Outsiders in the paulista West: bondspeople in the internal slave trade and their experience in Campinas, 1850-1888

Abstract

The project for my internship at Rice is a continuation of my master's project, which has the same title. In my master's research, am investigating the experience of bondspeople brought to the city of Campinas - a plantation center in the "historical West" of São Paulo - through the internal trade in slaves that grew rapidly after the end of the traffic in Africans (1850) and reached its height in the 1870s. My story finishes in 1888, the year of abolition.. I focus my research on various aspects of slave experience - family relationships (especially marriage and baptism), labor relations, the distribution of specialized occupations, the incidence of flight and possibilities of manumissions - always contrasting the experiences of the descendants of the Africans "founders" of the slave quarters in the first half of the century, with the new "outsiders" post-1850. To this end, I construct "micro-histories" - of a small numbers of properties (three, ranging from old to "newly established"), using the method of nominative record-linkage to follow people over time and between different documentary series. I present here the proposal for my research internship abroad at Rice University, under the guidance of Professor Alida Metcalf. The objectives of my internship, which will last for four months ( one academic semester, mid-August to mid-December 2012) are: to improve the methodological and theoretical discussion about the internal slave trade; to establish a closer dialogue with the American and Caribbean historiography on the slave trade and slavery in the Atlantic word; to take Professor James Sidbury's course, Research Seminar in Race and Slavery in the Early Atlantic; to participate in the Human Trafficking Seminar, which will meet every other week during the semester; to do a first draft of chapters for my Master's thesis under the guidance of Professor Alida Metcalf and Professor Robert Slenes, my advisor who will be at Rice University from August/2012 to May/2013. (Professor Slenes will be participating in the Rice Seminar, Human Trafficking, Past and Present: Crossing, Boundaries, Crossing Disciplines (AU)