The geopolitical crisis of black slavery: United States, Spain and Brazil, 1842-1865

Abstract

I am pleased to apply for a "Bolsa Estágio de Pesquisa no Exterior de Pós-Doutorado (BEPE-PD)" in order to spend the academic year 2016-2017 at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a global fellow of The Weatherhead Initiative for Global History (WIGH). Chaired by Professors Sven Beckert and Charles Maier, WIGH is a Harvard research center devoted to encompassing comparative history studies that focus on transnational processes of social, economic and political development (more on this at www.wigh.wcfia.harvard.edu). Beckert, specialist in the global history of slavery and capitalism and whose last book (Empire of Cotton) was finalist for the 2015 Pulitzer Prize in History, offered me the opportunity to work with them and their students at WIGH for the next academic year. Beckert would be the researcher responsible for my time as Global Fellow at WIGH. A voyage to the United States had been planned and foreseen as part of my field research in my Post-Doctoral fellowship application submitted to Fapesp in 2015 (please, see item "IV" of "Projeto de Bolsa no País", number 2015/16112-8). Now, I may expand this original goal and benefit from the highly stimulating academic community that I shall meet at WIGH, such as Professors Sven Beckert. During my residence in the United States, I intend to carry out my planned field research and use the expertise acquired at Harvard to write the last part of ongoing my investigation. This last part deals with the impact of the capitalist world-economy on the US Civil War and the implication of the US Civil War for slavery in the Spanish and Brazilian empires. As stated in my research proposal, to be at Harvard while writing about those topics would decisively improve my historical analysis and my final manuscript. (AU)