The politics of slavery in the Empire od Brazil, 1826-1865

Author(s)

Tâmis Peixoto Parron

• Document type: Master's Dissertation
• Press: São Paulo.
• Institution: Universidade de São Paulo (USP). Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH/SBD)
• Defense date: 2009-04-30

Examining board members

Rafael de Bivar Marquese; Miriam Dolhnikoff; Ricardo Henrique Salles

• Advisor: Rafael de Bivar Marquese

Abstract

This work studies the defense of slavery and slave trade in Imperial Brazil from 1826 to 1865, since the regular workings of Parliament until the outcome of the Civil War in the United States. It focuses on political discourses such as parliamentary speeches, State Council rulings, journal articles, pamphlets, books and political petitions. These evidences have been interpreted in the field not only of discourse analysis, but also of Social and Political History, in order to verify their impact upon slave trade dynamics, party building and social relations. The first chapter approaches the effects of the Anglo-Brazilian Slave Trade Treaty over Executive and Legislative relations, as well as the widespread conviction that the odious commerce was definitely finished. Chapter two handles its reopening as an illegal activity through articulated actions of particular social groups and members of Parliament (mainly the so-called grupo do Regresso and saquaremas). The following chapter relates the proslavery strategies of imperial politicians to cope with the increasingly more aggressive British diplomacy in the 1840s. The last one shows how parliamentary leaders, even after the slave trade suppression (1850), vindicated the political existence of slavery in Brazil as a means of national development for an indeterminate period of time (AU)