Crime and Punishment in the Coffee Provinces: Slave Resistance and the Death Penalty in the Paraíba Valley and Western São Paulo (1830-1888)

ABSTRACT

The article analyzes capital crimes committed by enslaved people, under the Law of June 10, 1835, and judicial penalties imposed upon them by jury courts in the Paraíba Valley and Western São Paulo between 1835 and 1888, focused on Vassouras and Campinas. This study identified patterns over the decades that revealed three temporalities of slave resistance and state violence, connected to variables like the economic flows of coffee production and the slave trade, the demographic profile of enslaved communities, and the dynamic of national politics. This research also identified similarities and differences between these regions, that belonged to distinct moments during the advance of the coffee frontier until the mid-nineteenth century and converged under one single temporality during the crisis of slavery in the Brazilian Empire.

Keywords:
Slavery; coffee; slave resistance; criminal justice; death penalty