Colonização e escravidão na Bahia: a Colônia Leopoldina, 1850-1888

Abstract

This study examines the slave population of the Leopoldina Colony, located on the southern tip of the state of Bahia, during the second half of the nineteenth century. In an attempt to understand how a colony made up of foreigners and relying on family agricultural production and free labor switched to slave labor, a secondary strand of analysis focuses on the first years of the colony founded in 1818. By providing a sketch of the colony´s free population as well as a demographic profile of the resident captive population this study aims to elucidate the actors involved in the numerous stories of flights, revolts, judicial disputes, accusations of ill treatment, crimes, and love stories involving masters and slaves. Using quantitative methods and qualitative analysis, the research revealed the importance of family to slaves in the colony, both as an instrument used by the masters to maintain the workforce, and for the slaves themselves, who could rely on solidary kin that were certainly accessible in the most decisive moments, such as during flights, or to buy freedom and land to be used after manumission. The data also reveals that slave marriage, non-catholic and possibly based on protestant rites, carried a certain legitimacy that was conferred by the community itself to the point where the proprietors kept the couples united during sales or partitions, even before these practices were legally enforced. The data also reveal that the work routine, contrary to the declarations by the colony´s proprietors and residents, was arduous, and that sometimes the slaves´ right to time off was not respected, as some proprietors reduced it to only half a day on Sunday. Within these post-mortem inventories, testaments, enrollment records, purchase and sales deeds, freedom-related suits, criminal lawsuits, church land records, consular correspondence between consular authorities as well as administrative and police correspondence, are surprising stories that serve as a departing point for an analysis of historical events and processes that led to the slaves´ gains during the second half of the nineteenth century, and help to understand their impact in a region so distant from the center of the province.