{"id":21879,"date":"2015-05-11T11:13:18","date_gmt":"2015-05-11T14:13:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rioonwatch.org\/?p=21879"},"modified":"2022-02-23T08:38:34","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T11:38:34","slug":"research-indicates-that-rio-received-2-million-african-slaves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/?p=21879","title":{"rendered":"Research Indicates that Rio Received Two Million Enslaved Africans"},"content":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese with video, by Renan Fran\u00e7a, published in O Globo,\u00a0click\u00a0here<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

The number is double what was estimated: the results are based on a database created by Emory University, in Atlanta.<\/h3>\n

Between 1500 and 1856, one of every five enslaved people in the world was brought to Rio de Janeiro. It was the\u00a0Port region<\/a>, today the location around Venezuela and Bar\u00e3o de Tef\u00e9 avenues, that received\u00a0the bulk\u00a0of slave ships coming from Africa, carrying even the bodies of those who couldn\u2019t survive the voyage. For a long time it was imagined that few\u00a0more than a million slaves disembarked in the city, while more than 2.6 million were taken to other parts of coastal Brazil. Now, studies confirm that the relative number in Rio is much higher\u00a0than was previously estimated by various historians. This conclusion is based on a rigorous database\u00a0created by researchers at Emory University, in Atlanta, USA: the archive compiles Port records going back three and a half centuries. The work is housed on the site\u00a0slavevoyages.org<\/a>\u00a0and will be translated to Portuguese by the Casa de Rui Barbosa Foundation, located in Botafogo. According to\u00a0the new information, close to two million slaves arrived in Rio.<\/p>\n

“The previous calculation, adopted by various historians, was made by Maur\u00edcio Goulart, who published ‘African Enslavement in Brazil’ in 1949. In his\u00a0work, he confirmed that Brazil received 3.6 million slaves. The estimate that few more than a million arrived in Rio was based on records from the Cais do Valongo<\/a> wharf between 1758 and 1831. However, there were other sites where slaves were unloaded off ships in the state, and we examined\u00a0documents referring to the transportation of slaves in eight languages, dated to periods before and after those 73 years which, until this research, was the only period studied. Now, we have a more precise number,” says Manolo Florentino, the only Brazilian that participated in the project. In the Emory team\u2019s research, 90% of the data for\u00a0the Southeast region of Brazil applies to Rio, the main entrance port for the country’s slave ships.<\/p>\n

In the study, 35,000\u00a0voyages were catalogued, documenting\u00a0a flow of 10.7 million slaves worldwide. Researchers checked documents from various countries including the United States and England, in addition to Brazil and nations on the African continent. Many times, there were no records of the arrival of a slave ship in Rio, but its departure from another city was documented, for example, in Portugal. And, besides\u00a0Cais do Valongo, Copacabana, Botafogo and other points in the city center served as disembarkment locations, albeit\u00a0on\u00a0a small scale.<\/p>\n

According to the research, close to 4.8 million slaves arrived in coastal Brazil. Another number that demands attention, released for the first time, is the total number of lives lost in the trips\u00a0between continents. According to research by the Emory team, close to 300,000 slaves died on their way to Rio.<\/p>\n

\"Jean-Baptiste<\/a>
Jean-Baptiste Debret painting shows slaves and guards interacting in Rio. Photo by Museu Ch\u00e1cara do C\u00e9u<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

“The research figures\u00a0could be even bigger. We are preparing an update for the upcoming years,” says\u00a0the historian and coordinator of the study,\u00a0David Eltis.<\/p>\n

Those interested can access the site or project and research the most intense periods of\u00a0slave trafficking through historic clippings. In the first three centuries of Portuguese colonization, for example, Bahia received 15% more slaves than the South-Central region (at the time, the Southeast was included in this region). The situation changed after 1763, when Rio became the seat of the nation’s government.<\/p>\n

The historian Marcus Dezimone, professor at the University of the State of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), explained that the climax of gold production in Minas Gerias, in the middle of the 18th century, turned Rio into a strategic place to receive slaves from Africa and send them to the mines.<\/p>\n

“We had an idea that at that time Rio surpassed Bahia in the number of slaves received, but this research at the American university is important because it provided\u00a0clarity on this period. Following the second half of the 18th century, the number of slaves who had recently arrived from Africa grew in Rio and stabilized in Bahia. No place in Brazil was functioning as much as an entrance for slaves as the city [of Rio].”<\/p>\n

The countries that sent the most slaves to Rio were the Congo and Angola\u2014in the eighteenth century, about 720,000 slaves arrived from these origins. After 1780, with the decline of mining activity in Brazil, a large number of slaves were taken to Vale do\u00a0Paraiba, in the interior of the state where, much later, the expansion of coffee agriculture began.<\/p>\n

The research also provided important insight about slavery in the 19th century: Rio imported more slaves than Cuba for work on coffee farms. Between 1831 and 1840, the researchers found that some 239,000 slaves were brought to Rio, compared to 186,000\u00a0to Cuba. The writer and researcher Tamis Parron, author of \u201cThe politics of slavery in the Empire of Brazil,\u201d commends\u00a0the research work and emphasizes\u00a0that, previously, the flow of the slave trade\u00a0had only been considered from a geography perspective.<\/p>\n

“The analysis always favored\u00a0Rio because of\u00a0the position of the city in relation to the African\u00a0continent. It was cheaper for the slave trafficker to arrive in Rio\u2019s port than to go to Cuba,” says Parron.<\/p>\n

Law for the English to See<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Another period that lacked\u00a0detailed information about the arrival of slaves to Rio was the period beginning in 1831\u2014the year of the Law Feij\u00f3, which prohibited\u00a0slave traffic in Brazil. The research site shows that, at first, the passage of the law showed results. In 1831, 900 slaves arrived in the city, compared to 31,000\u00a0a year prior. However, after 1832, human trafficking returned to high volume. The ineffective law coupled with pressure from the British for the end of human exploitation generated the expression, \u201cpara ingl\u00eas ver,\u201d or \u201cfor the English to see.\u201d Between 1835 and 1850, approximately 564,000 slaves arrived in\u00a0Rio illegally, according to Emory University.<\/p>\n

As\u00a0Rio gains this important database for better understanding its past, the city expects to see\u00a0the Cais do Valongo wharf classified as\u00a0a World Heritage Site<\/a>. Anthropologist Milton Guran coordinates an academic team that will send UNESCO a file for candidacy in September.<\/p>\n

“This 450th<\/sup>\u00a0year since the foundation of Rio makes us reconcile with our roots. Rio was born indigenous and got\u00a0a Portuguese baptism, but its ethnic base is composed of black roots, which was fundamental to our cultural formation,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For the original in Portuguese with video, by Renan Fran\u00e7a, published in O Globo,\u00a0click\u00a0here. The number is double what was estimated: the results are based on a database created by Emory University, in Atlanta. Between […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":57,"featured_media":21976,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1288,1282,1330,328],"tags":[2271,1645,310,315,170,188,148,740,279],"writer":[1619],"translator":[407],"illustrator":[],"photographer":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-21879","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-highlight","8":"category-research-analysis","9":"category-translation","10":"category-understanding-rio","11":"tag-for-the-english-to-see","12":"tag-piv","13":"tag-africa","14":"tag-african-diaspora","15":"tag-historic-preservation","16":"tag-history","17":"tag-port-region","18":"tag-research-findings","19":"tag-slavery","20":"writer-renan-franca","21":"translator-elizabeth-gladding"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/57"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21976"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fwriter&post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"translator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftranslator&post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"illustrator","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fillustrator&post=21879"},{"taxonomy":"photographer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rioonwatch.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fphotographer&post=21879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}