Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-v9fdk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-13T02:39:14.641Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Apprentices of freedom: Atlantic histories of the africanos livres in mid-nineteenth century Rio de Janeiro

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 September 2015

Jennifer Nelson
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article examines the journey undertaken by the slave ship Brilhante, captured by a British anti-slave trade patrol off the coast of Brazil in 1838. The ship and its crew were engaged in slave trafficking in contravention of international treaty agreements. In accordance with prize law the Brilhante was condemned by the Anglo-Brazilian mixed commission court in Rio de Janeiro and the slaves on-board were freed and apprenticed for a prescribed number of years. This article argues that during their apprenticeships not only were these Africans treated in the same way as slaves, but they formed similar bonds for survival. Both ethnic solidarity and shipmate bonds, which transcended ethnic boundaries, allowed them to forge new identities. The article demonstrates how the liberated Africans from the ship, who belonged to a larger marginalised group of “recaptives” within the Atlantic World, were thus able to facilitate the achievement of their eventual freedom, and improve the conditions in which they lived.

Keywords

Shipmate bondsliberated Africansmixed commissionsillegal slave-trade
Type
Articles
Information
Itinerario , Volume 39 , Issue 2: Africa In The Atlantic World , August 2015 , pp. 349 - 369
Copyright
© 2015, Research Institute for History, Leiden University 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

Jennifer Nelson is a final year PhD student in the department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at the University of Leeds.

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Unpublished SourcesGoogle Scholar
Arquivo Histórico do Itamaraty, Brazil (AHI) III, Coleções Especiais, 33 Commissões mistas, Tráfico de escravos, EmbarcaçãoBrilhante, 1831–1839, Lata 4, maço 3, pasta 1.Google Scholar
Arquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro (ANRJ)Fundo 7X, Junta do Comércio, Agricultura e Navegação, códice 184, vols. 3–4.Fundo AM, Série Justiça, IJ6 códices: 471, 472, 480, 523.Fundo OI, Coleção GIFI 6D-13.Google Scholar
Biblioteca Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (BNRJ)Representação dos presos existentes nos trabalhos da Casa da Correção e dos pretos africanos que trabalham nas obras publicas da nossa casa, pedindo a intervenção de S.M.I para melhorar-lhes a insuportável situação em que viviam: 1841, II-34, 25,11.Google Scholar
The National Archive, UK (TNA) Brazil: legation and consular, FO 84/286.Rio de Janeiro legation archives: letter books, FO129/7.Rio de Janeiro mixed commission, FO 84/242.Google Scholar
British House of Commons Parliamentary Papers (HCPP)House of Commons Parliamentary Papers Online. 2006. http://parlipapers.chadwyck.com.Google Scholar
Published Primary SourcesGoogle Scholar
Christie, William Dougal. Notes on Brazilian Questions. London: Forgotten Books, 2013, Original work published 1865.Google Scholar
Roberts, Thomas. The Cruel Nature and Injurious Effects of the Foreign Slave Trade Represented in a Letter Addressed to the Right Hon. Lord Brougham and Vaux. Bristol, 1836.Google Scholar
Secondary SourcesGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Richard, et al. “Using pre- Orthographic African Names to Identify the Origins of Captives in the Transatlantic Slave Trade: The Registers of Liberated Africans, 1808–1862.” History in Africa 40 (2013): 165–191.Google Scholar
Barcia, Manuel. The Great African Slave Revolt of 1825. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Bethell, Leslie. “The Mixed Commissions for the Suppression of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in the Nineteenth Century.” The Journal of African History 7:1 (1966): 79–93.Google Scholar
Bethell, Leslie. The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the Slave Trade Question, 1807–1869. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Borucki, Alex. “The ‘African Colonists’ of Montevideo: New Light on the Illegal Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro and the Río de la Plata (1830–1842).” Slavery and Abolition 30:3 (2009): 427–444.Google Scholar
Chambers, Douglas B. ‘Ethnicity in the Diaspora: The Slave-trade and the Creation of African’ “Nations” in the Americas.’ Slavery and Abolition 22:3 (2001): 25–39.Google Scholar
Chambers, Douglas B. “The Significance of Igbo in the Bight of Biafra Slave-Trade: A Rejoinder to Northrup’s ‘Myth Igbo’”. Slavery and Abolition 23:1 (2002): 101–120.Google Scholar
Conrad, Robert. “Neither Slave nor Free: The Emancipados of Brazil, 1818–1868.” The Hispanic American Historical Review 53:1 (1973): 50–70.Google Scholar
Domingues da Silva, Daniel. 2013, “The Kimbundu diaspora to Brazil: Records from the Slave Ship Brilhante, 1838.” Manuscript submitted for publication.Google Scholar
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison translated by Alan Sheridon. London: Allen Lane, 1977.Google Scholar
FrankZephyr, L Zephyr, L. Dutra’s World: Wealth and Family in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, Walter. “‘Being now, as it were, one family’ Shipmate bonding on the slave vessel Emilia, in Rio de Janeiro, and throughout the Atlantic World.” Luso-Brazilian Review 45:1 (2008): 53–77.Google Scholar
Herlin, Susan J. “Brazil and the Commercialization of Kongo.” In Enslaving Connections: Changing Cultures of Africa and Brazil during the Era of Slavery, edited by Paul Lovejoy and J. Curto, 265–287. New York: Humanity Books, 2004.Google Scholar
KaraschMary, C Mary, C. Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. Princeton, N.J: Princeton University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert. “The Portuguese Slave Trade from Angola in the Eighteenth Century.” Journal of Economic History 32:4 (1972): 894–918.Google Scholar
Klein, Herbert. The Middle Passage: Comparative Studies in the Atlantic Slave Trade. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Henry. “The Registers of Liberated Africans of the Havana Slave Trade Commission: Transcription, Methodology and Statistical Analysis.” African Economic History 38 (2010): 107–135.Google Scholar
Lovejoy, Paul. Transformations in Slavery: A History of Slavery in Africa, 2nd editionCambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.Google Scholar
Mamigonian, Beatriz, and Racine, Karen, eds. The Human Tradition in The Black Atlantic, 1500–2000. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010.Google Scholar
MamigonianBeatriz, Galloti Beatriz, Galloti. “To be a Liberated African in Brazil: Labour and Citizenship in the Nineteenth Century.” PhD thesis, University of Waterloo, 2002.Google Scholar
MamigonianBeatriz, Galloti Beatriz, Galloti. Revisitando a ‘transição para o trabalho livre’: a experiência dos africanos livres. In Tráfico, cativeiro e liberdade: Rio de Janeiro, séculos XVII–XIX edited by Manolo Florentino, 389–417. Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, 2005.Google Scholar
MamigonianBeatriz, Galloti Beatriz, Galloti. “Conflicts over the Meanings of Freedom: The Liberated Africans’ Struggle for Emancipation in Brazil, 1840s–1860s.” in Paths to Freedom: Manumission in the Atlantic World, edited by Rosemary Brana-Shute and Randy J. Sparks, 235–290. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Mattos, Hebe Maria. Das Cores do Silencio: os significados da liberdade no sudeste escravista, Brasil, século XIX, 2nd edition, Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 1998.Google Scholar
Martinez, Jenny S. “Anti-Slavery Courts and the Dawn of International Human Rights Law.” Yale Law Journal 117 (2007): 550–641.Google Scholar
Mintz, Sidney, and Price, Richard. The Birth of African-American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Becacon Press books, 1992.Google Scholar
Northrup, David. “Igbo and Myth Igbo: Culture and Ethnicity in the Atlantic World, 1600–1850.” Slavery and Abolition 21:3 (2000): 1–20.Google Scholar
Nwokeji, G. Ugo, and Eltis, David. “The Roots of the African Diaspora: Methodological Considerations in the Analysis of Names in the Liberated African Registers of Sierra Leone and Havana.” History in Africa 29 (2002): 365–379.Google Scholar
Patterson, Orlando. Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Reis, João Jose. Rebelião escrava no Brasil: A historia do levante dos males em 1835. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2003.Google Scholar
Rodrigues, Jaime. “Cultura marítima: marinheiros e escravos no tráfico negreiro para o Brasil (sécs. XVIII e XIX).” Revista Brasileira de Historia 19:38 (1999): 15–53.Google Scholar
Rodrigues, Jaime. O infame comércio: propostas e experiências no final do tráfico de africanos para o Brasil (1800–1850). Campinas: Editora da UNICAMP, 2000.Google Scholar
Rodrigues, Jaime. De Costa a Costa: escravos, marinheiros e intermediários do tráfico negreiro de Angola ao Rio de Janeiro, 1750–1860. São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2005.Google Scholar
Russell-Wood, A. J. R. “Atlantic Bridge and Atlantic Divide: Africans and Creoles in Late Colonial Brazil.” in Creole Societies in the Portuguese Colonial Empire, edited by Phillip Havik and Malyn Newitt, 171–218. Bristol: University of Bristol, 2007.Google Scholar
Silveira, Renato da. “Nação Africana no Brasil Escravista: Problemas Teóricos e Metodologicos.” Afro-Ásia 38 (2008): 245–301.Google Scholar
Silvestre Moreira, Alinnie. “Liberdade tutelada: Os africanos livres e as relações de trabalho na Fábrica de Pólvora da Estrela, Serrada Estrela/RJ (c. 1831–c. 1870).” Masters diss., Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 2005.Google Scholar
Slenes, Robert W. “‘Malungo, Ngoma vem’: África coberta e descoberta no Brasil.” Revista USP 12 (1991/92): 48–67.Google Scholar
Soares, Luiz Carlos. O ‘Povo de Cam’ na capital do Brasil: A escravidão urbana no Rio de Janeiro do século XIX. Rio de Janeiro: Faperj-7Letras, 2007.Google Scholar
Sweet, James H. Recreating Africa: Culture, Kinship, and Religion in the African-Portuguese World, 1441–1770. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Thornton, John. Africa and Africans in the Making of the Atlantic World, 1400–1800, 2nd edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.Google Scholar
African Origins: Portal to Africans Liberated from Transatlantic Slave Vessels, 2009. http://african-origins.org/african-data.Google Scholar
The Spatial History Project, Visualization: The Africans of the Slave Ships Cezar and Brilhante, 1838–1865, 2014. http://www.stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/viz.php?id=401.Google Scholar
The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database: Voyages, 2009. http://www.slavevoyages.org.Google Scholar