The parts and the whole: indentured labor in the Portuguese Empire: Macau and Mozambique in the nineteenth-century world economy

• Grant number: 22/01343-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research
• Effective date (Start): February 06, 2023
• Effective date (End): July 05, 2023
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Modern and Contemporary History
• Principal Investigator: Paulo Cesar Goncalves
• Grantee: Paulo Cesar Goncalves
• Host Investigator: Elvira Cunha de Azevedo Silva Mea
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Ciências e Letras (FCL-ASSIS). Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP). Campus de Assis. Assis , SP, Brazil
• Research place: Centro de Investigação Transdisciplinar "Cultura, Espaço e Memória" (CITCEM), Portugal

Abstract

Supported by extensive documentation located in Portuguese archives, the research project aims to analyze the specificities of the trafficking of workers engaged in Macau and Mozambique as parts of the Portuguese Empire and its relationship with the 19th century world economy, identifying the nuances of the modus operandi of the metropolis regarding the departure of populations from these two territories to control the flow, and, eventually, channel it according to their interests, at the same time as they sought to justify themselves as a colonizing nation and move away from the taint of a slave empire. Based on these particularities, it seeks to establish a historical parallel between the slave trade and slavery in Mozambique with indentured labor in Chinese territory, having as a parameter the expanded concept of forced labor, the Global History of Labor and the different conjunctures of the slavery in the Atlantic and Indian worlds. (AU)