Emancipations and Post-Abolition Studies

Origins, Developments, and Interpretations from a Historiographical Perspective

Abstract

The central theme of this article is Black freedom in Brazil and the ways it has been addressed in different contexts: first, in the public debate of the nineteenth century; later, in various fields of study produced from the twentieth century onwards. The general objective is to provide an overview of the field of emancipation and post-abolition studies in Brazil, identifying its origins and antecedents, its main themes and recurring debates, as well as its developments. Additionally, I aim to demonstrate that, since the nineteenth century, there has been an ongoing struggle to define the subjects responsible for the end of slavery in Brazil. Among the parties involved in this competition are the monarchy, symbolized by Princess Isabel and her title as the “redeemer” of the enslaved; the emancipation laws and the legislators who formulated them; the abolitionist movement and its agents; the Republicans who challenged the monarchy’s emancipatory stance; and, finally, the “people,” the “anonymous masses of the streets,” the “popular classes” within which the agency of Black individuals was first recognized, albeit incipiently, in the early twentieth century, especially in the Republican press and the Black press aligned with Republicanism.