On the Imminence of Emancipation: Black Geopolitical Literacy and Anglo- American Abolitionism in Nineteenth-Century Brazil Isadora Moura Mota Submitted in fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of History at Brown University Providence, Rhode Island May 2017 ! © Copyright 2017 by Isadora Moura Mota ! This dissertation by Isadora Moura Mota is accepted in its present form by the Department of History as satisfying the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Date____________ ___________________________ James N. Green, Advisor Recommended to the Graduate Council Date____________ ___________________________ Roquinaldo Ferreira, Reader Date____________ ___________________________ Michael Vorenberg, Reader Date____________ ___________________________ Sidney Chalhoub, Reader Approved by the Graduate Council Date____________ ___________________________ Andrew G. Campbell, Dean of the Graduate School iii! ! ! Curriculum Vitae Born and raised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Isadora Moura Mota completed a B.A. in History at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 2003 and a Master’s Degree at the Center for the Social History of Culture at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in 2005. After relocating to the United States, she received a Master’s Degree from Brown University in 2012. Her dissertation research has been supported by an International Dissertation Research Fellowship conferred by the Social Sciences Research Council (SSRC) and funding from the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, The Cogut Center for the Humanities, and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at Brown University. Her research interests have resulted in several publications focusing on slave activism in nineteenth-century Brazil, the role of Anglo- American abolitionism in the history of Brazilian emancipation, Afro-Brazilian literacy, as well as on comparative slavery and emancipation in the Atlantic World. iv! ! ! For Dudi (in memoriam) and Chloe v!! ! Acknowledgements This dissertation is the product of many years of research in Brazilian archives sustained by a sincere interest in the past and future of Brazil. On very basic terms, it embodies my search to understand how enslaved people managed to make the most of their lives and wage war on a system that denied them any reasonable measure of autonomy and wellbeing. I hope the pages that follow convey the belief that history writing needs to be grounded in a deep sense of empathy, both for the actors we study and for the readers who learn from the stories we tell. This project would have been impossible without the support of staff members and librarians who, like me, spend a great part of their lives in Brazilian archives. This time, as I navigated the manuscript collections of the Arquivo Nacional and the Arquivo do Itamaraty while pregnant, they were invaluable. I would like to thank all at both institutions for so kindly guiding me towards the materials that brought this dissertation to life. Back in Providence at Brown University, I am most thankful to Julissa Bautista, Mary-Beth Bryson, and Cherrie Guerzon for their assistance at every stage of the doctorate and, moreover, for filling my trajectory at the university with laughter and joy. I received funding from the Department of History, the Thomas Skidmore Fund, the Joukowsky Research Fund, the International Travel Fund, the Center for Latin American and Caribeean Studies (CLACS), and the Cogut Center For the Humanities, all at Brown University. The Social Sciences Research Council awarded me an International Dissertation Research Fellowship, providing support for a whole year of research in Brazil. Finally, a fellowship from the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice at vi! ! ! Brown University gave me precious writing time. I am profoundly grateful to all these institutions. The emotional and intellectual debts I have incurred while writing this dissertation are now almost impossible to trace back but deserve that I at least try. I have been fortunate to count on the cheerful guidance of my advisor James N. Green, whom I thank for encouraging and preparing me to embrace the many challenges that made this work possible. My heartfelt thanks also go to my dissertation committee, whose generosity and steadfast support I will never be able to adequately recognize. It has been an honor to benefit from the insights and experience of Michael Vorenberg, Roquinaldo Ferreira, and Sidney Chalhoub, my models as I continue on an academic trajectory. I would also like to thank my previous orientadores in Brazil, Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Robert W. Slenes, whose advice continue to challenge and inspire my work. To my professors at Brown University, I extend my gratitude for allowing me the opportunity to learn so much. I would like to thank especially Cynthia Brokaw, Amy Remensneyder, Seth Rockman, Tara Nummedal, Naoko Shibusawa, Françoise Hamlin, Douglas Cope, and Linford Fisher. I am also indebted to my friends and family, who are sometimes hard to distinguish. At Brown, I was lucky enough to have met Justina Hwang, a sister from Taiwan I didn’t know I had. Muitíssimo obrigada for standing by me all these years, for keeping me young at heart, and for never letting me give up. To my comadre Lillian Guerra, gracias for all the loving support and encouragement that have made me feel less of a foreigner in this strange land. And, most of all, thank you for bringing sweet Tato into my life. To my parents, Rose and Moacir, my sisters Isis and Isabela and my in-laws vii! ! ! Leo and Renan, I am grateful for the generosity of spirit that have kept me strong even when I am an ocean away from home. Thank you for encouraging my goals and for so many words of wisdom. “You write about oppressed people,” said my mom once, “so the work has to honor their plight.” Finally, I thank my partner Tim, whom I credit for so much of my personal and professional curiosity. It has been a joy to share every word of this dissertation with you and to benefit from your sustained intellectual energy and generosity. Not to mention your direct support with our energetic toddler, Chloe. She was born and blossomed alongside this dissertation, sometimes literally coloring its drafts and giving it a larger sense of purpose. I dedicate this work to her and to my querida Dudi, the mother I lost in the course of writing this work but whose intelligence and laughter continue to guide me. I stand on the shoulders of these two generations of strong women and hope to make them proud. viii! ! ! Table of Contents Introduction: Imagining Emancipation 1 1. “Viva os ingleses, viva a liberdade:” British Presence and Black Abolitionism in Brazil 18 The “English Question” 28 Emancipation or Freedom? The Curious Status of Liberated Africans 41 The Quilombolas of Montes Áureos 66 Conclusion 77 2. Of Ships and Freedom 79 The Brazilian Theater of the American Civil War 87 Waterfront News: Slaves Get Word of Emancipation 108 “Running away with the Americans”: Union Whalers in Santa Catarina 115 Conclusion 131 2. A War in Print: Liberalism, Afro-Brazilian Literacy, and the U.S. 133 Civil War The Brazilian Style of Liberal Anti-Slavery 142 Writing About the War: O Jequitinhonha 151 Abolition Now: Afro-Brazilian Literacy and the Geopolitical Imagination 162 Newspapers and Slave Rebellion in the Amazon 175 Conclusion 185 4. Different Borders of Belonging: The Place of Free(d) Africans in Brazil 188 The Limits of Brazilian Citizenship 194 “Nossos amigos Yankies se querem descartar de seus negrinhos” 200 The 1831 Law and African American Emigration to Brazil 213 At the Crossroads of Deportation and Re-Enslavement 220 Conclusion 236 Conclusion 239 Bibliography 243 ix! ! ! Introduction: Imagining Emancipation On September 1861, a Brazilian slave named Agostinho shared the excitement with his fellow Afro-Brazilians that a massive armed slave rebellion was at hand. He knew it to be true because a North American warship called the Sumter had arrived at the port of São Luís, the capital of the northeastern Brazilian province of Maranhão. In response to the news, several enslaved workers fled sugar and cotton plantations or refused to work for their masters in Anajatuba, a rural village ninety miles from the coast, having proclaimed themselves free in anticipation of armed support from North America. What makes this story seem odd to us today is that the Sumter was a ship belonging to the Confederate States of America, the proslavery republic in rebellion against the United States since April 1861. Moreover, it had Raphael Semmes, a notorious proponent of Southern expansionism abroad and a trader in slaves himself, at her helm. So why did Agostinho think that the Sumter’s arrival in São Luís heralded the end of slavery in Brazil? Agostinho understood that his prospects of emancipation were directly intertwined with the future of bonded labor in the Atlantic world. Imagining the U.S. Civil War as a transnational struggle for freedom that also played itself out in Brazil, he claimed alliances that spoke of a specific political worldview developed in the context of black communication networks. Agostinho had learned about the conflict from free blacks in São Luís to whom, in 1861, a clear distinction between Northern and Southern wartime ideologies was still in the making. Afro-Brazilians filtered news of the Civil War into a notion that the U.S. government and, therefore its ships, were in favor of abolition and were fighting against slave owners who wanted to continue the institution elsewhere in the Atlantic.! 1!! ! The Anajatuba rebellion was just the first of many insurrections to sweep Brazil during the 1860s. When intelligence about the American Civil War reached the country via the sea, print, and interpersonal contact, it infused debates about slave emancipation with a great sense of urgency.