Producing liberty in 19^th Century Brazil

ABSTRACT

This paper focuses on the transition from slavery to freedom in Brazil in the 19th century. Although current historiographical researches highlighted the social characteristics of freed slaves, this work also concentrates on the freedom letters “grantors”. Two main questions guided the analysis: why freedom letters were so common in Imperial Brazil? How did this practice intertwine with social relationships and shape society as a whole? To approach these problems, the locus chosen for the analysis was the city of Bagé, in the southernmost province of Rio Grande do Sul. On one hand, the relevant role of women in that slaveholder and rural world is worth of notice. On the other hand, small slave-owners, who represented the majority of their group, adopted specific strategies when emancipating captives, so as not to lose their own hierarchical status of masters. Furthermore, this work shows that the production of freedom in Imperial Brazil was a complex process that must transcend quantitative calculations. Among other aspects, we emphasize the relevance of understanding the influence of Iberian and African cultural matrices to understand the 19^th Century Brazilian society.

Keywords
Imperial Brazil; slavery; freedom