NOTES ON HISTORIOGRAPHICAL APPROACHES TO THE STUDY OF BLACK FAMILIES IN 19TH-CENTURY BRAZILIAN SOCIETY

Abstract

 In this paper I discuss recent historiography on black family life in the slave-based society of  Brazil during the second half of the 19th century, showing how social, economic and political changes in the final decades of slavery influenced family relations among blacks, whose legal statuses often differed within the same kin group. I argue that in order to best understand this experience, we must consider it within a distinctly emancipationist set of conditions – including the gradual abolitionist policies constructed and controlled by the State, as well as enslaved, free and freed black people’s own efforts to liberate their family members. I suggest that a combination of qualitative and demographic sources are important in illuminating scholarly questions about black family life and the daily experience of slavery. These sources also facilitate an exploration of the meanings that blacks conferred on their personal and collective experiences, in re-creating and re-signifying traditional African family and kinship systems.