Banca de QUALIFICAÇÃO: NATALIA SANTOS FREITAS

Exercising freedom: Africans, street commerce and provincial control in Alagoas (1830-1870)

Africans, Alagoas, Eighteenth century, Laws, Society

This thesis, linked to the Social History of Slavery and Freedom, has sought to investigate the impacts of the African presence, especially free and freed Africans, on street commerce in Alagoas. Guided by the sources found, the decades from 1830 to 1870 were delimited as a time frame, a moment marked by the unfolding of the Atlantic anti-trafficking laws - on November 7, 1831 and nº 581, of September 4, 1850 -, once the documentation made it possible point to the persistence of illegal landings in Alagoas until 1868. Also due to the fact that most of the individuals surveyed were Africans resulting from seizures carried out by traffic inspections (and we were able to catalog data on age composition, ethnic and gender). Based on this, and without focusing the analysis specifically on trafficking agencies and the period of guardianship of free Africans, we are interested in understanding how the African presence of those who managed their lives in the street food trade. To date, the creation of a regulation (Law No. 356) published by the Municipal Council of Maceió in 1859 and revoked in 1863 has been identified. In its text, the respective code prohibited (under penalty of 15 days in prison and 25 thousand réis) fine) exclusively free Africans from selling such articles, however, the petitions of free Africans, as well as free Africans, like Luiza's, reveal the use of the law municipal council of Maceió to prevent and criminalize the trade of those who were Africans. Furthermore, the listing of sources allows us to hypothesize that African women played a prominent role in the aforementioned food trade, because, despite there having been persecutions against Africans, to date, only saleswomen have been found imprisoned in the Maceió prison. . Due to this characteristic, the 4th chapter of the work intends to provide a more accurate observation and understanding of the street trading practices carried out by African women on both sides of the Atlantic. More precisely, Maceió and Luanda.