to studies of the ‘Age of Emancipation.’

Atlantic slave trade · Citizenship · Constitution · Denial · Emancipation · Ethnology · Genocide · Indigenous · Naturalization · Political science · Politics · Race (biology · Racism · Silence · Sociology · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · Gender Studies · Law

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