Publication Date

2025

Document Type

Dissertation/Thesis

First Advisor

Hanley, Anne G.

Degree Name

Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy)

Legacy Department

Department of History

Abstract

This dissertation examines the role of enslaved persons’ savings for self-purchase manumission (pecúlio) within the process of gradual abolition in the province of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Article IV of the 1871 Rio Branco Law granted enslaved persons in Brazil the legal ownership of their savings and, with those savings, the right to purchase freedom. Article IV supplemented the “free womb” provision of the Rio Branco Law, which declared that all children henceforth born to enslaved mothers were free. In the Brazilian Parliament, the law’s proponents argued that the savings provision would help reduce the enslaved population by codifying long-standing customs in Brazil regarding manumission and, unlike the free womb law, would do little to change the traditional relations between the enslaved and slaveowners on the country’s path to gradually abolishing the institution. In theory, slaveowners would be compensated for lost capital, as enslaved persons paid for their freedom by their own work and frugality. Yet in terms of reducing the enslaved population, Article IV had little measurable effect, and largely for this reason, historians have paid little attention to the provision.

I argue, however, that antislavery reformers’ focus on self-purchase manumission reflected a fundamental conservatism, which shaped their proposals and agendas throughout the nineteenth century. Many Brazilians wanted Article IV to be a successful piece of legislation, particularly because it promised to preserve critical aspects of the socioeconomic status quo. But preexisting geographic factors, pertaining to economic production, determined the provision’s perceived value. In the city of Rio de Janeiro, where elite urbanites led the national abolitionist movement, self-purchase manumission was far more common than in the capital’s rural hinterland, the coffee growing regions of Rio de Janeiro province’s Paraíba Valley, where the majority of the province’s enslaved population remained in the final decades of slavery. Article IV’ s legal protections of enslaved persons’ savings and the right to purchase freedom had, in fact, replicated a long running abolitionist strategy throughout the nineteenth century Atlantic World. I contend that, within the province of Rio de Janeiro, the traditional urban versus rural disparity regarding enslaved persons’ ability to save money and purchase freedom played a vital part in the creation and execution of gradual abolition policies and in forming the lasting legacy of abolition.

Extent

265 pages

Language

en

Publisher

Northern Illinois University

Rights Statement

In Copyright

Rights Statement 2

NIU theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from Huskie Commons for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without the written permission of the authors.

Media Type

Text

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