Slaves and freedmen in police records (São Paulo and Pernambuco, 1827-1888)

Abstract

In Brazil of the Eightieth, the problem of public security, as a matter of government, followed the birth of the Imperial State, especially after the entry into force of the 1824 Constitution, provinces, positions and institutions with the competence to prevent the practice of crimes. In many ways, and this was not a specificity of Brazilian history, civilizing and avoiding the practice of crimes were subjects that, at the time, ran concurrently. All this effort, which was later accompanied by a guiding legislative output, resulted in a significant body of daily police records. The main objective of this research is to analyze the place of slaves and freedmen in the police records produced in the Provinces of São Paulo and Pernambuco between 1827 and 1888. The achievement of this general objective will be guided by the following specific questions: from the Provinces of São Paulo and Pernambuco, parts of what in the Imperial period was known as the South and the North of Brazil, what occurrences related to slaves and freedmen were registered by the police authorities in that period? What judgments about the crimes and behaviors of these individuals were shared in the police records of both provinces? What provisions for slaves and freedmen were recorded in these records and how did such measures relate to the determinations on public and private security in the empire issued by the Presidents of the two Provinces under review and by the Ministers of Justice? It seeks to understand, in short, how police records helped to configure, concurrently with the construction of parameters of public security and state, a way of seeing slaves and freedmen in nineteenth-century Brazilian society. (AU)