A decree emancipates surviving emancipados

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 641 authorized railway concessions and required the concession company not to own enslaved people or employ them in construction and railway operation. This clause made the project a legally...

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...

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...

Decree no. 3,725-A of 6 November 1866 ordered that enslaved people owned by the state (the “Nation”) and designated as fit for army service be freed for that service; it extended the same benefit to...

A letter dated 10 July 1867, associated with insurgents in Viana, Maranhão, states that they were “in the field” to address the freedom of enslaved people. The document gives a rare glimpse of...

A surviving deposition dated 18 July 1867 records the questioning of Vicente, an enslaved man, in the aftermath of the Viana uprising in Maranhão. The testimony is mediated by officials: the...

The Council of State considered a draft prepared by a commission drawing on Pimenta Bueno’s proposals and Nabuco de Araújo’s legal work. The question was how the imperial state would manage the end of...