Souza, Robério S. Trabalhadores dos trilhos: imigrantes e nacionais livres, libertos e escravos na construção da primeira ferrovia baiana (1858-1863)

Abstract

Campinas: ed. Unicamp, 2016. 272 pp. labour history has long been written exclusively from the perspectives of wage labour, "proletarianization" (or the shift to wage labour) and the organizations of wage labourers. While these aspects have been conflated with "modernity" and the emergence and expansion of capitalism, slavery and other coerced labour relations have been marginalized as "backward" and non-capitalist. In this convincing and well-written book, Robério S. Souza turns these traditional approaches upside down and showcases a more inclusive labour history based on new conceptualizations. He deals with the construction of the Bahia and San Francisco Railway in 1858-1863, but rather than viewing it as a symbol of technological modernity, "progressive" foreign investments and free labour, he points to the compatibility of capitalism and coerced labour, indicates multiple entanglements between British capital and the worlds of slavery, and highlights the presence of slaves among the workforce, against the letter of the Imperial legislation of 1852. Similarly, the author addresses the european -and especially "Italian" -migrant workers, but instead of subscribing the standard narrative of them being vectors of free skilled labour, he foregrounds the precariousness of their freedom and compares it with that of the nacionais livres and with the conditions of those enslaved. More generally, Souza insists on the complexity of the composition of the workforce, rather than searching for the ideal-typical wage labourers within it: from this perspective, he is able to address the concrete relationships among workers across legal status and labour relations, pointing to their shared experiences and moments of solidarity, as well as the conflicts that arose among them.