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Week 8: The Abolition of Slavery and Post-Emancipation Realities

Powerpoint slides Week 8

Seminar Questions

Why was slavery abolished so late in Brazil?
Who or what ended it?
What arguments were marshalled for and against slavery in the 1860s-1880s?
How did abolitionists deal with issues of race?
How was the Brazilian abolitionist movement similar or different from abolitionist movements elsewhere?
How much changed with abolition?

Seminar Reading

Please read at least two of:

• Leslie Bethell (ed), Brazil: Empire & Republic, chapter 4 [e-book @ Library];

* Emilia Viotti da Costa, The Brazilian Empire, chapter 6, "Masters and Slaves: From Slave Labour to Free Labour," Chapter 6, Part 1 ; Chapter 6, Part 2

•Seymour Drescher, “Brazilian Abolition in Comparative Perspective,” Hispanic American Historical Review, 68:3 (August 1988): 429-60

•Sidney Chalhoub, “The Politics of Silence: Race and Citizenship in Nineteenth-Century Brazil.” Slavery & Abolition, 27:1 (April 2006): 73-87

•Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into white: race and nationality in Brazilian thought (1993). Chapter 1: “The Intellectual Context of Abolition in Brazil.”