The Exodus of 1835: African freedmen in Bahia and Dahomey in the aftermath of the Malê Rebellion

• Grant number: 12/17092-2
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: March 01, 2013
• End date: May 31, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History
• Principal Investigator: Silvia Hunold Lara
• Grantee: Lisa Louise Earl Castillo
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 13/21979-5 - Between slavery and the burden of freedom: workers and forms of labor exploitation in historical perspective, AP.TEM

Abstract

The defeat of the Malê uprising triggered a huge movement of return to Africa. With the deportation of around 200 freedmen, many other Africans left Brazil of their own free wills, fleeing repressive new laws. Upon arrival, they settled in coastal cities, mostly in the Kingdom of Dahomey, frequently maintaining contact with Brazil by exporting African products. The proposed project examines a specific group of prosperous African freedmen who made the decision to leave Brazil, tracing the development of a social network that linked them in Bahia and that persisted even after their arrival in the cities of Agué and Ouidah. As the owners of slaves and real estate properties, they had constituted themselves as a black elite in the Bahian capital over the course of the 1820s. Many were Muslims, but this did not prevent them from participating in Catholic networks as godparents and members of black lay brotherhoods. In tracing the rise to affluence and return migration of this group, the project gives attention to relations of biological and social kinship between individuals, also examining the pervasive presence of the institution of slavery in the lives of these former slaves. Data collection will utilize micro-historical techniques in analyzing parish and passport records as source material, also drawing from ethnographic methods in making contact with and interviewing present-day descendents of the people whose lives are the subject of the study.