The Abolition of Slavery in Brazil: The "Liberation" of Africans Through the Emancipation of Capital (Contributions in Latin American Studies)

The persistence of a raced-based division of labor has been a compelling reality in all former slave societies in the Americas. One can trace this to nineteenth-century abolition movements across the Americas which did not lead to (and were not intended to result in) a transition from race-based slave labor to race-neutral wage labor for former slaves. Rather, the abolition of slavery led to the emergence of multi-racial societies wherein capital/labor relations were characterized by new forms of extra-market coercion that were explicitly linked to racial categories. Post-slavery Brazilian society is a classic example of this pattern. Working within the context of the origin of the wage labor category in classical political economy, Baronov begins by questioning the central role of wage-labor within capitalist production through an examination of key works by Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, as well as the historical conditions informing their analyses. The study then turns to the specific case of Brazil between 1850-1888, comparing the abolition of slavery in three Brazilian regions: the northeast sugar region, the Paraiba Valley, and Western Sao Paulo. Through this analysis, Baronov provides a critique of the dominant interpretation of abolition (as a transition from slave labor to wage labor) and suggests an alternative interpretation that places a greater emphasis on the role of non-wage labor forms and extra-market factors in the shaping of the post-slavery social order. Contents......Page 8 Tables......Page 10 Acknowledgments......Page 12 Introduction......Page 16 1. The Historical and Theoretical Origins of the Modern Industrial Working Class (1700–1817)......Page 40 2. The Historical and Theoretical Origins of the Modern Industrial Working Class (1817–1870)......Page 70 3. The Abolition of Servile Labor East and West......Page 94 4. The Legacy of Brazilian Slavery......Page 132 5. Brazilian Abolition: The Preparation......Page 160 6. Brazilian Abolition: The Process......Page 188 Appendix A: Example of a 19th-Century Colono Contract......Page 220 Bibliography......Page 224 B......Page 244 C......Page 245 F......Page 246 L......Page 247 P......Page 248 S......Page 249 U......Page 250 Z......Page 251 Linking the racially divided working class of modern Brazil to the period of abolition, Baronov argues that certain abolition strategies resulted in capital/labor relations that were characterized by new forms of extra-market coercion. Free labor is indeed a defining feature of capitalism, but not free labor throughout the productive enterprises.