scholarly journals Slaves Who Owned Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Bahia, Brazil

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Reis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Capital City ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Urban Slavery ◽  
Peculiar Form ◽  
Provincial Capital ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Special Case

It was not uncommon in Brazil for slaves to own slaves. Slaves as masters of slaves existed in many slave societies and societies with slaves, but considering modern, chattel slavery in the Americas, Brazil seems to have been a special case where this phenomenon thrived, especially in nineteenth-century urban Bahia. The investigation is based on more than five hundred cases of enslaved slaveowners registered in ecclesiastical and manumission records in the provincial capital city of Salvador. The paper discusses the positive legal basis and common law rights that made possible this peculiar form of slave ownership. The paper relates slave ownership by slaves with the direction and volume of the slave trade, the specific contours of urban slavery, access by slaves to slave trade networks, and slave/master relations. It also discusses the web of convivial relations that involved the slaves of slaves, focusing on the ethnic and gender profiles of the enslaved master and their slaves.

scholarly journals "Por sua liberdade me oferece uma escrava": alforrias por substituição na Bahia, 1800-1850

Afro-Ásia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
João José Reis
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Transatlantic Slave Trade ◽  
Center Stage ◽  
Urban Slavery ◽  
Predominantly Female ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Trading Networks ◽  
The City

<p>O artigo discute a alforria por substituição, modalidade em que o escravo trocava sua liberdade dando em troca outro escravo, tornando-se, pelo menos temporariamente, um senhor de escravos escravizado. Os dados derivam de mais de 400 casos de alforrias registradas nos tabeliães de Salvador, destacando a cidade como local no Brasil em que esse tipo de alforria foi mais usado. O artigo relaciona a substituição ao volume do tráfico transatlântico, à escravidão urbana e ao acesso a redes do tráfico pelos escravos que investiam em outros escravos. Uma das possíveis explicações para o fenômeno vem da natureza da escravidão na parte da África onde se originava a maioria dos cativos baianos, onde a posse de escravos por outros escravos era prática comum. Mas a relação senhor/escravo ganha o centro da cena. Sendo a concessão da alforria prerrogativa senhorial, da mesma forma o era a licença para cativos formarem uma poupança para comprar seus substitutos. Discute-se as negociações entre senhores e alforriados, apontando circunstâncias envolvidas. Vários aspectos da negociação são revelados através de exemplos concretos. O artigo traça, entre outros achados quantitativos, os perfis étnico (com predominância de nagôs) e por gênero (com predominância de mulheres), tanto entre substitutos como entre substituídos, vinculando esse resultado à direção do fluxo do tráfico e à dinâmica do trabalho de ganho na cidade.</p><p>“For Her Freedom, She Offers me a Slave”: Manumission by Substitution in Bahia, 1800-1850</p><p>The article discusses manumission by substitution, in which a slave bought his/her freedom giving another slave in exchange, thus becoming, temporarily at least, an enslaved slaveowner. The data derives from more than 400 letters of manumission registered by public notaries in Salvador, making the city a leader in this type of manumission in Brazil. The article relates substitutions to the volume of the transatlantic slave trade, to urban slavery, and access to slave trading networks by the slaves who acquired captives. A possible explanation for the phenomenon is that in the part of Africa where most Bahian slaves originated, possession of slaves by other slaves was a common practice. But in Bahia master-slave relations gains center stage. The concession of manumission was the master’s prerogative, and so was permission for a slave to amass savings and use them to buy another slave. Negotiations between masters and slaves are discussed on the basis of concrete cases. Among other quantitative findings, the article also traces the ethnic (predominantly Nagô) and gender (predominantly female) profiles of both the substitutes and those they substituted, linking the results to both the direction of the slave trade and the dynamics of urban slavery.</p>Slave trade and urban slavery | Manumission by substitution | Nineteenth-century Bahia, Brazil

Madagascar and the Slave Trade, 1810–1895

1981 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 203-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gwyn Campbell
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Labour Force ◽  
Western Indian Ocean ◽  
East African ◽  
Long Distance ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
African Slaves ◽  
Increasing Demand ◽  
The One

The distinguishing feature of the Malagasy slave trade in the nineteenth century was the co-existence of two competitive slave networks, the one feeding Malagasy slaves to meet the demand of long-distance and regional markets in the western Indian Ocean, and the other channelling Malagasy war captives and East African slaves on to the markets of Imerina. The export of slaves from Madagascar had long existed, but the import of slaves was a new and distinctly nineteenth-century phenomenon, the result of the rise of the Merina empire, whose economy was based on a huge, unremunerated and servile labour force. As the empire expanded, so its labour requirements grew, to conflict sharply with the increasing demand for labour on the neighbouring plantation islands as they shifted over to the production of sugar. Creole merchants found themselves obliged to find alternative labour supplies, and from the 1830s they were moving rapidly down the west coast of Madagascar, where they purchased slaves from chiefs independent of Merina control. Until the outbreak of the Franco-Merina war of 1882–5, the slave-trade networks remained remarkably stable, despite local rivalries. This was due largely to the presence of the Arab Antalaotra, an experienced body of middlemen, and the Indian Karany who supplied the capital for the trade. The war effectively broke the power of the Merina regime, and as the imperial economy crumbled, so security of trade collapsed across the island. Though the disruption of legitimate commerce initially spurred the slave trade, it also strengthened creole calls for French intervention. This occurred in 1895, and the following year the French authorities abolished slavery in Madagascar. This, and the effective military occupation of the island by the French, reduced the Malagasy slave trade to a trickle by the first years of the twentieth century.

Beyond the Bazaars: Geographies of the slave trade in Central Asia

2017 ◽  
Vol 51 (4) ◽  
pp. 919-955
Author(s):  
JEFF EDEN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Military Force ◽  
Trade Networks ◽  
Decentralized Trade ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Motivating Factor

AbstractThe slave trade in nineteenth-century Central Asia involved hundreds of thousands of slaves, predominantly Persian Shīʿites, and stopping the trade was alleged to be a major motivating factor in the Russian conquest of the region. Nevertheless, Central Asian slavery remains little-studied and little-understood. In this article I will argue, first, that the region's slave trade was characterized by decentralized trade networks and by abundant inter-nomadic trade; and, second, that Russian efforts to end the slave trade by decree and through military force in the 1860s and 70s were not as successful as has often been assumed.

A GREAT DEBATE REVISITED From Slave Trade to ‘Legitimate’ Commerce: the Commercial Transition in Nineteenth-Century West Africa. Edited by ROBIN LAW. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Pp. xii + 279. £35 (ISBN 0-521-48127-9).

1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-177
Author(s):  
RALPH A. AUSTEN
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Academic Research ◽  
West African ◽  
Original Form ◽  
Main Theme ◽  
Great Debate ◽  
West African Coast ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Relationship Of

One of the great debates running through the first decades of academic research on West African history concerned the degree to which the unilateral ending of the Atlantic slave trade constituted a crisis for local societies and what link there was between this change and the imposition of formal European rule in the late 1800s. In its original form this debate has been over for some time. Most historians now agree that there was no long-term ‘crisis of transition’ on the West African coast in the early nineteenth century. Robin Law justifies the present volume by shifting attention to two secondary issues associated with the end of the slave trade: first, the transformations around inland production rather than coastal-dominated bulking and transport of vegetable exports; and second, the relationship of all these changes to the advent of colonialism. All the authors in this volume do discuss the connection between the end of the slave trade and internal systems of African production in the nineteenth century (including issues of indigenous slavery and gender relationships). Only a few concern themselves with colonial partition, although this becomes the main theme of Hopkins' concluding essay.

The Roman Aura in Henry James’s Daisy Miller: A Study (1878)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Carlos Rowe
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Global Power ◽  
Anglo American ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Classical Culture

Concentrating on Henry James’s Daisy Miller, this chapter reveals its author engaging in arguments over the decline and fall of the Roman Empire among nineteenth-century Anglo-American writers and over the best means of using Rome’s example as a warning to contemporaries. The novella’s Roman setting and frequent references to classical culture both extend Anglo-American Romantics’ emphasis on the Roman failure to develop a comprehensive democracy and allow James to pursue his own interest in post-Civil War America as an emerging global power. Departing from earlier interpretations of Rome’s importance within Daisy Miller, this chapter argues that James employs the character of Daisy to reconceive Rome’s relevance to central issues of class and gender. If James rejects aspects of contemporary American feminism embodied by such classically inspired artists as Harriet Hosmer and Maria Louisa Lander, he nevertheless makes his unsophisticated heroine, Daisy, into a means of expressing his democratic vision.

Women and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daina Ramey Berry ◽  
Nakia D. Parker
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Enslaved Women ◽  
Chattel Slavery ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Slave Traders ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Nineteenth Century United States ◽  
Kinship Bonds

This chapter analyzes the lives of enslaved women in the nineteenth-century United States and the Caribbean, an era characterized by the massive expansion of the institution of chattel slavery. Framing the discussion through the themes of labor, commodification, sexuality, and resistance, this chapter highlights the wide range of lived experiences of enslaved women in the Atlantic World. Enslaved women’s productive and reproductive labor fueled the global machinery of capitalism and the market economy. Although enslaved women endured the constant exploitation and commodification of their bodies, many actively resisted their enslavement and carved out supportive and sustaining familial, marital, and kinship bonds. In addition, this essay explains how white, native, and black women could be complicit in the perpetuation of chattel slavery as enslavers and slave traders. Considering women in their roles as the oppressed and the oppressors contributes and expands historical understandings of gender and sexuality in relation to slavery.

PAWNSHIP, DEBT, AND ‘FREEDOM’ IN ATLANTIC AFRICA DURING THE ERA OF THE SLAVE TRADE: A REASSESSMENT

2014 ◽  
Vol 55 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lovejoy
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Gold Coast ◽  
Guinea Coast ◽  
Congo River

AbstractA reassessment of the institution of pawnship in Africa for the period from the seventeenth century to the nineteenth century tightens the reference to situations in which individuals were held as collateral for debts that had been incurred by others, usually relatives. Contrary to the assumptions of some scholars, pawnship was not related to poverty and enslavement for debt but rather to commercial liquidity and the mechanisms by which funds were acquired to promote trade or to cover the expenses of funerals, weddings, and religious obligations. A distinction is made, therefore, between enslavement for debt and pawnship. It is demonstrated that pawnship characterized trade with European and American ships in many parts of Atlantic Africa, but not everywhere. While pawnship was common north of the Congo River, at Gabon, Cameroon, Calabar, the interior of the Bights of Biafra and Benin, the Gold Coast, and the upper Guinea coast, it was illegal in most of Muslim Africa and the Portuguese colony of Angola, while it was not used in commercial dealings with Europeans at Bonny, Ouidah, and other places.

Blackface Minstrelsy and the Reception of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield

2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-320
Author(s):  
Julia J. Chybowski
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
African American ◽  
Social Class ◽  
Gender Roles ◽  
Black Swan ◽  
Social Hierarchies ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Blackface Minstrelsy ◽  
And Gender

AbstractThis article explores blackface minstrelsy in the context of Elizabeth Taylor Greenfield's singing career of the 1850s–1870s. Although Greenfield performed a version of African American musicality that was distinct from minstrel caricatures, minstrelsy nonetheless impacted her reception. The ubiquity of minstrel tropes greatly influenced audience perceptions of Greenfield's creative and powerful transgressions of expected race and gender roles, as well as the alignment of race with mid-nineteenth-century notions of social class. Minstrel caricatures and stereotypes appeared in both praise and ridicule of Greenfield's performances from her debut onward, and after successful US and transatlantic tours established her notoriety, minstrel companies actually began staging parody versions of Greenfield, using her sobriquet, “Black Swan.” These “Black Swan” acts are evidence that Greenfield's achievements were perceived as threats to established social hierarchies.

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Gerber
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Illegal Immigration ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
National Character ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Anglo American

American Immigration: A Very Short Introduction traces three massive waves of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, and analyzes the nature of immigration as a purposeful, structured activity, attitudes supporting or hostile to immigration, policies and laws regulating immigration, and the nature of and prospects for assimilation. There have been some dramatic developments since 2011, including the crisis along the southwestern border and the intense conflict over illegal immigration. The population of the United States has diverse sources: territorial acquisition through conquest and colonialism, the slave trade, and voluntary immigration. Many Americans value the memory of immigrant ancestors, and are sentimentally inclined to immigrant strivings. Alongside this sits the perception that immigration destabilizes social order, cultural coherence, job markets, and political alignments. The nearly 250 years of American nationhood has been characterized by both support for openness to immigration and embrace of a cosmopolitan formulation of American identity and for restrictions and assertions of belief in a core Anglo-American national character.

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