Achieving freedom under the Holy Oils: baptismal manumissions in Campinas, 1774-1871

Abstract

This research project studies the custom of baptismal manumissions in Campinas between 1774 and 1871, starting from the baptismal records of the parish of Nossa Senhora da Conceição (Our Lady of the Conception) and cross-referencing them with other documentary sources: population censuses, wills, post-mortem inventories, marriage records, and manumission letters. Through quantitative and qualitative research, this approach will broaden the historical perspectives on the subject of enslaved people who gained their freedom by focusing on baptismal manumissions that have rarely been utilized within the historiography. Thus, this research intends to verify the patterns and changes of manumission over time, to examine the profile of those emancipated, as well as other people involved in the process. Furthermore, the project will also reconstruct the trajectories, experiences, and strategies adopted by enslaved parents in the construction of social bonds with people who could offer them assistance while in captivity and who may therefore have contributed to the liberation of their children during the Catholic ceremony of baptism. In this manner, I will bring new light to the relationships established between those enslaved and other free individuals, to advance the understanding of the meanings attributed to the phenomenon of manumission via the baptismal font and contribute to the main debates in the historiography of both manumission and slavery in Brazil. Finally, it is worth mentioning that this work is linked to the Thematic Project entitled "Between Slavery and the Burden of Freedom: Workers and Forms of Exploitation of Work in a Historical Perspective", coordinated by the Research Center on the Social History of Culture (CECULT), of IFCH/UNICAMP. (AU)