Slave Emancipation and Transformations in Brazilian Political Citizenship
Celso Thomas Castilho
University of Pittsburgh Press
In this groundbreaking study, Celso Thomas Castilho sheds new light on the political ferment surrounding the process of slave emancipation.<i>Elements of Democracy</i>demonstrates that the abolition debates in northeastern Brazil transformed the practices of political citizenship and marked the first instance of mass national politics. In addition, it offers original findings on the scope and scale of the abolitionist and sugar planters’ mobilizations in the Brazilian northeast. The book highlights the extensive interactions between enslaved and free people in the construction of abolitionism, revealing that Brazil’s first social movement reinvented discourses about race and nation.<i>Elements of Democracy</i>also highlights the important and previously ignored counter-mobilizations led by the landed elite, who perceived the rise of abolitionism as a form of political contestation. Castilho illuminates how disputes over control of emancipation also entailed disputes over the boundaries of the political arena, and connects the history of abolition to the history of Brazilian democracy. As such, this study establishes new perspectives on Brazilian political history, and on Brazil’s place within comparative discussions on slavery and emancipation.