Keila Grinberg, A Black Jurist in a Slave Society

Originally published in 2002, the doctoral thesis of Keila Grinberg, Professor of History at the University of Pittsburgh, USA, has recently appeared in English for the first time. Nearly two decades separate the Portuguese and English versions of A Black Jurist in a Slave Society. Pointing out the time gap between the original and the translated edition, the author says: ‘Although I have updated some references and edited the text with non-Brazilians in mind, the argument remains the same’ (p xvi). What, then, can this 20-year-old book still add to the current historiographical debate? How does it address the issues of race, civil law, and citizenship in nineteenth-century Brazil? What can we learn about law in a slave society? The book is divided into three parts and eight chapters. In the first part (chs 1–2), Grinberg presents an impressive panorama of the province of Bahia (Recôncavo and Salvador) in...

Argument (complex analysis) · Citizenship · Historiography · Political science · Politics · Portuguese · Sociology · State (computer science) · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Law · Philosophy