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Luso-Brazilian Thought on Slavery and Abolition*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 April 2010
Extract
The main force behind abolitionism in England and in the United States was quakerism. The first quakerish attack on slavery was unleashed by William Edmundson in 1676, after he visited Barbados. He attributed the many sins practiced in that island to the existence of slavery. This was a radical departure from the traditional Christian way of looking at slavery. This tradition, consolidated by St. Augustine, held the opposite view, that is, that slavery was a consequence of sin, not the other way around. Sin was, according to St. Augustine, the worst slavery – it turned men into slaves of their own passions. Soon the inversion was complete. Slavery itself became sin.
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- Copyright © Research Institute for History, Leiden University 1993
References
Notes
1 See Davis, David Brion, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture (Ithaca, N.Y. 1966)Google Scholar chapters 10 to 14.
2 For Vieira's position, I have relied on Vainfas, Ronaldo, Ideologia e Escravidao. Os Letrados e a Sociedade Escravista no Brasil Colônia (Petrópolis 1986) 125–129Google Scholar.
3 See Andreoni, Joao Antônio (Antonil), Cullura e Opulência do Brasil (Salvador 1955) 51Google Scholar. The book was first published in 1711.
4 Benci, Economia Crista, 179.
5 Ibidem, 223.
6 Da Rocha, Etíope Resgatado, 99–100.
7 The work is included in Obras Econômicas de J.J. de Azeredo Coutinho, 1794–1804 (Sao Paulo 1966) 231–607Google Scholar. This text is based on the second edition published in Portugal in 1808. The first edition was in French and was published in London in 1798.
8 Coutinho, Analise, 244–245.
9 Ibidem, 239.
10 See ‘Representaçāo ā Assembléia Geral Constituinte e Legislativa do Império do Brasil sobre a Escravalura’, in Edgard de Cerqueira Falcåo ed., Obras Cientificas, Polilicas e Sociais de josé Bonifácio de Andrada e Silva (2 vols., no date, no place) II, 115–158. The first edition was published in Paris in 1825.
11 Ibidem, 7, 23.
12 Ibidem, 40.
13 Ibidem, 13.
14 The difficulty encountered by those who wanted to question slavery is mentioned by Henrique Veloso de Oliveira, ‘A Substituicao do Trabalho dos Escravos pelo Trabalho Livre no Brasil’, reproduced in Agostinho Marques Perdigo Malheiro, A Escravidāo Africana no Brasil. Ensaio Histórico-Jurídico-Social (S. Paulo 1944; first edition in 1866), II, 308.
15 Nabuco, Joaquim, Um Estadista do Império (Rio de Janeiro 1957) 569–574Google Scholar.
16 See Ao Imperador. Novas Cartas Politicas de Erasmo (Rio de Janeiro 1967)Google Scholar. Letters number 2, 3 and 4 are those which deal with the problem of slavery.
17 Ibidem, 16.
18 Ibidem, 18.
19 See especially letter number 3. Alencar's evaluation of the number of slaves was grossly exaggerated. The census of 1873 showed that they were no more than 15% of the population. Reference to the threat of slave rebellion was a common tactic among supporters of slavery. The tactic was used against slaveowners by the writer Joaquim Manoel de Macedo who, in a series of novels published in 1869, tried to terrorize them with the description of slave violence. See Vitimas-Algozes. Quadros da Escravidāo (Rio de Janeiro).
20 For an extensive analysis of Fitzhugh's work, see Genovese, Eugene D., The World the Slaveholders Made (New York 1971)Google Scholar.
21 See Nabuco, Joaquim, 0 Abolicionismo (Petrópolis 1977)Google Scholar. The most ambitious abolitionist work was certainly Malheiro's A Escravidāo Africana. Very erudite, Malheiro concentrates on the juridical aspects of slavery. More radical expressions of abolitionism can be found in articles by newspapermen such as José do Patrocínio and Joaquim Serra. On this ‘left’ of the abolitionist movement, see Bergstresser, Rebeca Baird, ‘The Movement for the Abolition of Slavery in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1880–1888’, Ph. D. dissertation, Stanford University, 1973Google Scholar. Writers, like the poet Castro Alves, usually appealed to the sentiments of readers pointing out the brutal aspectsx of slavery.
22 Nabuco, O Abolicionismo, 66–67. Nabuco's emphasis.
23 André Rebouças was probably the one who came closest to an unconditional defense of abolition. See his Aboliçāo Imediata e sem Indenizaçāo, (Rio de Janeiro 1883). Only recently historians are beginning to the vision of slavery and freedom held by slaves. See, for instance, Chalhoub, Sidney, Visoes da Liberdade (Sāo Paulo 1990)Google Scholar.
24 A Escravidāo Africana, I, 11.