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

Dados Bibliográficos

ID9968286
AutoresM Dantas (0000-0003-2691-5033, Florida State University, autor correspondente), Mariana L R Dantas, Douglas Cole Libby (0000-0001-9810-4737, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, autor correspondente)
Ano2020
Volume65
FascículoS28
Páginas117-144
Data de publicação2020-03-04
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoInternational Review of Social History (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0020-8590 • E-ISSN: 1469-512X
EditoraCambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1017/s0020859020000152
OpenAlexW3010222760
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas4
Referências citadas43

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