Saraiva, Dantas e Cotegipe: baianismo, escravidão e os planos para o pós-abolição no Brasil (1880-1899)

Abstract

This thesis investigates baianismo and its implications on slavery throughout the 1880s. The baianismo is originally a political phenomenon that evidences the numerical preponderance of bahians in the ministerial cabinets of the Second Reign. This research specifically analyzes the governments of José Antonio Saraiva (1880-1882; 1885), Manuel Pinto de Souza Dantas (1884-1885) and João Maurício Wanderley, baron of Cotegipe (1885-1888), demonstrating how these men, originally from Bahia, exercised the politics of slavery, trying to extend the existence of captivity as much as possible, making the experience of freedom of the free and freed population more precarious, criminalizing the entire colored population under the pretext of avoiding what they called "labor disorganization," and working to guarantee compensation to the slaverholders. In the following pages, it is shown how baianismo was not a homogeneous and harmonious political phenomenon, but could even hold antagonistic political positions, reaching both hardened slavocrats and decided abolitionists. Nor was it restricted to men and their ministries, but rather encompassed the intimate dimension of the emperors' personal relationships, including women, such as Luiza Margarida Portugal de Barros, countess of Barral and Pedra Branca, and free black people, such as André Rebouças, Maria Amanda Lustosa da Cunha Paranaguá, and Franklin Américo de Menezes Dória.