Mechanical Trades Research Articles

Dignidade, Trabalho e Escravidão: A Aprendizagem dos Ofícios Mecânicos na América Portuguesa, suas Consequências Sociais e Jurídicas na Formação de uma Identidade Coletiva dos Trabalhadores

The article aims to analyze the formatting of the Guildas that doesn’t occurred in the same way as the Iberian counterparts, keeping intense differences with the reality of the metropolis, but having a fundamental role in shaping the work of the mechanical trades, with the representation of the craftsman’s interests. Despite the expansion of trade, the arrival of the Court to Brazil also opened a crisis in corporations, due to the introduction of the liberalizing measures. After their extinction, their assistance functions would be replaced by mutual aid societies, and later by the unions. But this transition broke an existing social network participation, weakening the position of the citizen to the state, but with a political representation in favor of the local government to defend their interests. The perception within this historical space is established as a reflection of the colonial context of the Portuguese empire, in which the role of mechanical worker resonates in his group and carries a corporate order to form a web with political and social developments. There is a conflict in this process between the activities of the free and the slave about doing their jobs on the street, being necessary to assess the complexity of the role of these people who participated actively in sedimented economic and political changes in the capital-labor ratio, with the consolidation of a collective training of workers and their rise in an extremely estamental society and its consequences nowadays.