Os africanos livres no Arsenal de Guerra de Pernambuco – 1850-1864

Abstract

With internal and external pressure and with the aim of promoting the new National State, Brazilian parliamentarians enacted on November 7, 1831 the legal norm that would change the slave scenario of the first half of the 19th century, the Feijó Law. This legislation, in addition to prohibiting the Atlantic slave trade, declared all Africans imported illegally from that date on to be free. However, due to being constantly circumvented, in the first 20 years, around 800,000 people were brought to Brazil and many did not even feel the enjoyment of freedom. Unable to send these subjects back to the African coast, the Regency Government, in a palliative way, determined that all individuals brought illegally would serve in private homes or be destined for provincial public institutions. In Pernambuco, the War Arsenal was one of the departments that most had these subjects, being enrolled between the years 1850 and 1864 around 111 African men and women. In our study, the establishment of war, which had the function of producing and depositing military materials, is the main scenario of action of these servants, where in addition to performing African and being treated in a similar way to enslaved people, they elaborated several articulated tactics both against the oppression of the institution, as to obtain their long-awaited emancipation.