Illegal Slave Trade, Individual Identification, and Rights in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

As individuals and as property, enslaved Africans were subject to different forms of registration, from their enslavement in Africa, on the Middle Passage and while held as slaves in the Americas. From brands made by hot iron on their bodies to the slave registration lists, these records represented forms of individual identification, for slave traders, slave holders and the States in question. In nineteenth century Brazil, the abolition of the slave trade imposed on the newly-independent state the task to identify those Africans emancipated from slave ships and guarantee their freedom. The continuation of the illegal slave trade brought to the country more than 750 thousand “new Africans” who were kept as slaves despite their right to freedom. This paper will explore different forms of registration affecting Africans during the illegal slave trade in nineteenth-century Brazil, focusing in particular on the individual records of liberated Africans found on the lists produced by the mixed commission court set in Rio de Janeiro (1821-1841), those produced by different sectors of the Brazilian government, and also on other records meant to identify individual liberated Africans, from the moment of their first emancipation to the end of their term of mandatory service. The paper addresses the ways in which the systems of legibility set in the nineteenth century touch the lives of Africans and were used by the Brazilian government to enforce the legal distinction between liberated Africans and those brought by contraband, who would be kept as slaves.