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

<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

Slaves Who Owned Slaves in Nineteenth-Century Bahia, Brazil

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.

The Hidden Face of Urban Slavery

Understanding the urban rental market is crucial if we are to grasp the multiple ways in which coartados were forced to react to new, damaging scenarios. As new changes to the urban rental market came into existence, and as their impact on the slavery-based service sector expanded, coartados found themselves often trapped in what can only be described as a buyer-to-buyer dynamic, which forced them to go from one master to another, almost always against the wishes of those who owned them, and frequently against their own wishes too.

Salvador da Bahia

The city of Salvador da Bahia was founded in 1549 under the name of São Salvador da Bahia de Todos os Santos (Holy Savior of the Bay of All Saints). But it was known as the city of Bahia between the 16th and 19th centuries. This major Atlantic port city developed by exporting sugar and tobacco to Europe and beyond and importing slaves from Africa. It was also the capital of Portuguese America until 1763. We cannot really separate the history of the city and that of its hinterland, one of the most prosperous plantation economies in the Atlantic world. It was the plantations of the Recôncavo that made Bahia one of the major slaveholding regions in the Americas and the interaction between the city of Bahia and its hinterland was constant. Nonetheless, this article focuses on the urban setting. Salvador da Bahia was a Portuguese colonial city, built on land of the Tupinambá people, which brought together a multiethnic community made up of European, indigenous, and African populations. It was a cosmopolitan city despite itself, whose development was closely linked to slavery and slave trade. It was a place of mutual influence and deep reconfiguration, where mixing was both obvious and problematic. The society of Bahia was based on exclusion and negotiated forms of integration, influenced by the Portuguese imperial framework. It was a complex slave society, whose transformation between the 16th and the 19th centuries cannot be understood without taking into account the several Atlantic dynamics. Slavery reached its peak during the Brazilian imperial regime, being kept untouched after independence, and the dynamics of the city remained deeply tied to the slave trade, whether illegal or interprovincial. This persistence of slavery through the 19th century raises the question of the traditional chronology of the history of Brazil, whose colonial period would end with independence. This article encompasses both colonial and imperial periods and offers a wide historiographical overview on Salvador da Bahia. The historiography of Bahia has been extensively devoted to slavery history and slave populations. Historians have long been interested in black urban slavery and its specificities, highlighting the complexity of the society of Salvador da Bahia and the strength of the interactions that took place there. In recent years, scholars have explored new perspectives, by taking the path of micro history and collective biographies. They have examined in depth the multiple connections between Bahia and different African regions, which involved different agents and social groups. By focusing on the South Atlantic, they have experimented with approaches beyond the imperial framework and have made a major contribution to Atlantic studies. The political perspectives were also renewed, emphasizing the strength of local powers and the interactions between local and imperial strategies. The indigenous history of the region of Bahia is also experiencing a significant revival. We thus intend to emphasize recent works and ongoing research on Salvador da Bahia.