Freedom, Precariousness, and the Law: Freed Persons Contracting out their Labour in Nineteenth-Century Brazil

Abstract

SummaryThis essay discusses the relationship between Brazilian labour laws and the labour arrangements entered into by former slaves (libertos – freed persons) in Brazil during the nineteenth century. It discusses firstly how the definition of “contract” was important in guiding the labour laws on Brazilian national and immigrant workers, as well as on former slaves. By analysing a sample of labour contracts entered into by freed persons and recorded in the archives of notaries in the southern Brazilian city of Desterro (now Florianópolis) between the 1840s and 1887, this essay discusses too the conflicted meanings of “freedom of labour” to freed persons and their employers. It attempts further to show how efforts to deal with precariousness were central to the strategies of freed persons and the negotiations underlying those contracts. Finally, this essay aims to understand the possible reasons for the disappearance of the contracts from notarial records after the end of slavery.