The Code Rural, issued at the National Palace on 6 May 1826, sought to bind cultivators to plantation production through contracts and rural policing. Later scholarship documents penalties for so-called vagrancy and unauthorized travel, and unpaid corvée road work. The code did not restore legal chattel slavery: cultivators were legally free people. It did, however, impose coercive controls on work and movement, partly to secure export revenues used to service the indemnity debt.
Log in to like or bookmark this story.
🔖 Bookmark
No images or videos for this event yet.
Related Events
What labor system did the 1826 Code Rural seek to enforce?
🎉😄
😢
Explanation
The code pressured free cultivators into plantation labor and regulated movement.