Reading the 1835 parish censuses from Bahia: Citizenship, kinship, slavery, and household in early nineteenth-century Brazil

Americas

Volumn 59, Issue 3, 2003, Pages 287-323

  Barickman, B J ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33845649739     PISSN: 00031615     EISSN: 15336247     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/tam.2003.0002     Document Type: Review

References (99)

1. On the census-based research and for references to many of the relevant works, see, e.g., José Flávio Motta, "The historical demography of Brazil at the V centenary of its discovery," Ciência e Cultura, 51:5-6 (1999), pp. 446-56
2. The few studies dealing with these topics for Brazil generally focus on census categories for color or race. See n. 16 below. Elsewhere, by contrast, such topics have received more attention. See, e.g., Catherine Hakim, "Census Reports as Documentary Evidence: The Census Commentaries, 1801-1951," The Sociological Review, n.s., 28:3 (1980), pp. 551-80
3. Desley Deacon, "Political Arithmetic: The Nineteenth-Century Australian Census and the Construction of the Dependent Woman," Signs 11 (1985), pp. 27-47
4. William Alonso and Paul Starr, eds., The Politics of Numbers (New York, 1986)
5. Bernard S. Cohn, An Anthropologist Among the Historians and Other Essays (Delhi, 1987), pp. 224-54
6. Joan Wallach Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), pp. 112-138
7. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, 2d ed. (London, 1991), pp. 164-70
8. Margo Anderson, "The History of Women and the History of Statistics," Journal of Women's History 4:1 (1992), pp. 14-36
9. and Leticia Mayer Celis, Entre el infierno de una realidad y el cielo de un imaginario: estadística y comunidad científica en el México de la primera mitad del siglo XIX (Mexico City, 1999)
10. In this regard, the 1835 Bahian censuses resemble in their general format U.S. censuses since 1850. See Anderson, "The History," pp. 19-20, which, despite differences in context, I have found useful here
11. On liberalism in nineteenth-century Brazil, see, e.g., Emília Viotti da Costa, Da monarquia à república: momentos décisives, 2d ed. (São Paulo, 1979), pp. 109-26
12. Richard Graham, "Ciudadanía y jerarquía en el Brasil esclavista" in Ciudadanía política y formación de las naciones: perspectivas históricas de América Latina, coord. Hilda Sabato (Mexico City, 1999), pp. 345-71; and the works cited in n. 70 below
13. For this and the following paragraph, see, e.g., Leslie Bethell and José Murilo de Carvalho, "Brazil from Independence to the Middle of the Nineteenth Century," in Cambridge History of Latin America, ed. Leslie Bethell, 11 vols. (Cambridge, 1984-95), vol. 3, chap. 16
14. José Murilo de Carvalho, Teatro de sombras: a político imperial (São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, 1988)
15. Roderick J. Barman, Brazil: The Forging of a Nation, 1798-1852 (Stanford, 1988)
16. Richard Graham, Patronage and Politics in Nineteenth-Century Brazil (Stanford, 1990)
17. Marcus J.M. de Carvalho, "Hegemony and Rebellion in Pernambuco (Brazil), 1821-1835" (Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1989)
18. Matthias Röhrig Assunção, "Elite Politics and Popular Rebellion in the Construction of Post-Colonial Order: The Case of Maranhão, Brazil (1820-41)," Journal of Latin American Studies 31:1 (1999), pp. 1-38
19. Jeffrey C. Mosher, "Political Mobilization, Party Ideology, and Lusophobia in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: Pernambuco, 1822-1850," HAHR 80:4 (2000), pp. 882-912
20. and Gladys Sabino Ribeiro, A liberdade em construção: identidade national e conflitos antilusitanos no Primeiro Reinado (Rio de Janeiro, 2002). Also see n. 11 below
21. On trade statistics, see, e.g., Nicia Villela Luz, "Ensaio de interpretação," in Latin America: A Guide to Economic History, ed. Roberto Cortés Conde and Stanley J. Stein (Berkeley, 1977), p. 170
22. Dauril Alden, "The Population of Brazil in the Late Eighteenth Century: A Preliminary Study," HAHR 43:2 (1963), pp. 173-205
23. and Maria Luiza Marcílio, "Levantamentos censitários da fase proto-estatística do Brasil," Anais de História (Assis), IX (1977), pp. 63-75
24. and Hamilton de Mattes Monteiro, Nordeste insurgente (1850-1890) (São Paulo, 1981), pp. 33-45
25. João José Reis, "A elite baiana face aos movimentos sociais, Bahia: 1824-1840," Revista de História 54:108 (1976), pp. 341-84
26. idem, Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia, trans. Arthur Brakel (Baltimore, 1993)
27. István Jancsó, Na Bahia contra o Império: história do ensaio de sedição de 1798 (São Paulo, 1995)
28. Hendrik Kraay, "'As Terrifying as Unexpected': The Banian Sabinada, 1837-1838," HAHR 72:4 (1992), pp. 501-27
29. idem, Race, State, and Armed Forces in Independence-Era Brazil: Bahia, 1790s-1840s (Stanford, 2001)
30. B.J. Barickman, "'Tame Indians,' 'Wild Heathens,' and Settlers in Southern Bahia in the Late Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries," TAm 51:3 (1995), pp. 325-68
31. Reis, Slave Rebellion, chaps. 11-12
32. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Negros, estrangeiros: os escravos libertos e sua volta à África (São Paulo, 1985), pp. 72-81, 96-9
33. CL, vol. 1, pp. 1-2, 22-6, 38-44
34. Freed Africans would remain the target of discriminatory laws for many years after 1835. See CL, vol. 4, pp. 257, 261, 281, 323, 415, 530; vol. 5, pp. 260, 530; vol. 6, pp. 61, 175-76
35. Silva, Investigações, p. 79 (for quotations from Martins' address)
36. CL, vol. 1, pp. 19-21
37. Although falas (addresses) and relatórios (reports) by provincial presidents were routinely published, I was unable to locate a published copy of Martins' 1835 address at the Arquivo Público do Estado da Bahia or the Biblioteca Nacional; nor does it appear in the list of published reports in Ann Hartness Graham, Subject Guide to Statistics in the Presidential Reports of the Brazilian Provinces, 1830-1889 (Austin, Tex., 1977), pp. 18-27. Therefore, I have had to rely on secondary sources for quotations from Martins' address
38. On Iguape, see B.J. Barickman, A Bahian Counterpoint: Sugar, Tobacco, Cassava, and Slavery in the Recôncavo, 1780-1860 (Stanford, 1998), chaps. 5, 6
39. Like the other categories in the 1835 censuses, those used to classify individuals by color should also be questioned. I have dealt with the matter in "As cores do escravismo: escravistas 'pretos,' 'pardos' e 'cabras' no Recôncavo baiano, 1835," População e família 2 (1999), pp. 7-62
40. On census categories for race or color, also see Muriel Nazzari, "Vanishing Indians: The Social Construction of Race in Colonial São Paulo," TAm 57:4 (2001), pp. 497-524
41. and Melissa Nobles, Shades of Citizenship: Race and the Census in Modern Politics (Stanford, 2000) (which deals with published censuses from 1872 onward)
42. Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 106
43. On birthplace in censuses elsewhere in Brazil, see Marcílio, "Levantamentos," p. 71
44. Iraci del Nero da Costa, Populações mineiras: sobre a estrutura populacional de alguns núcleos mineiros no alvorecer do século XIX(São Paulo, 1981), pp. 218-24
45. and Clotilde Andrade Paiva, "Minas Gerais no século XIX: aspectos demográficos de alguns núcleos populacionais," in Brasil: história econômica e demográfica, ed. Iraci del Nero da Costa (São Paulo, 1986), pp. 186-87, n. 15
46. See, e.g, the works cited in nn. 6 and 11 (esp. Barman, Brasil, pp. 17-30
47. and Ribeiro, A liberdade, chap. 1)
48. José Honório Rodrigues, A Assembléia Constituinte de 1823 (Petrópolis, 1974), pp. 56-60, 127-30
49. Paulo Octávio Carneiro da Cunha, "A fundação de um império liberal: discussão de princípios," in História geral da civilização brasileira, ed. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda and Boris Fausto, 11 vols (São Paulo, 1960-84), tomo II, vol. 1, p. 254
50. Caio Prado Júnior, Evolução político do Brasil: Colônia e Império, 15th ed. (São Paulo, 1986), pp. 54-55
51. "Constituição política do Império do Brasil," in Constituições do Brasil, comp. Adriano Campanhole and Hilton Lobo Campanhole, 10th ed. (São Paulo, 1989), pp. 749-50, 767-70 (Tít. 1°, art. 1; Tít. 2°, art. 6, §§ I-IV; Tít. 8°, art. 179)
52. Cunha, Negros, pp. 63-86, esp. pp. 74-81
53. But, from the research by Cunha and Reis (cited above) and by Maria Inês Côrtes de Oliveira, O liberto: o seu mundo e os outros, Salvador, 1790/1860 (São Paulo, 1988), p. 30, n. 24; it would seem that few freed Africans in Bahia underwent naturalization
54. idem, "A elite baiana," p. 382 (for the letter to the minister of justice)
55. and Verger, Fluxo, p. 359 (for quotation from Martins' speech)
56. The census lists a conventional occupation for only one married woman living with her husband: a freed "black" ganhadeira (day laborer), married to a freed "black." In S. José das Itapororocas and S. Gonçalo dos Campos, wives were also generally listed simply as "wives" under "occupation." Exceptionally, conventional occupations (always in addition to "wife") were recorded for about one-third of all wives living with husbands in the Capela de S. Luzia, one of 5 subdistricts in S. Gonçalo dos Campos. Along the same lines, according to Elizabeth Kuznesof, in a 1765 count, census-takers in S. Paulo "often seemed to treat the category of 'widow' as if it were an occupation." "How Does Development Begin? Wealth and Family Strategies in São Paulo, 1765 to 1836," paper presented at the RMCLAS conference, Portland, Oregon, April 2002, p. 13 (cited by permission)
57. Cf. Margo Anderson, "(Only) White Men Have Class: Reflections on Early 19th-century Occupational Classification Schemes," Work and Occupations 21:1 (1994), pp. 5-32
58. idem, "The History," p. 18
59. Hakim, "Census Reports," pp. 554-55
60. Deacon, "Political Arithmetic."
61. Graham, Patronage, p. 7
62. Pimenta Bueno, Direito Público, p. 191. Sons-at-home over 25 could, however, vote if they were public employees
63. On the categories of illegitimacy in Brazilian law, see Linda Lewin, "Natural and Spurious Children in Brazilian Inheritance Law from Colony to Empire: A Methodological Essay," TAm 43:3 (1992), pp. 352-96
64. See, e.g., Elizabeth Kusnezof, "Sexual Politics, Race, and Bastard-bearing in Nineteenth-Century Brazil: A Question of Power or Culture?," Journal of Family History 16:3 (1991), pp. 241-60
65. See, e.g., Robert Slenes, Na senzala, uma flor: esperanças e recordações da família escrava - Brasil Sudeste, século XIX (Rio de Janeiro, 1999), which also cites many of the other studies on slave families
66. Perdigão Malheiro, A escravidão, vol. 1, pp. 58-61 (p. 61 for quotation)
67. On kinlessness as a fundamental component in the definition of slavery, see M.I. Finley, Ancient Slavery and Modern Ideology (Harmondsworth, Middx, 1983), pp. 75-77
68. Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), pp. 7-9
69. and Claude Meillassoux, The Anthropology of Slavery: The Womb of Iron and Gold, trans. Alide Dasnois (Chicago, 1991), pp. 9-140
70. and Slenes, Na senzala, pp. 71, 117
71. Also cf. Sheila de Castro Faria, A Colônia em movimento: fortuna e família no cotidiano colonial (Rio de Janeiro, 1998), pp. 355-90
72. Hut lists with information about domestic groups among rural slaves are rare in Brazil, but see Richard Graham, "Slave Families on a Rural Estate in Colonial Brazil," Journal of Social History 9:3 (1976), pp. 82-402
73. and Schwartz, Sugar Plantations, pp. 394-406
74. In fact, in Family life and illicit love in earlier generations: Essays in historical sociology (Cambridge, 1977), chap. 7
75. and B.J. Barickman, "'A bit of land, which they call roça': Slave Provision Grounds on Sugar Plantations and Cane Farms
76. In some contexts, Laslett's distinctions between "household," "houseful," and "premises" would no doubt be useful, but not in dealing with the larger slave-owning "fogos" in the 1835 Bahian censuses. The censuses do not in any way distinguish within those "fogos" different co-residential groups of slaves, domestic slaves (who as such may have routinely slept in their master's house) from field hands, or even slave quarters from the owner's dwelling space. Classifying slave "family" units, where they can be detected, as "households" would also entail using a definition of "fogo" not employed by the census-takers and would violate Laslett's own dictum that clearly divided blocks of names in censuses "must" be regarded as "households" or "families" (p. 24). Also see, e.g., Lutz K. Berkner, "The Use and Misuse of Census Data for the Historical Analysis of Family Structure," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 5:4 (1975), pp. 721-38
77. and Hermann Rebel, "Dispossession in the Communal Memory: An Alternative Narrative About Austria's Descent into the Holocaust," Focaal 26-27 (1996), p. 170
78. Perdigão Malheiro, vol. 1, pp. 35-36, 58 (emphasis in original). As often noted, the 1824 constitution excluded slaves from "the political community" by not even mentioning the word "slave" in any of its 179 articles
79. Thus, in part, the 1835 census bears out the classic arguments about the patriarchal family as the fundamental social unit in colonial and nineteenth-century Brazil put forth (with different emphases) by Gilberte Freyre, Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, and Antônio Candido (de Mello e Souza). I explore the matter as well as some of the implications for census-based research on family and other social-demographic issues in late colonial and early nineteenth-century Brazil in "Households of the rich (but not necessarily famous): Plantation and wealthy cane-farming households in early nineteenth-century Bahia," paper presented at the RMCLAS conference, Portland, Ore., April 2002. Also see Elizabeth Anne Kuznesof, Household Economy and Urban Development: São Paulo, 1765 to 1836 (Boulder, Col., 1986), p. 5, n. 11
80. Ronaldo Vainfas, Trópico dos pecados: moral, sexualidade e inquisiçáo no Brasil (Rio de Janeiro, 1989), pp. 107-113
81. and Faria, A. Colônia, pp. 47-52
82. and, for recent historical studies of the family in the Northeast, Linda Lewin, Politics and Parentela in Paraíba: A Case Study of Family-Based Oligarchy in Brazil (Princeton, 1987)
83. and Dain Borges, The Family in Bahia, Brazil, 1870-1945 (Stanford, 1992)
84. Ilmar Rohloff de Mattos, O tempo saquarema (São Paulo and Brasília, 1987), chap. 2, esp. pp. 119-20
85. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda, preface to Thomas Davatz, Memórias de um colono no Brasil (1850), trans. and annot. Sérgio Buarque de Holanda (São Paulo, 1941), pp. 26-27
86. On Latin usage, see P.G.W. Glare, ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford, 1972), s.v. "familia"
87. David Herlihy, Medieval Households (Cambridge, Mass., 1985), pp. 2-3
88. See Mattos, O tempo, pp. 119-20
89. Also see Sherry B. Ortner's general remarks on the family as an administrative unit in "The Virgin and the State," Feminist Studies 4 (1978), p. 29
90. Roberto Schwarz, Ao vencedor as batatas: forma literária e processo social nos inícios do romance brasileiro (São Paulo, 1981), chap. 1
91. But cf. Maria Sylvia de Carvalho Franco, "As idéias estão no lugar," Cadernos de debate, 1: História do Brasil, 2d ed. (São Paulo, 1976), pp. 61-64
92. See, e.g., Kraay, Race, esp. pp. 5-6
93. Alfredo Bosi, Dialética da colonização (São Paulo, 1992), chap. 7
94. Manuela Carneiro da Cunha, Antropologia do Brasil: mito, história, etnicidade (São Paulo, 1986), pp. 139-44
95. Costa, Da monarquia, pp. 109-126
96. Also cf. Jurandir Malerba, Os brancos da lei: liberalismo, escravidão e mentalidade patriarcal no Império do Brasil (Maringá, 1994)
97. Diana L. Barker, "Regulation of Marriage," in Power and the State, ed. Gary Littlejohn et al. (London, 1978), p. 256
98. Also see Hilda L. Smith, All Men and Both Sexes: Gender, Politics, and the False Universal in England, 1604-1832 (University Park, PA, 2002)
99. and Carole Pateman, The Disorder of Women: Democracy, Feminism and Political Theory (Cambridge and Oxford, 1984)