Fighting for freedom: manumitted people and free blacks in the Courts of Old Portuguese Order (Mariana e Lisboa, 1720-1819)

Author(s)

Fernanda Aparecida Domingos Pinheiro

• Document type: Doctoral Thesis
• Press: Campinas, SP.
• Institution: Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas
• Defense date: 2013-10-25

Examining board members

Silvia Hunold Lara; Ana Cristina Nogueira da Silva; Renato Pinto Venancio; Sidney Chalhoub; Lucilene Reginaldo

• Advisor: Silvia Hunold Lara

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation discusses the problems faced by former slaves and their descendants, which is to have the possession and the enjoyment of freedom. This work analyses the practice of re-enslavement, illicit captivity, and illegal extension of slavery in hundreds of legal actions, that took place between 1720 and 1819 in two places of the Portuguese Empire. The two cities are Mariana, an important slavery center in the American continent and Lisbon, a metropolitan capital with a lot of slaves in Europe. This research also investigates how manumitted people, "coartados", and free blacks, instructed by their lawyers, create strategies of protection and resistance in the Court. In these performances of men of colour in the court, it is emphasized the risks and constrains to the freedom of manumitted people and free blacks, at the same time it appears the limits to the domain of masters and former-masters. Therefore, it is observed throughout this work that the intermediation of the court in conflicts about slavery and freedom reveal new dimensions in the private relationships among former-masters and manumitted people, as well as among masters and slaves (AU)