Abstract
From the maritime experience of Africans in Africa, this paper analyzes the changes that occurred in the Portuguese legislation about the mobility and the registration of captive sailors and discusses the interpretations of these themes by the current historiography. It ends with an analysis of the prospects of freedom for the enslaved sailors in transit within the Portuguese colonies between the second half of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century.
Keywords:
slavery; Atlantic History; Historiography