Study investigates internal slave trafficking in Brazil

Research analyzes the last three decades of slavery and the monarchy, a period of major expansion in coffee growing within Brazil.

By José Tadeu Arantes

Agência FAPESP – The slavery system, a fundamental part of the formation of Brazilian society that officially ended only 125 years ago, continues to influence the country. Although there is a vast historiography of slavery, new studies are always opportune – especially when they rely heavily on primary sources and offer an in-depth investigation of aspects that had been treated only in general works.

This is the case of “Escravos Daqui, Dali e de Mais Além: O Tráfico Interno de Cativos na Expansão Cafeeira Paulista” (Slaves from Here, There and Beyond: The Internal Traffic of Captives in the Expansion of São Paulo Coffee Growing), the thesis for a university teaching certification written by José Flavio Motta, associate professor of the School of Economics, Administration and Accounting at the Universidade de São Paulo (FEA-USP), and published in book form with funding from FAPESP.

In this study, the author – a veteran researcher of slavery who published the 1999 book “Corpos Escravos, Vontades Livres” (Enslaved Bodies, Free Wills), also with FAPESP funding - researches the characteristics of the slave trade from 1861 to 1887, which covers most of the last three decades of the slavery system and monarchy regime in Brazil.

“It addresses...a period of major expansion in coffee crops in the São Paulo Province. The municipalities chosen for analysis - Areias and Guaratinguetá in the Vale do Paraíba and Constituição (Piracicaba) and Casa Branca in the ‘Historic West’ – were affected by the advance of coffee growing in São Paulo territory from the turn of the 18th century and into the 19th century,” Motta said.

The main documentary base of the study was written transactions involving slave trading (such as purchase, sale, trading and donation) preserved in the archives of these municipalities. In total, Motta analyzed 1,656 deeds, corresponding to 3,677 captives. Another source Motta utilized was the Almanac of São Paulo Province for 1873. 

The researcher also perused the vast collection of primary and secondary print sources on the topic, including the account offered by Augusto Emílio Zaluar in “Peregrinação pela Província de São Paulo (1860-1861)” (The Pilgrimage through the São Paulo Province (1860-1861)) and the historiographic study “O Escravismo Colonial” (Colonial Slavery), two classics on the topic.

“In this thesis, I analyze the characteristics of transactions, of the slave-owners that conducted them and, above all, of the people who were traded,” Motta explained. With the end of transatlantic trade, the internal sale of slaves intensified in Brazil, including inter- and intra-provincial trade.

The expansion of coffee growing in São Paulo caused the municipalities analyzed in this work to become major hubs. Entry sales were more prevalent than departures, although some were traded to other regions. The same phenomenon was observed in other production areas.

“The proposal was to develop a comparative study, which was at the same time synchronous for the different municipalities that experienced varying stages of development of the coffee crops and diachronic between the distinct intervals of time: 1861-1869, 1870-1873, 1874-1880 and 1881-1887. In these intervals, there were variations in the dynamics of internal slave trade due, in part, to the advance of the so-called servitude questions with the passage of the Lei do Ventre Livre [Free Womb Law, making children born to slaves free] in 1871 and the Lei dos Sexagenários [The Sexagenarian  Law, freeing people over 60] in 1885,” explained Motta.

Variation in prices

In general, the large demand for labor caused slaves from provinces in the North of the country to flow into the areas located on the frontiers of coffee-growing expansion, particularly more recently developed and dynamic areas such as the “New West.” Among the contingent of slaves sold, adult males stand out. Their price, the highest in the slave-trading market, was justified by their greater productivity in the fields.

In the older coffee-growing regions, in contrast, the slaves who were traded were comparatively older and, depending on the subperiod considered, were more often from bordering provinces (Rio de Janeiro and Minas Gerais). Therefore, they were sold at lower prices.

However, Motta stresses that the preference for young male adults was one of the general characteristics of the internal slave trade and was not a historiographical novelty.

“This study’s difference is in following the ‘how’ and suggesting interpretations of the ‘why’ this preference became more or less intense in different municipalities in these distinct time intervals,” he said.

The profusion of quantitative data in a thesis that is fundamentally a work of economic history does not reduce slaves to mere numbers without subjectivity or protagonism.

“In some situations, one can clearly see the efforts of slaves to mold their destinies or, at least, to influence them to the possible limits,” stressed the researcher.

One exemplary case, both on the part of the slave for his efforts to win his freedom and on the part of the elite slaveholders, was Rosaura, a 25-year-old cook. Authorized by her owner to beg for spare change as an additional activity to buy her freedom for 1,500,000 réis (the currency at the time), Rosaura managed to obtain 30,000 réis, which she gave to her owner.

When Rosaura was sold to another man for 1,500,000 réis, the 30,000 réis were passed from one owner to the next, as described in the deed. Two months later, this new owner sold Rosaura for 1,750,000 réis, making a large profit with the transaction. However, unlike the previous deed, the new one made no mention of the slave’s savings, which were perhaps simply appropriated by the second owner.