Abolition of Slavery in Brazil

Seminar Questions

What main reasons have historians given for the abolition of slavery in Brazil?
What was the role of gradual legal emancipation; the Paraguayan War; ideas about backwardness/ 'progress'?
How has the historiography changed over about the last 3 decades?
Where were the centres of the abolition movement?
What role did enslaved people/ free Afro-Brazilians/ women play?
Was abolitionism similar or different to other Atlantic abolitionist movements?
How much changed in 1888?

Readings

For a general overview, have a look over Thomas Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, chapter 4, "Making Brazil 'Modern': 1870-1910"

Then choose at least ONE of:

Barbara Weinstein, "The Decline of the Progressive Planter and the Rise of Subaltern Agency: Shifting Narratives of Slave Emancipation in Brazil" in Reclaiming the Political in Latin American History: Essays from the North, eds. Gilbert Joseph, Emily S Rosenberg, Emilia Viotti da Costa, and Steve Stern, Duke University Press 2001 [useful historiographical overview]
Drescher, Seymour. “Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective.” Hispanic American Historical Review, 68:3 (August 1988): 429-60 [useful on transnational comparisons and connections]
Walter Fraga Filho, Crossroads of Freedom: Slaves and Freed People in Brazil 1870-1910 "Introduction" [useful on microhistory, enslaved agency, post-emancipation]
Cowling, Camillia. “Debating Womanhood, Defining Freedom: The Abolition of Slavery in 1880s Rio de Janeiro.” Gender & History, 22:2 (August 2010): 284-301 [useful on gender, enslaved agency and its connections to wider abolition campaigns]

Further reading

Robert Edgar Conrad, The Destruction of Brazilian Slavery, 1850-1888 (1972) [multiple copies in library; one is on short loan] (older, but recommended for a fuller narrative account of abolition)

Chapter 6: “The Emancipation of the Newborn”
Chapter 12: “The Abolitionist Movement: Second Phase”
Chapter 16: “The Conversion of São Paulo”

Celso Castilho, Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Citizenship

Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought(1993)

- Chapter 1: “The Intellectual Context of Abolition in Brazil,” pp 1-37

Angela Alonso, The Last Abolition: The Brazilian Anti-Slavery Movement, 1868-1888 CUP 2021

Celso Castilho and Camillia Cowling, Funding Freedom, Popularising Politics: Abolitionism and Local Emancipation Funds in 1880s Brazil," Luso-Brazilian Review, 47:1 (2010)

Celso T. Castilho "The Racial Terms of Citizenship: Abolition and its Political Aftermath in Northeastern Brazil," in Race and Nation in the Age of Emancipations, edited by Whitney Nell Stewart, and John Garrison Marks, University of Georgia Press, 2018.

Castilho, Celso. Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship. University Press of Pittsburgh, 2016.

Camillia Cowling Conceiving Freedom: Women of Colour, Gender, and the Abolition of Slavery in Havana and Rio de Janeiro 2013

Maria Helena Machado "From Slave Rebels to Strikebreakers: The Quilombo of Jabaquara and and the Problem of citizenship in Late Nineteenth-Century Brazil" Hispanic American Historical Review 2006

Rebecca J Scott, ed. The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil Duke University Press, 1988

If you're researching an essay on slavery and abolition in C19 Brazil, here are some wider readings on this period; they are not all directly related to abolition but will be useful for context:

Abreu, Martha. “Slave mothers and freed children: emancipation and female space in debates on the ‘Free Womb’ Law, Rio de Janeiro, 1871.” JLAS, 28:3 (1996): 567-80.

George Reid Andrews, Blacks and Whites in São Paulo, Brazil, 1888-1988 (1991)

Beattie, Peter M. The Tribute of Blood: Army, Honour, Race and Nation in Brazil, 1864-1945. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001.

Leslie Bethell, The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade: Britain, Brazil and the slave trade question, 1807-1869 (1970)

Kim D Butler, Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won: Afro-Brazilians in Post-Abolition São Paulo and Salvador (1998)

Berbel, Márcia Regina, and Rafael Bivar Marquese. “The Absence of Race: Slavery, Citizenship and Pro-Slavery Ideology in the Cortes of Lisbon and the Rio de Janeiro Constituent Assembly (1821-4).” Social History, 32:4 (November 2007): 415-33

Chalhoub, Sidney. “The Politics of Disease Control: Yellow Fever and Race in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro.” Journal of Latin American Studies, 25:3 (Oct 1993):441-463.

________. “The Politics of Silence: Race and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.” Slavery & Abolition, 27:1 (April 2006): 73-87.

Primary sources:Robert Edgar Conrad, ed. Children of God’s Fire: A Documentary History of Black Slavery in Brazil. Princeton University Press (1984)

Grinberg, Keila. “Freedom Suits and Civil Law in Brazil and the United States.” Slavery and Abolition, 22:3 (December 2001): 66-82.

Izeksohn, Vitor. Slavery and War in the Americas: Race, Citizenship, and State-Building in the United States and Brazil. University of Virginia Press, 2014.

Kittleson, Roger A. “Campaign of All Peace and Charity: Gender and the Politics of Abolitionism in Porto Alegre, Brazil, 1846-1888.” Slavery & Abolition, 22 (2001): 83-108.

Lauderdale Graham, Sandra. “The Vintem Riot and Political Culture, Rio de Janeiro, 1880.” HAHR, 60:3 (August 1980): 431-49.

________. “Slavery‟s Impasse: Slave Prostitutes, Small-time Mistresses, and the Brazilian Law of 1871.” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 33 (1991): 669-94.

Machado, Maria Helena. “From Slave Rebels to Strikebreakers: The Quilombo of Jabaquara and the Problem of Citizenship in Late-Nineteenth-Century Brazil.” HAHR, 86:2 (2006): 247-74

Needell, Jeffrey. “The Abolition of the Brazilian Slave Trade in 1850: Historiography, Slave Agency and Statesmanship,” Journal of Latin American Studies, 33:4 (Nov. 2001): 681-711

Nishida, Mieko. “Manumission and Ethnicity in Urban Slavery: Salvador, Brazil, 1808-1888.” HAHR, 73:3 (August 1993): 361-91.

Joaquim Nabuco, Abolitionism, trans. by Robert Conrad (1977)

A J R Russell-Wood, The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (1982)

Santos, Martha. Cleansing Honour with Blood: Masculinity, Violence and Power in the Backlands of Northeast Brazil, 1845-1889. Stanford University Press, 2012.

Rebecca Scott (et. al.), The Abolition of Slavery and the Aftermath of Emancipation in Brazil (1988)

Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought (1993)

Scott, Rebecca. “Exploring the Meaning of Freedom: Postemancipation Societies in Comparative Perspective.” HAHR, 68:3 (1988): 407-28.

Schwartz, Stuart. “Recent Trends in the Study of Slavery in Brazil.” Luso-Brazilian Review, 25:1 (Summer 1988): 1-25.

Stanley J. Stein, Vassouras: A Brazilian Coffee Country, 1850-1900 (1957)

Robert Brent Toplin, The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil (1972)