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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
Thirty years ago Frank Tannenbaum in Slave and Citizen first catalogued the many occasions for the manumission of slaves in Latin America. He indicated that baptism was an important occasion of manumission. Any slave owner, motivated by generosity and religious sentiment or a minimal payment made by the parent or godparent of the child, could free his slave at baptism. Tannenbaum cited this as one of many instances where Catholic practice and ritual effected a more humane and hopeful existence for the slave in Latin America, denied to slaves held in Protestant colonies.
The results of recent investigations of slave manumission in Brazil, however, have challenged the idea that slaves were frequently manumitted. Kátia M. Queirós Mattoso and Mary Karasch, in studies of Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, found that only a small percentage of those who were freed were children. In addition, it was revealed that few infant slaves were freed at baptism. Stuart Schwartz found that for colonial Bahia “there is no evidence [in notarial records] that large numbers of children were given their liberty at the baptismal font.” Arnold Kessler discovered that baptism was the occasion of manumission of only fourteen children, representing 2 percent of his sample of manumitted slaves (libertos) in nineteenth-century Bahia. For the small coastal town of Paraty in southern Brazil there was a similar pattern. Of the 325 slaves whose freedom was recorded in the notarial archive between 1789 and 1822 only six slaves, or 1.8 percent of the total sample, were infants freed at baptism.
The author wishes to express his thanks to the notaries of Paraty and the members of the parish council of Nossa Senhora de Rem6dios de Paraty for their gracious assistance. Thanks is also given to Professors Warren Dean and Nicolas Sanchez-Albornoz for their expert advice. Research for this paper was made possible by a Fulbright-Hays Grant. Computer time was made available by a grant from the Graduate School of New York University. This paper was originally presented at a meeting of the Social Science History Association, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, October 29, 1976.
1 Tannenbaum, Frank, Slave and Citizen, The Negro in the Americas (New York, 1946), 53–57Google Scholar.
2 Queirós Mattoso, Kátia M., “A propósito de cartas de alforria na Bahia, 1779-1850,” Anais de História, 4 (1974), 23–52Google Scholar; Karasch, Mary, “Manumission in the City of Rio de Janeiro, 1807-1851,” a paper presented to the American Historical Association (San Francisco, 1973);Google Scholar Kessler, Arnold, “Banian Manumission Practices in the Early Nineteenth Century,” a paper presented at the same meeting; and Stuart Schwatz, “The Manumission of Slaves in Colonial Brazil: Bahia, 1684-1745,” Hispanic American Historical Review 54: 4 (November 1974), 603–35Google Scholar. Other studies of manumission are included in Adám Szaszdi, “Apuntes sobre la esclavitud en San Juan de Puerto Rico, 1800-1811,” Anuario de Estudios Americanos, 24 (1967) 1433-77; and Mary Karasch, “Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro, 1808-1850,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Department of History, University of Wisconsin, 1972). Fredrick Bowser considered the question of manumission in his The African Slave in Colonial Peru, 1560-1650 (Standord, 1974) and in “The Free Persons of Color in Lima and Mexico City: Manumission and Opportunity, 1580-1650,” in Engerman, Stanley and Genovese, Eugene, eds., Race and Slavery in the Western Hemisphere: Quantitative Studies (Princeton, 1974), 331–68Google Scholar.
3 Mattoso, Queriós, “A propósito,” 46–48; Karasch, , “Slave Life in Rio de Janeiro,” 46–47Google Scholar.
4 Schwartz, “Manumission,” 621.
5 Kessler, “Bahian Manumission,” 4.
6 Klein, Herbert, “The Colonial Freedmen in Brazilian Slave Society,” Journal of Social History, 3:1 (Fall 1969), 40CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also see Koster, Henry, Travels in Brazil, vol. I (Philadelphia, 1817), 404–7Google Scholar.
7 Lamego, Alberto Ribeiro, O homen e a Guanabara (Rio de Janeiro, 1964), 226Google Scholar; Prado, Caio, Junior, The Colonial Background of Modern Brazil, trans., Macedo, Suzette (Berkeley, 1969), 181Google Scholar, footnote; Pereira, JoSo Manos, Memória sobre o methodo económico do transportar para Portugal agua ardente do Brasil (Lisbon, 1789), 20–21Google Scholar; de Casal, Manuel Aires, “Provincia do Rio de Janeiro (1814),” from Corográfica Brazilica (1817) in Publicações do Arguivo Nacional, 9 (1909), 112Google Scholar; e Araujo, J.S.A. Pizarro, Memórias Históricas do Rio de Janeiro, vol. 3 (Rio de Janeiro, 1820), 37Google Scholar.
8 Manuel da Silva Mariz, Estado da vila de Paraty, sua provoaçãb, terma e outras informações… (1790), Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, Lata 48, no. 19; Estado da vila de parati… (1805), unsigned, Aquivo Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, Codice 807, vol. 2, fl. 80; “Mappa da população da Corte e provincia do Rio de Janeiro em 1821,” Revista do Instituto Histórico e Geográfico Brasileiro, 33(1870), 137.
9 In order to calculate what percentage of the total period was represented by the sample of cartas de alforria, we summed the complete months accounted for in the reconstructed livros de escriptura, even if there were no cartas de alforria registered that month. This sample represents 254 months or 63 percent of the total 403 months between March 1789 and September 1822, and correspondingly 325 libertos registered in grants of freedom during those 254 months represent 63 percent of the probably 526 slaves freed during that thirty-three year period, and an average of 15.3 slaves per year. Based on the census reports for 1790 and 1821, the average number of slaves in Paraty during this period was 2921 and the unadjusted annual rate of manumission in the country was 0.52 percent.
10 An example of an entry in the baptismal register is:
On the ninth day of April in the year eighteen hundred and twelve in this parish of Our Lady of the Remedies I solemnly baptized by holy law, Joaquim, born on the fifth of the current month, legitimate son of João Amaro da Gama, black freedmen native of the parish of Our Lady the Intercessor [?] of the city of Pernambuco [Recife] and Maria Antonia, black and of this parish. Paternal grandparents Isabel, who was the slave of Francisco de Paula and unknown grandfather, maternal grandparents Joio Cardozo e Inácia Maria de Aleida, natives of this parish. Godparents Lieutenant José Paula do Oliveiro and Protector Our Lady of Sorrows …
Livro de registros de batizados [livres] (1811-1824) I, [A]rquivo de [P]aróquia da [NJossa [S]enhora de [R]emédios de [P]araty.
11 The baptism of a fourteen year old English boy in 1814 was excluded from this group.
12 An example of manumission at baptism is as follows:
On the twentieth day of April in the year eighteen hundred and twelve in this parish of Our Lady of Remedies I solemnly baptized by holy law, Rita, born on the third of the current month legitimate daughter, that is, natural daughter of Maria crioula [black] native of the town, slave of Joâo Alves da Silva and maternal grandfather unknown and Leonarda native of the parish and slave of the same João Alves da Silva. Godparents Joaquim José de Santa Ana and Protector Saint Rita: And then from the same man [slave owner] I was told [that] by his own free will and without pressure from anyone he gave freedom to the above mentioned innocent [baby] Rita mulatto that she would enjoy from today for always, as if she was born of a free womb, requesting her place in this book of free persons to record for all time and in order to make clear [what occurred] here…
Livro de… batizados, I, APNSRP.
13 The basic monetary unit used in colonial Brazil was the real. A thousand reals or reis was called a milreis (written as 1$000). Thirty-two is written as 32S000. In this paper the traditional form is used.
14 Livro de Notas 6 (May 1807), Loose Pages (October 1798), Livro de Notas 10 (December 1818), CUP. There were also three cases where godparents, at some time after baptism, financed the release of their afilhado.
15 Queirós Mattoso, “A propósito,” 43; Kessler, “Bahian Manumission,” 4.
16 Livro de Notas 10 (June 1816), CUP. It seems that baptism was not only the absolution of original sin and the consecration of a new Christian in colonial Brazil. It was also a declaration of legal status in a slave society, a social role which would thereafter require a judicial act to alter.
17 Klein, “Colonial Freedmen,” 40; opposing Klein’s view, Professor Emilia Viotti da Costa claimed that manumisson by slave owners of their offspring was uncommon. Viotti da Costa, Da senzala à colônia (Sao Paulo, 1966), 272.
18 Livro de Notas 6 (December 1807) and Livro de Notas 9 (April 1812), CUP.
19 Russell-Wood, A. J.R., “Colonial Brazil,” in Cohen, David W. and Greene, Jack P., eds., Neither Slave Nor Free, The Freedmen of African Descent in the Slave Societies of the New World, 105Google Scholar; Schwartz, “Maumission,” 621-22.
20 Two hundred and forty-six of the slaves, 21 percent of Schwartz’s sample, were described as “por ser cria de min.” Schwartz, 621.
21 In this case Francisco Martins Pereira commanded in his will that his son and executor Antonio Martins Coelho free the pardo slave Jacinto, referred to as a “cria de caza.” A carta de alforria e irrevogável liberdade for Jacinto was duly registered by Antônio Martins after the death of his father. Loose Pages, (September 1808), CUP.
22 Russell-Wood, “Colonial Brazil,” 92.
23 Professor Schwartz identified 18 liberto children of slave masters freed in colonial Bahia making them 2 percent of the 1160 slaves freed in his study and he considered this number significant. Schwartz, “Manumission,” 621.
24 Livro de Notas 9 (December 1913) and Livro de Notas 14 (January 1821), CUP.
25 It is possible too that a free white male might father the child of a slave who is the property of another person. Miscegenation and male ownership are not therefore definite proof of owner paternity. In three cartas de alforria, white fathers freed their children born of slave mothers by buying freedom from the slave masters. These three cases were not included in the category of possible or declared paternity.
26 Schwartz, “Manumission,” 619.
27 Fifty-four of the 2,590 cases of batizados and 4 of the 27 cases of libertos were identified as being in danger of death.
