“Que negros somos nós?”: africanos no Recife, século XVIII

Abstract

This research aims to investigate the experiences of Africans in Pernambuco in the 18th century, especially in Recife in the second half of this Century. Based on some individual and collective trajectories, marked by slavery or freedom, this work seeks to present the survival strategies, identities, social insertion, and kinship construction of people born in Africa who were transported to Pernambuco. The port of Recife, along with Salvador and Rio de Janeiro, was one of the ports that received most enslaved people from Africa throughout the 18th Century, and estimates show that at least 158,000 people landed on these beaches. To this purpose, we used the available ecclesiastical and notary documentation, as well as administrative sources and chroniclers' accounts as a way to understand how the Africans who arrived in Recife rebuilt their lives, despite the conditions in which they lived. Thus, the tools of Social History were methodologically important to reconstruct trajectories, family arrangements and sociability networks, to highlight the protagonism experienced by these people. Therefore, by dealing specifically with Africans, this research revisits the sources to bring new readings and interpretations to the study of this social group in the colonial society of Recife.