Railway concession reserves construction work for free workers

Decree no. 731 of 14 November 1850 provided additional implementation rules for Law no. 581. Its place in the rapid sequence of regulations shows the imperial government building administrative...

Decree no. 731-A of 14 November 1850 set percentages of proceeds from seized trafficking vessels and their cargo, and from payments made after captures of Africans, for a Navy auditor and clerk....

Decree no. 797 of 18 June 1851 ordered a general census. Counting inhabitants could aid administration and taxation, but population categories were created by a state whose social order depended on...

Decree no. 798, also dated 18 June 1851, set rules for registering births and deaths. In a slaveholding society, recording a child’s status could help reproduce an owner’s claim across generations....

On 29 January 1852, Decree no. 907 suspended the 1851 census and civil-registration regulations amid intense popular resistance. The protest, often called the Ronco da Abelha in some regions, was...

Decree 1303 provided that Africans who completed the prescribed fourteen-year service could seek emancipation, while also directing where they could reside and that they take paid work or service....

Decree no. 1,318 of 30 January 1854 regulated implementation of the 1850 Land Law, including procedures for identifying and registering land. The system relied heavily on declarations by occupants and...

On 1 June 1857, enslaved and freed African ganhadores—workers who carried goods and people through Salvador—stopped work in protest against a municipal ordinance that imposed restrictive...

Imperial Decree 3310 emancipated surviving Africans classified as emancipados, regardless of how long they had served. This formal change ended the assigned-service condition for those covered, though...

Decree no. 3,371 of 7 January 1865 organized volunteer battalions for the war against Paraguay. The call to arms unfolded within a slaveholding empire: military service offered some enslaved men a...