Liberdade tutelada : os africanos livres e as relações de trabalho na Fabrica de Polvora da Estrela, Serra da Estrela/RJ (c.1831-c.1870)

AUTOR(ES)
DATA DE PUBLICAÇÃO

2005

RESUMO

"Liberated african", "freed african", "prize negroes" and "emancipado". These expressions, in the nineteenth century, indicated the juridical status of every ilegally enslaved africans rescued by government authorities in slave trade ships after the slave trade prohibition. Once captured by a government, like Brazil?s Empire, they should be put to work as "apprentices". It was the Empire´s responsibility to keep liberated africans under guardianship for 14 years, and then release them, according to an agreement between Brazil and the British Crown. His was not accomplished by Brazil´s Empire, and so most liberated africans served either the state or private hirers their entire lives. Liberated africans? social and juridical condition was two-fold: they were in a society in which africans were mostly slaves and still their freedom was hardly prevented by a guardianship surrounded by uncertainty. Their high level of peculiarity has shaped series of specific facts and circumstances, most of them in state?s environment, to manage and control them. The documentation this specific administration left behind can reveal new meanings for the complex nineteenth century?s labor world. That is why liberated africans are a key to understand more about labor relation changes at that time. This paper focuses liberated africans? experience in a powder factory owned by the Empire between 1830 and 1864, where they happened to be in touch with different social groups, like government slaves, free workers and military craft workers

ASSUNTO(S)

trabalho forçado escravidão africanos compulsory labor liberdade freedom slavery gunpowder germany - history - 19th century polvora africans factories

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