Families, Manumission, and Freed People in Urban Minas Gerais in the Era of Atlantic Abolitionism

Abstract

Late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century Minas Gerais was heavily reliant on its slave labor force and invested in the social order shaped by slavery. The main systematic challenge to slavery was discrete negotiations of manumission that resulted in the freedom of a few individual slaves. This practice fueled the expansion of a free population of African descendants, who congregated most visibly in the captaincy's urban centers. Through an examination of manumission stories from two African-descendant families in the towns of Sabará and São José, this article underscores the relevance of family ties and social networks to the pursuit and experience of freedom in the region. As slavery remained entrenched in Brazil, despite Atlantic abolitionist efforts elsewhere, urban families’ pursuit and negotiation of manumissions shaped a historical process that naturalized the idea and possibility of black freedom.

Manumission, custom, and the laws of slavery and freedom in Latin America

“…Did those who had been promised their freedom perform the services that they were expected to? It was usually women, more likely to work in domestic contexts, who received freedom in return for care work, a much documented point in the historiography (Dantas, 2008, Dantas & Libby, 2020Higgins, 1999;Johnson, 1979;O'Toole, 2012O'Toole, , 2017Paiva, 1995aPaiva, , 1995bProctor III, 2010;Vergara Figueroa & Luz Cosme, 2018). In McKinley's words, "care work created a sort of intimacy that fostered thick relationships with purchase in court and in the broader society" (2016,245).…”