Few exploratory ventures would ever be undertaken if the explorer appreciated his own limitations at the outset. Although his ultimate destination is unclear, the route uncertain, the terrain unfamiliar and the tools inadequate he is spurred initially by a self-assurance born of his own limited knowledge. Unfortunately, that same self-assurance ill-equips him for the difficulties which he inevitably has to face en route. This thesis has been no exception to this pattern. It has involved more than its fair share of blind alleys, false trails, disorientation, retracing of footsteps and re-establishment of bearings. It has occasionally been marked by that feeling of despairing bewilderment which confronts the uncertain traveller lost in unfamiliar territory or overwhelmed by the novelty and complexity of his surroundings. Like most exploratory journeys, it has been difficult to decide when the ultimate destination has been reached and almost impossible in restrospect to recall the exact route by which that particular point was achieved. However, the historian of Dahomey is fortunate in comparison with the explorer venturing into virgin territory. For he is well served by the pioneers who have blazed the trail before him and by the signposts which are available to him. The Kingdom of Dahomey has been well covered by primary source material and contemporary documentation and publications.

The idea of the Texas Revolution as an internal conspiracy cannot be eliminated. This thesis describes the role of a small minority of the wealthier settlers in Texas in precipitating the Texas Revolution for their own economic reasons. This group, made up of many of the leading figures in Texas, were, for the most part, well-to-do farmers, merchants, and professional men.. Most of them were slaveholders, and their prosperity depended upon the continued existence of this institution. In their minds, the entire economic growth and development of Texas rested upon slavery. When the Mexican government began to threaten the economic future of Texas by the passage of prohibitatory laws on slavery and commerce, many of the leaders in Texas began to think of freeing Texas from Mexican control. The threat to their own economic position and prosperity gave birth to the idea of Texas independence.

Slave narratives influenced nineteenth-century American religious culture and history; through the slave narrative, modern readers experience the African-American struggle for freedom and personhood in the antebellum South. While the slave narrative stimulated identity- formation, once identity was formed a narrator fought for authority and control of that identity throughout their narrative. This struggle for control is present in the narratives of Frederick Douglass and Nat Turner. Due to each slave’s religious allusions, African-American literary scholars repeatedly link Douglass and Turner to biblical books such as Jonah and Ezekiel. However, this thesis will examine Frederick Douglass’s Narrative of the life of Frederick Douglass, an American slave, Written by Himself, and Thomas R. Gray’s The Confessions of Nat Turner through the lens of the Book of Job. By examining Douglass’s and Turner’s pursuit of knowledge through correlations within the Book of Job, both scriptural authority and authenticity emerges within each narrative.

The Freedom Quilt is a play that I have written and adapted from Deborah Hokinson’s book, Sweet Clara and the Freedom Quilt. This story explores the historic and dramatic implications in the idea of coded quilts as a form of communication among African American slaves; specifically as coded maps to freedom. There is an ongoing scholarly debate challenging the existence of these quilts, let alone that they could have been used in such a complex manner. The Freedom Quilt however, is one girl’s unique and individual story, and does not in any way suggest that maps, encoded in quilts were used by a large number of escaping slaves. I don’t know if the actuality of these quilts can ever be proven or disproven, but history has revealed that there were many paths to freedom, and following a map of this kind could very well have been one of them. This document was created in Microsoft Word 2000

In 1936, Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employees began interviewing formerly enslaved men and women, allowing them to speak publicly of their experiences under slavery. Defying racism and the repressions of Jim Crow, ex-slaves discussed intimate details of their lives. Many researchers considered these interviews unreliable, but if viewed through the lens of gender and analyzed using recent scholarship on slavery and sexuality, FWP interviews offer new insights into the lives of enslaved men and women. Using a small number of ex-slave interviews, most of them drawn from Louisiana, this thesis demonstrates the value of these oral histories for understanding the sexual lives of enslaved men and women. These interviews expose what we would otherwise have little access to: the centrality of struggles over enslaved people’s sexuality and reproduction to the experience of enslavement and the long-term effects of these struggles on the attitudes of slavery’s survivors.

De la fin du XVIIème siècle jusqu'à l'abolition de 1848, l'île Bourbon, dans le Sud-Ouest de l'océan Indien, a connu un système esclavagiste marqué par une codification et des pratiques des différents pouvoirs dévalorisant ou niant les structures familiales des esclaves. A côté d'autres moyens de résistances serviles comme le marronnage ou la révolte, il apparaît, grâce à la reconstruction des familles esclaves, que ces formes d'organisation ont permis à une population provenant de razzias en Afrique ou à Madagascar, puis fortement créolisée, de retrouver son humanité, en investissant le champ de la parenté dont les pouvoirs civils ou religieux la privaient. Si un nombre restreint de familles furent reconnues, comme à l'époque de la Compagnie des Indes, la majorité des esclaves vécurent au sein de familles marrons, ignorées et méprisées. Elles apparaitront au grand jour après l'abolition de l'esclavage en 1848. La natalité fut reconnu importante au sein du groupe des esclaves mais accompagnée d'une forte mortalité infantile. Lieu privilégié de transmissions de valeurs culturelles et linguistiques, la famille esclave, quelles qu'en soient les formes, a permis à de très nombreux esclaves de survivre à un système inhumain, les exclus de la parenté appartenant essentiellement aux groupes ayant connu la destruction de leur système familial, à Madagascar ou en Afrique. / From the end of the 17th century until the abolition of 1848, Bourbon Island in the South-West Indian Ocean, saw a slave system marked by consolidation and practices of different authorities downgrading or denied family structures of the slave. Next to other means of servile resistors as the "marronage" or revolt, it appears through the reconstruction of slaves families, these forms of organization have enabled a population from raids in Africa or Madagascar, then strongly creolized regain his humanity, investing field of kinship that civil or religious powers denied. If a small number of families were recognized at the time of the India Company, the majority of slaves lived in Maroon families, ignored and disregarded. They will appear in broad daylight after the abolition of slavery in 1848. The birth rate was important in the group of slaves but accompanied by a high infant mortality. Privileged place of cultural and linguistic values transmissions, slave family, in all forms, has helped many slaves to survived to an inhuman system, those excludes from the kinship system mostly belonging to the groups have experienced the destruction of their family system in Africa or Madagascar.

A historiografia contemporânea aponta que a escravidão foi um fato inegável nos sertões da América Portuguesa e do Brasil desde o estabelecimento desta instituição. A presente dissertação questiona quais foram os mecanismos que permitiram a existência e a possibilidade de permanência de escravos nas regiões, que tiveram por base econômica, a atividade pecuária. Advoga-se, em geral, que a manutenção por meio do cerceamento da mobilidade e recurso à violência permitia que a escravidão fosse mantida. No entanto, no que concerne ao controle dos escravos, houve mais do que a pura violência física. Um conjunto de práticas e saberes, que envolveu também complexas relações entre senhores e escravos, imbricadas teias de arranjos e negociações assimétricas estiveram presentes nos processos que permitiram sua manutenção. Neste trabalho, que visita a historiografia sobre o tema, defende-se a hipótese de que, no caso da pecuária, um fator de manutenção do escravismo teria sido a possibilidade de constituição de famílias cativas, na conformação de um protocampesinato escravo, nos interstícios do Sistema Colonial. / The Contemporary Historiography about Dryland Slavery and the undeniable fact of its establishment over the Portuguese America and Brazil. This research questions which mecanisms allowed the existence and the possibility that slaves could remain over the regions, that had Cattle activity, as main economy. In general, the argument is that slavery was maintenned through the restriction of mobility and use of violence. However, regarding the control of slaves, was more than pure physical violence. A set of practices and knowledge, which also involves complex relationships between masters and slaves, overlapping webs of asymmetric relations and arrangements were present in the processes that allowed the continuation of slavery. This thesis deals with the debate of this historiography and the hypothesis that in the case of cattle, a factor maintaining the slavery system would have been the possibility to form slave families in the formation of a slave proto-peasantry in the interstices of the Colonial System.

O trabalho tem por objeto de estudo o tráfico de escravos realizado nos Rios da Guiné, em especial as feitorias de Bissau e Cacheu, que tinham por destino o Estado do Grão-Pará e Maranhão. Além do próprio negócio negreiro em África, também avaliaremos os desdobramentos econômicos do tráfico na economia amazônica. O recorte temporal começa no ano de 1756, com o início do funcionamento da Companhia Geral de Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão, empresa de caráter monopolista, que tinha por objetivo o fomento do comércio entre a metrópole e suas diversas possessões ultramarinas no Atlântico. Como marco final optamos pelo ano de 1807, pois com a chegada da Corte em 1808, a colônia mudou seu status passando a ser sede do Reino. / The work is the object of study slave trade conducted in the Rios da Guiné, especially the factories of Bissau and Cacheu, that were destined for the State of the Grão-Pará and Maranhão. In addition to the own slave business in Africa, will also evaluate the economic consequences of trafficking in the Amazon economy. The time frame begins in the year 1756, with the initial operation of the Companhia Geral do Comércio do Grão-Pará e Maranhão, monopolist company, which aimed to promoting trade between the metropolis and its many overseas possessions in the Atlantic. As final milestone we chose the year 1807, because with the arrival of the Court in 1808, the colony changed its status becoming the seat of the kingdom.

Esta pesquisa se propõe a analisar a revista Semana Illustrada, dirigida pelo prussiano Henrique Fleiuss, com especial atenção para as representações do negro e do tema da escravidão. O periódico circulou no Rio de Janeiro entre 1860 e 1876 e é pioneiro no que se refere ao uso de imagens na imprensa. As novas tecnologias, associadas à demanda por imagens, incitaram o surgimento e posterior consolidação da imprensa ilustrada. A invenção e a popularização da fotografia evidenciavam uma sociedade ávida por imagens e que estava em pleno processo de transformação e elaboração de uma educação visual. Nesta pesquisa, a reflexão sobre as imagens presentes no periódico Semana Illustrada que se referem ao negro e ao escravo tem como objetivo entender a visão que este veículo de comunicação tinha sobre o assunto, como parte das questões cotidianas da sociedade oitocentista do Rio de Janeiro na segunda metade do século XIX. O contexto brasileiro se revela peculiar, uma vez que se tratava de uma sociedade que se pretendia moderna, mas que convivia ainda com grande contingente de mão de obra escrava. Ao estudar essas imagens, descortina-se a cultura visual de um tempo emblemático para o Brasil. / This research aims to analyse the magazine Semana Illustrada, managed by the prussian Henrique Fleiuss, focusing on the representation of black people and slavery. The magazine circulated in Rio de Janeiro between 1860 and 1876 and plays a pioneer role concerning the use of images in the press. The new technologies associated to the demand for images incited the appearing and consolidation of illustrated press. The invention and popularization of photography evinced a society avid for images and in process of transformation and elaboration of a visual education. This research intends to reflect upon the images found in Semana Illustrada that refers to the black people and the slave in order to understand the vision of this vehicle of communication about the subject as part of social life in Rio de Janeiro by the second half of nineteenth century. The brazilian context is peculiar once there was a society pretending to be modern, that nevertheless cohabited with a big contingent of slave work force. Study this images is to discover the visual culture of an emblematic time for Brazil.

Muitos são os estudos que se têm dedicado à temática da reprodução e das famílias escravas no Brasil; poucos, porém, referem-se a regiões desprovidas de vínculos mais estreitos com a economia exportadora. Neste trabalho, que se insere no campo da demografia histórica, direcionamos nossa atenção para a aludida temática enfocando o caso de Mariana no decurso da segunda metade do século XIX. Esta localidade, situada na província de Minas Gerais, esteve, desde o declínio da produção aurífera, integrada à economia voltada para a produção de subsistência e o abastecimento do mercado interno. De início, esboçamos os principais traços definidores do perfil econômico de Mariana, bem como delineamos as características de sua população escrava, além de especular sobre as estratégias de manutenção da instituição escravista adotadas na localidade no período considerado. As informações por nós compulsadas, obtidas em especial a partir da leitura dos inventários post-mortem (nossa fonte principal), bem como mediante o recurso complementar a documentação variada (assentos de casamentos e de batismos de escravos, matrículas e registros de compra e venda de cativos), possibilitaram o exame da estrutura e das características demográficas das famílias escravas. Além disto, as fontes de que lançamos mão permitiram destacar a importância das famílias no processo de formação e ampliação dos plantéis de cativos de Mariana nas décadas derradeiras da escravidão brasileira, período marcado pela promulgação de uma série de leis condicionadas por aquele processo e que, ao mesmo tempo, nele produziram inequívocos efeitos. / Many are the studies dedicated to slave reproduction and slave families in Brazil. Only a few, though, focus on regions not engaged in export economy. This work, which belongs to the field of historical demography, studies slave reproduction and slave families in Mariana during the second half of the 19th century. Mariana, a locality in the province of Minas Gerais, turned to subsistence economy and internal market production since de decline of gold production. This work begins with a description of the main economic characteristics of Mariana and of its slave population, speculating on the strategies for maintaining slavery used in the region during that period. The structure and demographic characteristics of slave families were analyzed through information obtained in post-mortem inventories (our main source) and secondary sources such as wedding and baptism registries and records of slave purchases and sales. Additionally, those sources highlighted the importance of slave families in the process of development of slaveholdings in Mariana during the last decades of slavery in Brazil, a period marked by a legislation that was oriented to that process and has undeniably influenced it.