Defying slavery: black fugitives and insurgents and the policy on the borders of Rio de la Plata (Brazil and Uruguay, 1842-1865)

During the first decades of the nineteenth century, while the abolition processes were advancing in the Spanish American republics, especially in the Rio de la Plata, the slavery institution expanded and was reinvigorated in Brazil. The abolition of slavery in Uruguay in the 1840s was enacted in a civil war context that soon took on an international dimension, opening new possibilities for the struggles of slaves and launching challenges to the slave order maintenance in Brazil, especially in Rio Grande do Sul. The present thesis analyzes the tensions arisen from a severance in the South of America between a free soil jurisdiction and a slave territory in two moments: In the first one, the impact of the Uruguayan abolition on the Southern frontier of the Empire in the 1840s and the role of the slave insurgency in the imperial government's decision regarding the abolition of the trans-atlantic slave trade in 1850 and in the Brazilian's military intervention in the Rio de la Plata 1851's war; the second one was characterized by an advance of the Brazilian slaveowners in the North of Uruguay, the freedom acquired by the Africans and their descendants born in the republic, by ex-slaves of Brazilians who acquired freedom through abolitionist legislation or through escape was threatened by processes of re-enslavement and enslavement, a situation opposed by the Uruguayan Government through a policy of freedom protection. Controversies over slavery and freedom opened up possibilities to challenge the power of masters and slavery, both by the Uruguayans authorities and by the Africans and their illegally enslaved descendants (AU)