Africans and Petit Marronage in Rio de Janeiro, ca.

1800–1840

Flávio Gomes

Luso-Brazilian Review, Volume 47, Number 2, 2010, pp. 74-99 (Article)

Published by University of Wisconsin Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/412866

Access provided by Iowa State University (5 Jan 2019 18:03 GMT)

 Africans and Petit Marronage in
Rio de Janeiro, ca. 1800–18401
Flávio Gomes2

Neste artigo analisamos as fugas e a formação de pequenas comunidades de

fugitivos na cidade do Rio de Janeiro e seus arredores no século XIX, entre
1800 e 1840. Com base em fontes seriais de registros policiais, inventários
post-mortem e anúncios de jornais abordamos as estratégias e as identi-
dades dos escravos – especialmente africanos – que fugiam, destacando as
áreas de concentração das fugas e suas perspectivas de identidades étnicas.

M uch of the historiography of slavery in the Americas emphasizes slave

protests in an almost heroic manner, particularly rebellions and grand mar-
ronage (large maroon communities). Conversely, scholarship gives scant at-
tention to the phenomenon of smaller scale slave escapes. There are official
reports of small, mobile bands of fugitives called ajuntamentos, especially
in the urban centers of Rio de Janeiro, Lima, Salvador, Havana and Rec-
ife. Authorities reported their appearances, masters complained about their
slaves’ disappearances, the press published complaints and hundreds of
ads about runaways, and even travelers’ accounts commented on fugitive
slaves. In Bahia, João Reis has suggested that the phenomenon of endemic
flight – so-called petit marronage – in urban areas and their outskirts formed
“suburban quilombos” that were different from the large, populous maroon
communities established during the colonial period. In Recife, Marcus de
Carvalho has shed light on the nature of these escapes, the characteristics
of the fugitives, and their constant movement in the surrounding urban ar-
eas. In his study of the colonial mining center of Vila Rica, Donald Ramos
argues that the formation of small quilombos in urban areas became an
“escape valve” for the slave system. He argues that they did not present a

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ISSN 0024-7413, © 2010 by the Board of Regents
of the University of Wisconsin System

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 Gomes 75

threat, and points out that large-scale slave uprisings did not occur in the
mining districts.
This article reconsiders the subject of runaway slaves through a case
study of the phenomenon in the urban and suburban areas of Rio de Ja-
neiro in the first half of the nineteenth century. I seek to escape the pitfalls
presented by police records, particularly those commonly used in scholar-
ship that emphasizes action and reaction to decipher the meanings of slave
resistance. The focus here is on the roles of flights and fugitives within an
evolving slave culture that was strongly inflected by African ethnicities. The
Atlantic slave trade brought thousands of Africans to the streets, byways,
alleys, farms, shanties, plantations, slave quarters and mansions of the city
and its outskirts in the first half on the nineteenth century. I employ a statis-
tical analysis of arrest records, advertisements for escaped slaves and slave
demographics for Rio de Janeiro, especially when the Atlantic slave trade
peaked in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s. This methodology allows me to ad-
dress both the construction of social settings suitable for fugitives in the
city and its suburbs, and the processes in which ajuntamentos, batuques
(African drumming sessions), “casas de quilombo” (runaway slave houses)
and escape became mechanisms for reorganizing enslaved peoples’ lives and
cultures. In part, this article also suggests reflections on methodological
perspectives for thinking about slave culture and the meanings of escapes.
In many cases, the analysis of large maroon communities ends up con-
structing polarized images of the worlds of slavery (slave quarters, planta-
tions and cities) and freedom (escapes, rebellions and marronage). Through
serial sources on arrests of fugitives, police records, the impact of Atlantic
trade and advertisements for escaped slaves, it is possible to evaluate the
formation of interstitial spaces, including the development of ethnic identi-
ties and perceptions of slaves, creoles, slave owners, Africans and govern-
ment officials. The movement of groups of fugitives and petit marronage in
Rio de Janeiro, including suburban parishes such as Irajá, Inhaúma, Campo
Grande, Engenho Velho, etc., also indicate connections between the spheres
of work and slave leisure culture in the urban and semi-urban areas of the
city with the highest concentration of Africans in the Americas at the dawn
of the nineteenth century.

Worlds of Freedom
There are few studies of fugitives in urban or semi-urban settings, prob-
ably because of the difficulty of working with the sources and runaways’
supposed inability to destroy or resist the slave system. But ajuntamentos

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 76 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

of fugitives were part of the landscape in Rio de Janeiro’s city center and
suburbs in the first decades of the nineteenth century. As early as 1825, an
official decree issued by the Intendência Geral de Polícia (General Police
Directorate) ordered the pursuit of groups of fugitive slaves in several areas.
It observed that sending out troops or staging a crackdown “would be un-
successful because the criminals communicate with innkeepers in other
parts of the city.” This indicates that suburban runaway communities had
developed allies in the free population and established effective networks of
underground communication.
The studies available on runaways and their suburban maroon commu-
nities in slavocratic cities lack a suitable systemization and typology to de-
scribe the nature of the sources where information about them appears, the
contexts in which they are observed, and the frequency of complaints about
and crackdowns against them. For instance, we still know very little about
how the ebb and flow of the Atlantic slave trade influenced the phenom-
enon of petite marronage. In Rio de Janeiro, bands of fugitives – particularly
Africans – appeared in several parishes in the outskirts of the city, as well as
on the city’s slopes and hills, practically demarcating the boundaries of an
advancing urban perimeter. They often appeared near large estates, trails,
roads and farms. In the rural suburb of Inhaúma, for instance, there were
reports of “pretos quilombolas” (black maroons) near the Macado planta-
tion and on the Viscount of Alcântara’s property in 1827. These runaways
regrouped there despite the fact that the government had unleashed a
planned wave of crackdowns on groups of fugitives around the city begin-
ning in 1823.
The steep hills in Rio’s present-day neighborhoods of Tijuca, Catumbi
and Santa Tereza, adjacent to the city center, caused the authorities the most
concern. In order to stage an attack on the “quilombo de Catumbi,” the po-
lice argued that it would first be “necessary to raid and surround half the
Serra da Tijuca mountains.” However, in 1841, there were still reports of
groups of fugitives in “Catumbi Grande.” There might also have been a slight
overstatement in the report that observes that “in the back of the Caldeira
Farm in neighborhood of Rio Comprido there is a large quilombo where
there are not only blacks but also armed [military] deserters surrounded
by trenches with outposts.” In that same area, two years later, 18 blacks de-
scribed as “aquilombados” were arrested near “Ramalho’s hill, between his
farm and that of Pedro Dias in Catumbi.” As farms were located amid water-
falls, woods, hills and slopes, it was not easy to find roving bands of fugitives.
The forests surrounding the hills provided protection, and for that reason,
several residents asked the police commissioners to “remove the clearings
where the quilombolas hide.” On the other side of the forests of Tijuca –
called “Taquara and Bico do Papagaio” – in the district of Jacarepaguá, a

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 Gomes 77

“quilombo of nearly 20 slaves” appeared, “who in addition to thefts, seduce

the slaves away from neighboring owners.” They appeared (and disappeared)
in several spots at once. Regarding the fugitive named José Congo, in late
1825, he was “deemed to be in the Mãe d’água quilombo in Carioca.” Re-
ports from Engenho Velho, and later from Engenho Novo, stated that,
“across from Judge Pedreira’s farm, there several escaped slaves have gath-
ered and are forming a quilombo.” The police carried out several attacks on
the quilombos in that area in the 1820s and 30s. One that was frequently
mentioned in police records of that time was the “quilombo de Garahy.”
Advertisements and reports of arrests do not produce the stories of rebels
or heroes forged by the cruelties of slavery. Instead, they are glimpses of hu-
man lives and the experiences, plans, expectations, desires and frustrations
of thousands of Africans and creoles who were enslaved in Rio de Janeiro in
the first quarter of the nineteenth century. In September 1812, a Rio newspa-
per reported the escape of a slave named Joaquim. Who was he? A 20-year-
old African with “slightly bowed legs,” he had a “round face” and “small,
lively eyes,” and took “a jacket, trousers of blue cloth, and another [pair]
worn as a slave-for-hire” with him when he fled, along with “all his clothing,
a round black hat, boots and brass outrider’s spurs.” He had left nothing to
chance. Being a blacksmith, he had also “taken an anvil and all his smith-
ing tools.” He had been the slave of Luiz de Santana Gomes, a surgeon who
lived on Rua da Alfândega. He was also known to have had another master,
Father Reginaldo, in the parish of Santo Amaro. Apparently he intended to
“flee from the captaincy,” and so he had changed his name to Manoel.
Slave escapes set a bad example, both for the slaves in the same house-
hold and those who lived nearby. This was apparently the case at the Bene-
dictine monastery in early November 1815. The first of their slaves to flee was
Mariano, a “light-skinned mulatto.” Being a shoemaker, he was well shod
when he took his first steps on the road to freedom. The law forbade slaves
from wearing shoes, so Mariano’s footwear might have formed part of his
strategy to pose as a free man in a part of the city where no one knew him.
Later that same month, a “darker mulatto” named Florêncio tried his luck
and escaped from the monastery. An older man who worked as a tailor, he
fled barefoot. By April of the following year, there was another escape, this
time by Francisco, a blacksmith.
In many cases, the fugitives tried to pass for freedpersons. This was the
case with a slave owned by Joaquim Pereira, an African named Manoel who
was arrested and sent back from Pilar “for going about as an escaped slave
calling himself a freedman.” Another African of the same name who “said
he was a freedman” was sent back from Guaratiba. Passing for a freedperson
involved taking on important identities, such as changing one’s own name
and the name of one’s former master, or seeking protection in hiding places

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 78 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

in the city and outlying areas (perhaps by being sheltered by someone or

finding employment with other masters). Changing names (their own and
those of their owners) was a common strategy, but it did not guarantee en-
during freedom. Instead it was a passport to longer “adventures” in the free
world. That was what João, an African from Libolo, tried to achieve. His
master, Joaquim Antônio de Begonha Lobo, who lived on Rua da Quitada,
warned that he was “very astute,” and when he escaped he “customar-
ily changes his name and claims to be a freedman.” Lobo offered rewards
and even “five doblas to help [purchase] their freedom” to the slave who
provided information or located the fugitive. It is interesting that a slave
owner should offer a cash reward to the slaves that helped capture his es-
caped slave, money that could be used to obtain their own manumission in
the future.
Sent back from Icaraí (a neighborhood of Niteroi across the bay from Rio
de Janeiro) as an escaped slave, Silvéria, a black woman who said she was
“the slave of Maria Rosa” arrived in Rio de Janeiro, but it was later found
that her owner was really José Gabriel de Lacerda de Albuquerque, and
her name was Silvânia. One Antônio Moçambique, sent back from Magé,
“said in the Calabouço that his name was Simão.” In the same calaboose,
there was an African named Cassange who was arrested as an escaped
slave in Guaratiba, and it was unclear if his name was “Domingos or Fran-
cisco.” Was his owner “José Ferreira or Dona Maria Angélica”? In Jacutinga
the same questions were raised about an African from the Angola ethnic
group – was his name “Francisco José or Joaquim”?
Building the identity of a freedman also had its uses. In 1817, an African
from the Mina-Ussá ethnic group was reported to have escaped from Rua
dos Pescadores. Three years had gone by and his master, João da Costa Lima,
had found out that he was plying “his trade as a cooper on dry land, passing
as a freedman, and had been seen in the parishes of Jacarepaguá and Campo
Grande.” One Manoel Cabinda, who was arrested as an escaped slave, said
he was a freedman named José Congo. Joaquim Rebolo insisted he was a
freedman, but was discovered to belong to José Tavares, a resident of São
Gonçalo. But another Joaquim, who worked at the Naval Arsenal, seems to
have been smarter. An African of “nação and good appearance,” he said he
was a freedman named Joaquim Theodoro.
Refusing to state one’s master’s name could also be an effective strategy. It
was yet another way to hoodwink the capitães-do-mato (slave bounty hunt-
ers) and authorities. But that might not have been the only reason. It also
meant putting off the promised punishment and staying out of the vengeful
clutches of a slave owner enraged by their illicit absence. In 1817, a fugitive
African arrested in the woods on the Carmo de Iguapiassú plantation was
out of luck. He belonged to Appellate Court Judge Cláudio José Pereira da

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 Gomes 79

Costa. Described as “not very clever,” he declared that he was the “slave of an
Antônio Gomes, who lived on Rua do Rosário,” but due to “investigations
conducted,” “it was known that [such a person] did not live there,” so an
advertisement was published to find his lawful owner.

Hard-to-Control Situations
Fueled by the flow of the slave trade, which increasingly landed hundreds of
Africans on Rio de Janeiro’s shores, roving bands of fugitives made exerting
social control over the enslaved population a difficult task. It was not just a
matter of the supposed lack of overseers or the ever-present need to police
the streets. Various forms of social control were created and transformed
beyond the preventive measures taken by the owners themselves. What one
sees in the advertisements for escaped slaves reveals the politics of slavery,
those of masters and slaves, which had to be constantly redefined. The best
way to prevent further escapes was by capturing the fugitives. Documenta-
tion about runaways allows one to map the spheres of operations of fugitives
and slave hunters in the cities and their suburbs. And no less important,
capturing runaways involved paying for repressive measures, particularly
those undertaken by capitães-do-mato.
Due to the large number of arrests in Rio de Janeiro, a prison system was
set up to house captured fugitives, in this case, the Calabouço. But who would
arrest them and how would the cost of their arrest and incarceration be re-
paid? Because the capitães-do-mato customarily charged extortionate fees,
this question preoccupied slave owners. In 1828, there were complaints about
the “malice” of the capitães-do-mato who sent fugitives to the Aljube prison
(used to house common criminals) instead of the Calabouço. This was done
in reprisal “when the masters of these [fugitives] refused to pay the exorbitant
amounts they demanded for the evil purpose of causing financial harm to
those same masters [by making them] pay for the imprisonment.” Several
slave owners, particularly small farmers who were poor and had just one or
two slaves, complained that it was impossible to pay for the cost of catching
and returning fugitive slaves. In fact, the Chief of Police even handed this
problem over to the Ministry of Justice. This was due to a complaint from
Crispim José dos Santos Moreira. Slave owners had to pay small fortunes for
fugitives who were held for about two months. And local laws governing the
arrest and incarceration of slaves varied widely. It was not uncommon for
capitães-do-mato and others to attempt to negotiate directly with the slave
owners instead of following the rules in Rio de Janeiro which required that
captured runaways be sent to jail. This was the case with a pedestre (a mem-
ber of the city’s military police force) in the First District of Engenho Velho,
in 1837. After arresting Maria, a slave owned by José de Seabra Lemos, “in-

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 80 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

stead of taking her to the Calabouço, as was his sworn duty, he had kept her”
with the intention of “using the slave to extort the Master.”
The costs billed to slaveowners for tomadias (captured fugitives) changed
frequently. They were assessed on the basis of the distance captured slaves
had to be transported as well as the nature of their capture. This created
numerous conflicts, because capitães-do-mato would apprehend fugitives
in nearby towns, take them to the capital and demand payment for the
tomadias based on the greater distance, as if the fugitives had been caught
there instead. The opposite also occurred. Fugitives from the capital were
jailed in rural towns in the province of Rio de Janeiro. In 1824, a complaint
came from none other than the visiting magistrate for the towns of Macacu
and Magé, Estevão Ribeiro de Rezende, who objected to the “irreparable
financial harm” caused by the steep prices charged for capturing fugitives.
Strangely enough, there were even complaints regarding fugitives who were
“mislaid” after being captured, which occurred in the town of São João do
Príncipe. Some capitães-do-mato also complained about the extra costs and
expenses they incurred due to the “inconvenience of raiding the forests,
which involves risks and long journeys.” There were also complaints about
extortion and altered receipts for expenses such as transportation, food and
medical treatment from police, capitães-do-mato, local jails, and the Cala-
bouço in the capital.
The problems of costs and responsibilities when capturing fugitives were
even broader. The Chief of Police of Rio de Janeiro and the Minister of
Justice jointly analyzed these topics in extensive correspondence in 1832. Ac-
cording to the former, it was the custom “in the old days” for police officials
to pay the “capitães-do-mato or escorts of fugitives sent from different au-
thorities in the Province for the expenses of capture, food and transport.”
It was as if they were advancing the amount to be charged to the masters
themselves. But there was an even higher cost, because many slaves “died
in prison or were not sought by their masters.” Many belonged to “poor
and miserable people who cannot meet such expenses.” It was not feasible
for the government to cover the cost of these advance payments. Measures
were suggested that could safeguard the interests of the police and farmers,
as well as those of the pedestres and capitães-do-mato. The solution was for
the police to request more funding for their precincts so they could keep
making advance payments and cover initial costs. For one thing, the police
chief believed that this procedure “actually helped ensure that many run-
away blacks and quilombolas were turned into the Police.”
Tomadias had implications that were far larger than the competing in-
terests of slaves, police, bounty hunters, and masters. In the political econ-
omy of urban slavery, the city and its surroundings had to be dominated, in
terms of social control, in view of the fact that the enslaved created hiding

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 Gomes 81

places and spaces for socialization and the production of a slave culture.
In the first decades of the nineteenth century, the police had to request a
specialized workforce to combat runaway slaves and urban quilombos. Be-
cause the local police forces were achieving very little in concrete terms,
pedestres were brought in from Minas Gerais between 1814 and 1815, partly
to combat quilombos in the outskirts of the city, such as “the vicinity of the
Canos da Carioca, Laranjeiras, Andaraí and other nearby places.”
The old and well-known colonial practice of appointing capitães-do-
mato, particularly by city councils and local magistrates, was extended to
the urban centers of Rio de Janeiro in the early nineteenth century. Ap-
parently, it had a limited effect, despite repeated requests and the constant
distribution of titles of capitães-do-mato in suburban parishes and further
inland. In the streets of the colonial capital, capitães-do-mato were a prob-
lem instead of a solution. In addition to extorting slave owners, robbing and
stealing, they were involved in public disturbances and even with the slaves
themselves, escaped or otherwise. There is abundant information in police
correspondence about such conflicts. Most of the people named were free
men – pardos, cabras, mulatos (brown, black and mulatto) – and many freed-
men. There were even troops of soldiers and auxiliaries made up solely of
“men of color” and freemen. There were also political implications, ten-
sions and solidarities between the free and freed black population and run-
away slaves. In the urban parish of São José, at the Glória estate in 1816,
capitão-do-mato Antônio Corrêa ended up stabbing a black man named
Adão. His motives are unknown. Two years later, in Sé parish, a freedman
named Francisco da Silva got into trouble. He was also a capitão-do-mato,
and five escaped Africans had been found in his home beside São Diogo Hill.
He had been “keeping them for himself instead of handing them over to
their masters or sending them to jail.” In Inhaúma, accusations were leveled
against an “Indian” named Gonçalo Manoel, who was said to be “a vagrant,
unemployed and without a fi xed address, living in taverns, and he was the
associate of capitão-do-mato Dutra.” The two men were charged with “beat-
ing slaves from the Engenho Rancho Nossa Senhora plantation.”
The records from the Rio de Janeiro Police for 1819 and 1820 contain nu-
merous complaints involving capitães-do-mato. Many freedmen, most of
them “brown” or pardos, passed themselves off as capitães-do-mato. For ex-
ample, a pardo freedman named José Pires was arrested and charged with
“stealing a cubit and a half of blue cloth” from a soldier named Manuel de
Assumpção and “seizing blacks who were not fugitives and taking them
to the home of the capitão-do-mato.” In another case, the pardo freedman
Joaquim de Sant’Anna was “found with a bound black man [despite] not
being a capitão-do-mato.” A black freedman named Geraldo José Neto was
taken to jail from Rua São Clemente after “being found on Botafogo Beach

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 82 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

with a large stick in his hand, a pocket knife and some handcuffs, claiming
to be a capitão-do-mato.” Further off, in Cabo Frio parish, another freed
black man would be arrested and sent to the capital – one Gregório Nunes –
“for being a horse thief, stealing birds and produce, and being a capitão-do-
mato, taking advantage of his job to steal slaves,” furthermore, he lacked
a “fi xed address, uses banned weapons and disrupts the district.” Manoel
Joaquim Lopes and Manoel Vicente were locked up in the center of Rio de
Janeiro, on Rua Direita. They were making trouble and holding “a bound
slave [they] called a fugitive.” A freedman named Ponciano José de Frei-
tas and Maximiano Nunes, “who claims to be a freedman,” used to “catch
blacks they claim to be runaways and sell them to capitães-do-mato.” In
Irajá, in 1820, it was the turn of Francisco Ayres, another pardo, to fall under
suspicion. He had apprehended a fugitive, but “there is no record of where
he had delivered him.” There were also conflicts among freedmen. Pedestres
and capitães-do-mato arrested freedmen and “free men, claiming they were
runaways.” Three men who called themselves capitães-do-mato were ar-
rested while carrying weapons and charged with stealing slaves. In 1824, a
capitão-do-mato was found “unduly apprehending” slaves in Praia Grande.
Even worse, he was also stealing the money the slaves were carrying for their
jornadas [day’s wages] and to pay for the administrator’s commissions, as
well as “fabric they were taking to their shelter.” The victims were enslaved
at the farm of Lieutenant General Francisco de Paula Magessi.
Conflicts also arose among capitães-do-mato, militia soldiers and other of-
ficials. For example, capitães-do-mato were allowed to guide troops attempt-
ing to capture groups of fugitives and even attack small urban quilombos, but
they could never officially command them. In this regard, different situations
arose in the town of Araruama. In 1826, the need to use large numbers of sol-
diers and police officers to capture fugitive slaves was pointed out, although
it was “even scandalous to subject militia soldiers to the will of a capitão-do-
mato.” Two years later, three police officers arrested and later released capitão-
do-mato Romualdo Muniz de Miranda, after charging him with “having
runaway blacks in his house and failing to deliver some of them.”

Routes and demographics

Slaves in Rio de Janeiro – including thousands of Africans of varied origins –
not only escaped but began organizing spaces and territories on the city lim-
its and suburbs, both to ensure safe, long-lasting hideouts and to adapt and
reinvent their lives and cultures. Since the eighteenth century, Rio de Ja-
neiro had stood out as one of the main ports of entry for enslaved Africans
in all the colonies in Portuguese America. Based on studies by Eltis, Karasch,
Klein, Miller, Goulart and others, we know a great deal about the size and
nature of that trade. At first, Africans who disembarked in that city’s ports

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 Gomes 83

were sent to the mining areas and south. Some also remained in Rio, and
were sold to farmers in the Guanabara bay area. In the final decades of the
eighteenth century, consumption of Africans increased both in the emerg-
ing regions of the slave economy in Rio de Janeiro province – Campos dos
Goytacazes (sugar) and later the Paraíba Valley (coffee) – as well as in ur-
ban areas, which were increasingly complex and required more slave labor.
According to Goulart, during the period between 1801 and 1830 alone,
570,000 Africans arrived in Rio de Janeiro. Based on Karasch’s calculations,
that figure surpassed 600,000 between 1800 and 1843. Revising some of the
calculations in those studies, Eltis observes that between 1811 and 1830, the
number of Africans who entered Rio de Janeiro’s port reached approximately
470,000.
Mary Karasch carried out the first study of the origins of the Africans
who arrived in Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century. Based on a sample
obtained from customs records, the documents of captured slave ships and
records of taxes, arrests and burials by the Santa Casa de Misericórdia, she
classified the “origins” of the Africans as Western, Central-Western and East-
ern, aside from those considered to be of “unknown African origin.” West
Africans represented 1.5 of the total number of enslaved Africans, a figure
that could reach 7 in other sources. The Central Africans (including North
Congo, northern Angola and southern Angola) represented 79.7, and East
Africans, 17.9.
Considering the impact of the Atlantic slave trade in the first decades
of the nineteenth century, we have some evidence regarding the origins
of slaves in Rio de Janeiro based on post-mortem inventories. A sample of
997 inventories conducted between 1810 and 1830 contains a total of 12,507
slaves, 60.4 of whom were men. Analyzing just 7,550 male slaves, we find
that 25.8 were born in Brazil and 66.2 were of African origin (the ori-
gins of 8 – 607 – were unknown). Among the Brazilian-born slaves identi-
fied as creoles, 14.8 were classified as “pardos,” 6.6 as “cabra” and 3.9 as
“mulatos,” reflecting the race and color classification system used in Brazil.
Among the Africans, the origins of 94.2 (4,702) were identified, but 241
were only classified as “nação” or “de nação,” and there are also 50 other
ethnonyms of unidentified origins. The Central Africans represented the
largest number (85.6), followed by East Africans (11.1) and West Africans
(3.5). The main groups among the latter were identified as Mina, Calabar,
Cabo Verde, Nagô and São Tomé. The origins given for East Africans in-
clude Moçambique, Quilimane, Inhambane and Sena. The largest variety
of “nations” is represented by the Central Africans (4,015), whom we have
divided into North Congo (Cabindas, Congos and Muxicongos) – 27.6;
southern Angola (Benguelas and Ganguelas) – 28.7; and northern Angola
(a larger variety of Africans) – 39.8. There is also a group of other Central
Africans, which makes up 3.9.

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 84 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

Pie Chart 1. Regional Geographic Origins of African Slaves in Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830
by Percentage
Source: ANRJ, National Archives, Post-Mortem Inventories, 1810–1830.

Pie Chart 2. Regional Geographic Origins of Central African Slaves in Rio de Janeiro
by Percentage
Source: ANRJ, National Archives, Post-Mortem Inventories, 1810–1830.

While North Congo and southern Angola are well defined, including
Africans identified as Cabindas, Congos, Benguelas and Ganguelas, total-
ing 2,257 or 48 of all Africans and 56.2 of Central Africans, we find a
wide variety of Central Africans from northern Angola, especially the Baca,
Cassange, Camundá, Camundongo, Luanda, Cabundá, Songo, Monjolo and

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 Gomes 85

Rebolo peoples, aside from those known as Angolas. Other Central Africans
include the Bambuíla and Mocumbe peoples, and particularly the Mofumbe
and Mogumbe. It is important to evaluate this ethnic and classificatory situ-
ation because it had an impact on the expectations of the fugitives and their
strategies for building territories in the case of escaped slaves.
The question is how these Africans from different origins were able
to flee in the city of Rio de Janeiro and the outlying area and organize them-
selves in small groups. And how did the factor of identity facilitate, encour-
age, impede or discourage those who sought to escape? At the dawn of the
nineteenth century, the city and its suburban parishes were full of slaves
and Africans. In 1799, there were 14,986 slaves and 8,812 freedpersons in the
total population of 43,376 in the parishes of Sé, São José and Candelária. By
1821, there were 57,549 slaves in the municipality of Rio de Janeiro, including
40,376 in urban parishes and 17,173 in rural parishes. When analyzing the
population censuses for the 1830s, Karasch points out the precarious nature
of the data and estimates.
Therefore, police records are providential sources for gaining an in-
depth understanding of the escaped slaves’ worlds. Mary Karasch and Leila
Algranti were the first to use arrest records for fugitives and slaves who had
committed crimes in their studies, on the basis of which they established
geographic, quantitative and typological patterns for runaways and crimi-
nals in the City of Rio de Janeiro. Here, we propose to carry out an ag-
gregative analysis that also takes into account the identities of the Africans
arrested as escaped slaves.
Due to the increased number and frequency of slave escapes, the city in
particular organized a repressive penal and prison system run by the gov-

Chart 3. Records of Escaped Slaves in Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830

Source: ANRJ, Codice 359, Escravos fugidos – 1826; Codice 360, Lançamentos de
escravos fugidos, 1823–1831, 1volume; Codice 403, Relação de presos feitos pela polícia,
1810–1821, 3 vols; Codice 404, Lançamento dos presos remetidos pelos comissários de
polícia de várias localidades, 1827–1830, 1 vol.

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 86 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

Pie Chart 4. Regional Geographic Origins of African Slaves Captured as Fugitives in

Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830 by Percentage
Source: Ibid.

Chart 5. Regional Geographic Origins of Central African Slaves Captured as Fugitives

in Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830 by Percentage
Source: Ibid.

ernment to discourage escape attempts and hold the runaways. Captured

slaves were booked and sent to the Calabouço. We have taken into consid-
eration all arrest records for alleged runaways – between 1810 and 1830 –
including 4,409 slaves, 475 being women and 3,880 men (there were 54 arrest
records that did not indicate the gender of the captured fugitive). The rate
of capture of fugitives for 1826 and 1827 is noteworthy, being possibly less
indicative of the reorganization and effectiveness of the system of repres-
sion during that period than of under-recorded arrests in other periods. The

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 Gomes 87

Chart 6. Locations where Runaway Slaves were Captured, Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830
Source: Ibid.

records for 1826 and 1827 contain 62.3 of the total number of runways ar-
rested during the period between 1810 and 1830.
There was not only a high percentage of male slaves captured (89.1)
but most of them were African. Just 8 were Brazilian-born, 8.4 were of
unknown origins and 5.1 were recaptured Africans of unknown origins.
Considering the sites where fugitive Africans were arrested between 1810
and 1830, we have found that nearly half (47.9) were found in the suburbs.
The main sites in the city and its outskirts were Lagoa, Tijuca, Botafogo
and the city center. For the suburbs, the main parishes that appear in the
records are Irajá, Inhaúma, Jacarepaguá, Campo Grande, Guaratiba, En-
genho Velho and Ilha do Governador. The region called Bandas do Além
(“back of beyond”) was the area overlooking Guanabara Bay, and included
the parishes of Praia Grande, Icaraí, Itaipu, São Gonçalo and Itaboraí,
extending as far as Rio Bonito, Maricá and Saquarema. One of the other
main regions where fugitives were captured was the Guanabara Bay area,
encompassing Jacutinga, Pilar, Suruí, Marapicú, Iguaçu, Meriti and Gua-
pimirim. Slaves were also captured in the interior of the province, both in
the north, such as Campos and Macaé, and southern areas such as Piraí,
Resende, São João Marcos and São João do Príncipe.
Initially, we found a limited number of captured fugitives in the more
central part of the city, which lies within the innermost urban perimeter.
In this case, there could be two converging trends. The first would be the
under-reporting of captured slaves in the heart and arteries of the city. Sec-
ond, this could also be because the authorities were more concerned with
fugitives in the surrounding parishes, and those found in the city were ar-
rested by pedestres and taken directly to their masters. Escapes and arrests

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 88 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

in the heart of the city would therefore have remained invisible. Capturing a
runaway African in the city could be a herculean task, as it involved identify-
ing them in streets crowded with Africans amid the hectic comings and go-
ings of porters, grocers and other vendors and artisans. Finding protection
and anonymity was not easy for a fugitive, but the large number of arrests
made in the nearby parishes could reveal how Africans began to occupy and
determine their own social spaces. Here we can follow the construction of
“nations” and some parts of Rio de Janeiro and its suburbs.
In this case, one can visualize the routes that connected the city of Rio de
Janeiro with the suburban parishes and the Guanabara Bay region. Rather
than being divided into urban and rural settings, the city was closely con-
nected to the suburban parishes, the fastest route being by water via Guana-
bara Bay. Therefore, slaves in the surrounding rural areas – mostly Africans
in the first quarter of the nineteenth century – could reach the city relatively
quickly, and urban slaves-for-hire could hide with relatives in the country-
side, on rural farms or even in the forests and parishes on the outskirts of
the main urban parishes, such as Candelária, São José, Santana, Sacramento
and Santa Rita. In the course of their movements and migratory prospects,
escape routes and chosen hideouts took on cultural significance as they re-
flected the ethnic networks developed around African identities invented
in Rio de Janeiro’s Diaspora and refreshed almost daily by the transatlantic
slave trade.
Take for example the Mozambican runaways who were recaptured most
frequently in the following neighborhoods: Lagoa (12.3), Praia Grande
(9.8), Engenho Velho (7.9), Inhaúma (7.3) and Campo Grande (6.7).
There is a similar pattern for the Congos. They were found in Lagoa (12.6),
Praia Grande (7.4), Inhaúma (6.8), Itaguaí (6.3), Irajá (5.2) and Engenho
Velho (4.8). Here we can see a slight discrepancy, with certain groups of
Africans found in larger numbers than others in some locations. Tables 1
and 2 show the 15 main sites (parishes where fugitive slaves were arrested,
including the 10 main groups of Africans according to their “nations”).
An analysis of the data makes it possible to posit some theories about
how the Africans began to “divide” the suburban areas of Rio de Janeiro
along ethnic lines. First, we could conjecture that these figures only reflect a
trend in the slave trade. However, only one in four slaves in the inventories
analyzed was born in Brazil, while just 8 of those captured as fugitives
were creoles. Did Brazilian-born slaves flee less often, or were they harder
to catch when they did? With regard to the Africans, other questions arise.
West Africans represent 3.5 of the slaves listed in the inventories but to-
tal 5.6 of all the Africans recaptured. The biggest difference arises among
East Africans – 11 of the general slave population, but 24.6 of the escaped
Africans among recaptured slaves. The numbers for the Central Africans
shown in arrest records and inventories are more evenly balanced.

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W5445.indb 89
Table 1. Distribution of parishes/towns, per escaped Africans,
African “nations” and areas of embarkation, 1810–1830

Total num.
Parishes/Towns of Africans Moçambique % Congo % Benguela % Cabinda % Angola % NACNP ∗

Campo Grande 149 (42.7) (15.3) (18) (18) (6) 117 (78.5)
Engenho Velho 185 (42.4) (18.8) (15.1) (15.8) (7.9) 139 (75.1)
Guaratiba 64 (25.5) (29.8) (17) (17) (10.7) 47 (73.4)
Icaraí 56 (47.3) (21.1) (13.2) (13.2) (5.2) 38 (67.8)
Iguaçu 69 (40) (22) (14) (12) (12) 50 (72.4)
Ilha do Governador 61 (29.6) (20.4) (24.1) (14.8) (11.1) 54 (88.5)
Inhaúma 250 (30.7) (20.7) (25.1) (13.4) (10.1) 179 (71.6)
Irajá 180 (35.9) (21.4) (14.5) (17.5) (10.7) 131 (72.7)
Itaguaí 106 (28) (41.5) (20.7) (9.8) 0 82 (77.3)
Jacarepaguá 63 (50) (19) (16.8) (7.1) (7.1) 42 (66.6)
Lagoa 437 (29.2) (21.6) (23.8) (17.8) (7.6) 315 (72.0)
Pilar 75 (14.5) (29.1) (29.1) (10.9) (16.4) 55 (73.3)
Praia Grande 261 (37.5) (19.2) (15.4) (16.3) (11.6) 208 (79.6)
São Gonçalo 101 (34.3) (26) (28.8) (8.2) (2.7) 73 (72.2)
Vila Nova de S. 65 (31.8) (27.3) (9.1) (27.3) (4.5) 44 (67.6)
João del Rei
Total 2,122 (34.3) (22.3) (19.5) (15.4) (8.5) 1.568 (73.9)

Sources: ANRJ, Codices 359, 360, 403 and 404.

∗NACNP = Absolute numbers and concentration () of the five main “nations”: Moçambique, Congo, Angola, Benguela and Cabinda

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 90 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

Of course, we do not know if the slaves captured in a given parish es-

caped from properties and masters in the same area, or even how many
Africans there were on the properties located in those parishes. Based on
a sample of 456 Africans (in parish records) for Inhaúma between 1817 and
1842, Goés observes the predominance of those identified as being of Ben-
guela (21), Cabinda (20) and Congo (16) origin. Based on arrest records
for the period between 1810 and 1830, we located 250 Africans for that par-
ish, including 179 from the Mozambican, Congo, Benguela, Cabinda and
Angola “nations.” The Mozambicans, who represented 11 of Africans in
Goés’s data, total 30.7 of the Africans arrested in Inhaúma. The Cabindas
represent just 13.4, compared with 20 in the parish records.
In short, the grouping of Africans in “nations” in certain areas suggests
that some decided to flee and choose hiding places on the basis of their own
logic of ethnic identity. Thus, some spaces could have been taking shape on
their own terms. Once again, the most noteworthy was the concentration of
Mozambicans, in a range that would reach 50. But that percentage varied.
In Pilar parish, in the bay area, they were not in the majority, having been
supplanted by Congos, Benguelas and Angolas. In Jacarepaguá, however,
they not only made up 50 of the population but the next-largest group –
made up of Congos – was 19. In the three main parishes where Africans
were recaptured – Lagoa, Praia Grande and Inhaúma – the percentage of
Mozambicans ranged between more than 29 and less than 37.5. There
were more in some regions, such as Guaratiba and Itaguaí, in addition to
the aforementioned Pilar parish. The largest percentage of Congos was
41. in Itaguaí parish. The largest concentrations of Benguelas – an Af-
rican “nation” that was growing in the nineteenth-century slave trade
demographics – were also found in Pilar and São Gonçalo, which lay fur-
ther inland. Comparatively speaking, there was always a smaller percentage
of Angolas among the “nations,” reaching a maximum of 16.4. The most
consistent concentration in terms of percentages was the Congos, averaging
23.6. The percentages of Benguelas and Cabindas varied widely.
In Table 2, considering the smaller groups of fugitives, broken down per
location, we find more varied percentages, especially the Rebolos in Pilar
and Irajá (respectively 63.6 and 45.3), the Cassanges in Icaraí (58.3) and
the Rebolos once again, in this case in São Gonçalo (37.5). This could mean
that there was a flux of minority African groups whose identities disap-
peared or were dissolved into better-represented “nations,” particularly the
Ganguelas, Moanges and Songos, who ranged from 11 to 20 of the fugi-
tive population.
When escaping, Africans could try to find refuge in certain parts of given
parishes, and thereby form groups of “nations” with encompassing identi-
ties in the interior. The Minas, for example, maintained a joint concentra-
tion of 26.5 in the parishes of Lagoa and Inhaúma. We cannot rule out the

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W5445.indb 91
Table 2. Distribution (%) of parishes/towns per escaped Africans concentrated, per smaller
groups of African “nations” and areas of embarkation, Rio de Janeiro, 1810–1830

Total num.
Parish/Town of Africans Rebolo % Cassange % Mina % Monjolo % Cabalar % Cabundá % NACNS *

Campo Grande 149 (14.3) (25) (32.1) (25) 0 (3.6) 28 (18.8)

Engenho Velho 185 (22.9) (17.1) (20) (37.1) (2.9) 0 35 (18.1)
Guaratiba 64 (28.6) (35.8) (7.1) (21.4) (7.1) 0 14 (21.8)
Icaraí 56 0 (58.3) (16.7) (16.7) 0 (8.3) 12 (21.4)
Iguaçu 69 (20) (20) (33.3) (20) (6.7) 0 15 (21.7)
I. Governador 61 (20) (60) (20) 0 0 0 5 (8.2)
Inhaúma 250 (29) (32.3) (24.2) (11.3) (1.6) (1.6) 62 (24.8)
Irajá 180 (45.3) (11.9) (11.9) (21.4) (2.4) (7.1) 42 (23.3)
Itaguaí 106 (11.8) (17.7) (29.3) (23.5) (17.7) 0 17 (16.0)
Jacarepaguá 63 (13.3) (33.4) (6.6) (13.3) (26.8) (6.6) 15 (23.8)
Lagoa 437 (23.6) (34.4) (17.3) (7.5) (8.6) (8.6) 93 (21.2)
Pilar 75 (63.6) 0 (18.2) (18.2) 0 0 11 (14.6)
Praia Grande 261 (34.2) (24.4) (17.1) (14.6) (7.3) (2.4) 4 (1.5)
São Gonçalo 101 (37.5) (20.9) (4.2) (16.6) (4.2) (16.6) 24 (23.7)
Vila Nova de S. João 65 (18.7) (25) (6.2) (31.4) (18.7) 0 16 (24.6)
del Rei
Total 2,122 (27) (26.8) (18.2) (17.3) (6.3) (4.4) 430 (20.2)

Sources: ANRJ, Codices 359, 360, 403 and 404.

∗NACNS = Absolute numbers and concentration () of the five secondary “nations”: Rebolo, Cassange, Mina, Monjolo, Calabar and Cabundá

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 92 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

possibility that some areas or parts of given parishes became the backdrops
for the reconstruction of ethnic identities that were not necessarily exclu-
sive because they often incorporated freedpersons and slaves from other
groups (e.g., malungos—middle passage shipmates). In the parish of Irajá,
for example, there was a complaint in 1819 regarding a “house of Calundus”
owned by the black freedwoman named Maria Jacques. Her “partner and
agent” was a creole slave named Marcos. They “practiced several supersti-
tions with a group of many people and gave refuge to runaway slaves.” Four
Africans, all Benguelas, with different masters were arrested at the farm of
Councilor Francisco de Lemos. In June 1826, 19 people – most claiming to
be freedmen – were arrested “at a Quilombo, or communal house” in Lagoa.
In November of that same year, also in Lagoa, about nine Africans were
captured in “ajuntamentos de Batuque.” There were four freedmen and five
slaves, four of whom were from the Mina “nation.” The fact is that the parish
of Lagoa was a hub for fugitive slaves and military deserters. Local residents
complained “because of the constant robberies committed on their country
estates and farms” by the fugitives who lived in those parts.
The spaces that Africans could have been inventing in several areas and
parishes of Rio’s suburbs were also places of conflict. Although police re-
cords on fugitives show little evidence of any escaped slaves captured in
the heart of the city, there are numerous indications that certain areas were
havens for fugitives and Africans from certain “nations.” Several advertise-
ments containing details about the motives and probable destinations of
the runaways raise suggestions about these matters. Take Feliciano, a fugi-
tive who had been on the run for over three years. We know that “he has
been seen going to Catete where he has a brother, and for that reason is well
known in those parts,” aside from the fact that he was “very fond of black
ajuntamentos.” And José, an Angola fugitive, was said to be “in the vicinity
of Glória and Catete and taking refuge with the help of someone who was
his partner.” Some named associates, in this case, two African men named
João, both from the Angola “nation,” “used to take shelter in the shed of
a lumber merchant in Glória, but having been warned, they are roaming
about the City.”
What did it mean for runaways to “roam about the city”? Were they seek-
ing protection to prolong their successful escape? But where could they go?
Margarida, a ladina (acculturated African) runaway slave who was “brown
as a creole,” must have thought that way. It was said that she was roam-
ing “the estates of Engenho Velho, sheltered by the blacks.” Maria Congo
may have been smarter. She “always keeps company with other women, and
when she comes across people she knows, she says that they are her partners,
and she used to live on Rua São José, and it is said that she was working as a
laundress in Engenho Velho, and has been seen in Saco do Alferes and Fa-
zenda de Santa Cruz.” Catarina Benguela went even further, as she worked

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 Gomes 93

“as a greengrocer and laundress in the suburbs of this city and even trav-
eled to São Gonçalo.” The grocer Mariana, from the Quilimane “nation,”
was known to be “sheltered by blacks in waterfalls and private homes.”
Not to be outdone, despite being a runaway, the street vendor Maria Congo
continued “buying and selling milk in the countryside as well as to her cus-
tomers.” Joana, a parda woman, “used to work as a laundress in Catete and
Laranjeiras,” saying “that she was a freedwoman, and that the black man
[with her] was her husband: and now it is known that she is living in the dis-
trict of Magé under a different name, although when she is suddenly called
by her real name, she will answer to it.” When Tereza Congo went on the
lam, she was “well known for selling sweets on the Royal Santa Cruz road,
and in the parishes of Engenho Velho, Inhaúma, Irajá, Campo Grande, and
Jacarepaguá, and continues to sell liqueur and sweets that she makes to
cover up her escape.” She may have been one of those typical African char-
acters who connected and reconnected the tortuous routes of the Rio de
Janeiro suburbs. But João, from the Cassange “nation,” was not interested
in plying a trade. He “fled with a tray of sweets, but because he is ladino, he
has cast aside the tray and now carries a basket [as a porter] for hire.” One
Joana Benguela, who fled from Catete, “was seen selling cloth in the com-
pany of two black men in the streets and takes shelter in São Cristóvão at
night.” Several sites were indeed recognized as havens for fugitive slaves,
but we know little of their expectations about the identities built around
them. Near or far – in the streets in the city center or suburbs, on the edges
of farms, fields, and small and large plantations on the outskirts of Rio –
Africans seemed to have invented and reinvented not only spaces and cul-
tures, but themselves.
One sign of the thickening of urban slave culture in Rio de Janeiro based
on the experiences and movements of fugitive Africans is the mystery sur-
rounding the term “casa de quilombo” (literally “quilombo house”) that
appears in the records. It seems to refer to a place – particularly in urban
areas – where the authorities found large numbers of fugitive slaves together.
They may have been a counterpoint to the “casas de acoitamento” where
thieves and rogues hid the slaves. However, it may have been the space that
gave rise to the boarding houses (casas de angu or zungú) in Rio de Janei-
ro. With other shapes and meanings, “casas de quilombo” were not just
quilombos, which flourished all around the city. They fit in with João Reis’s
arguments regarding an episode when a quilombo was raided in Itapoã, on
the outskirts of the city of Salvador, in 1826. Ritual and religious objects
were found there. Just as in Salvador and Recife, in Rio de Janeiro, “casas de
quilombo,” “bailes” (dances), batuques and ajuntamentos were gatherings
of slaves, Africans, fugitives and freedpersons held on weekends and special
dates on a calendar of an African nature that was either sporadic or under
construction. In 1813, Elizário Antônio, Francisco Borges, Felipe Pereira,

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 94 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

Maximiano Francisco, and Inocêncio “de tal” (the equivalent of “John

Doe”) were charged with “going out at night from a quilombo where they
lived on Rua da Pedreira and making trouble.” Two years later, six Africans,
including slaves and freedpersons, “were arrested in a house on Flamengo
Beach that was found to be a haven for runaway blacks.” In 1822, the widow
Helena de Jesus, who lived at the “end of the street called Velha Guarda,”
complained that “blacks lived next door to her [in what] is presumed to be
a quilombo of runaway slaves.” The Chief of Police of Rio de Janeiro had
his headquarters on the same street. Information received from Inhaúma
years later was more detailed. Four members of a group of freedmen and
suspected runaways were arrested in a “casa de quilombo” where it was said
that “spells were cured.”

Conclusion
In Rio de Janeiro, Africans and first-generation creoles invented cultural
logics centered around escape routes, ajuntamentos and small quilombos
in an urban and semi-urban context that was strongly influenced by the
demographic force of the Atlantic slave trade. How could African fugitives
be found amongst all the slaves-for-hire, grocers and washerwomen, the
casas de angu, batuques and gatherings of Capoeiras? In terms of analy-
sis, we can articulate here both what Chalhoub has called the cidade ne-
gra (black city) and what João Reis, Marcus de Carvalho, Líbano Soares,
Mariza Soares and Martha Abreu have revealed about religious expressions,
escapes, Capoeiras, zungús, confraternities, feasts and festivities in recent
studies.
But attempts to scrutinize, quantify and produce types and patterns for
escapes and the fugitives’ motivations and supposed strategies can be lim-
ited. The sources that tell us of escapes and African fugitives are too rich
and complex to be confined to categories, indices, quantifications and ty-
pologies, and permit multiple methodological approaches. I argue that the
actions of the fugitives on the outskirts and suburbs of the city of Rio de
Janeiro – among other historical experiences – helped build up one aspect of
the slave culture involving the labor market, customs, social arrangements,
language and collective memories. More than just an act of rebellion, slave
escapes, especially in urban and suburban environments, provide the out-
lines and contours of evolving cultural and ethnic identities.
The logic behind slave escapes and their interests, motivations and strate-
gies for remaining in hiding were linked to the cultures of the Diaspora, par-
ticularly African identities in the urban and semi-urban contexts strongly
affected by the Atlantic slave trade. Recently arrived Africans, many of
whom had not even been named or baptized and were unfamiliar with their
surroundings, might have tried to escape soon after they landed on these

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 Gomes 95

shores. Others would only escape once they had devised plans and strategies
that identified and built up territories on the basis of their wants and needs
in symbolic, ritual and material terms. Some felt the need to control spaces
and expand networks and alliances. Also, running away did not just mean
breaking with the world of slavery. Through slave escapes and their mean-
ings, the institution of slavery itself, including boundaries set through nego-
tiation and conflict, could be reinvented. In the urban and suburban areas of
Rio de Janeiro, the magnitude of escapes and fugitives in terms of territories
and surrounding identities suggests ideas that should be considered about
the evidence of the formation of one African culture – among many – and
its first generations. Languages, idioms, burial practices, confraternities,
musical identities and even a work culture with an ethnic basis were being
invented and continuously modified through the masters’ experiences, pub-
lic policies, and the plans of slaves.

Notes

1. Translated from the Portuguese by H. Sabrina Gledhill. Th is study was carried

out with a grant from the CNPq. I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers of
the Luso-Brazilian Review for their critiques and suggestions. My special thanks to
Peter M. Beattie for his critiques and suggested revisions of portions of the trans-
lated paper.
2. Professor of History at the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and
Associate Professor at the Graduate History Programs at the Universidade Federal
Rural do Rio de Janeiro (UFRRJ) and Universidade Federal da Bahia (UFBA).
3. Regarding classic studies of marronage in the Americas, see: Richard Price
(org.), Maroon Societies. Rebel Slave Communities in The Americas, 2nd ed. (Balti-
more: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1979); Sociedades Cimarronas. Comu-
nidades esclavas rebeldes en las Américas (Madrid: Ed. Siglo Ventiuno, 1981) and
“Resistance to Slavery in the Americas: Maroons and their Communities” (Indian
Historical Review, no. 15, Volume 1–2, 1988–89). On Brazil, see classic studies in
Décio Freitas, Insurreições escravas (Porto Alegre: Movimento, 1976); Palmares:
A Guerra dos Escravos 3rd ed. (Rio de Janeiro: Graal, 1981); José Alípio Goulart,
Da Fuga ao Suicídio (Aspectos de Rebeldia dos Escravos no Brasil) (Rio de Janeiro:
Conquista, 1972); Clóvis Moura, Os Quilombos e a Rebeldia Negra (São Paulo: Bra-
siliense, 1981); Rebeliões da Senzala. Quilombos, insurreições e guerrilhas (Rio de
Janeiro: Conquista, 1972); Stuart B. Schwartz, “Resistance and Accommodation in
Eighteenth-Century Brazil: The Slaves’ View of Slavery.” (Hispanic American His-
torical Review, Duke University Press, vol. 57, no. 1), pp. 69–81; “Mocambos, Qui-
lombos e Palmares : A Resistência Escrava no Brasil Colonial” (Estudos Econômicos.
São Paulo, IPE-USP, volume 17, special issue, 1987), pp. 61–88. The following discuss
historiography: Suely Robles Reis de Queiroz, “Rebeldia Escrava e Historiografia”

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 96 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

(Estudos Econômicos, São Paulo, IPE-USP, volume 17, special issue, 1987), pp. 7–35;
João José Reis, “Quilombos e Revoltas escravas no Brasil – ‘Nos achamos em campo
a tratar da liberdade.’” Revista USP, (São Paulo, volume 28, December/February,
1995–6); Flávio dos Santos Gomes & João José Reis, Liberdade por um fio. História
dos Quilombos no Brasil (São Paulo: Cia das Letras, 1996) and Flávio dos Santos
Gomes, Histórias de Quilombolas: Mocambos e Comunidades de senzalas no Rio de
Janeiro — Século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 1995).
4. See João José Reis, Rebelião Escrava no Brasil: A História do levante dos Malês
(1835) (São Paulo: Brasiliense, 1986) and Marcus de Carvalho, “O Quilombo do
Malunguinho, o rei das matas de Pernambuco,” in João José Reis & Flávio dos San-
tos Gomes. Liberdade por um fio, pp. 407–432 and “O Quilombo do Catucá em
Pernambuco,” (Caderno CRH, Salvador, no. 15, Jul/Dec 1991), pp. 5–28.
5. See Donald Ramos, “O Quilombo e o sistema escravista em Minas Gerais do
século XVIII,” in João José Reis & Flávio dos Santos Gomes, eds. Liberdade por um
fio, pp. 164–192.
6. See Gad Heuman, “Introduction.” Slavery & Abolition (special issue), “Out of
the House of Bondage: Runaways, Resistance and Marronage in Africa and the New
World”), volume 6, no. 3, December/1985, pp. 1–7, and Philip D. Morgan, “Colonial
South Carolina Runaways: Their Significance for Slave Culture” (Slavery & Aboli-
tion, volume 6, no. 3, December 1985), pp. 57–78.
7. Regarding slave escapes, see also: Márcia Sueli Amantino, “Comunidades qui-
lombolas na cidade do Rio de Janeiro e seus arredores, século XIX,” in Jorge Prata de
Sousa (org.), Escravidão: Ofícios e liberdade (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Público do Rio
de Janeiro, 1998), pp. 109–134; José Maia Bezerra Neto, “Quando histórias de liberdade
são histórias da escravidão: fugas escravas na Província do Grão-Pará (1860–1888)”
(Estudos Afro-Asiáticos, Salvador, no. 36, 1999), pp. 73–96; “Fugindo, sempre fugindo.
Escravidão, fugas escravas e fugitivos no Grão-Pará (1840–1888)” (MA thesis, Uni-
camp, Campinas, 2001) and Isabel Cristina Ferreira dos Reis, “Uma Negra que fugio,
e consta que já tem dous fi lhos”: Fuga e família entre escravos na Bahia Oitocentista”
(Afro-Ásia, Salvador, 1999), pp. 29–48. See also Flávio dos Santos Gomes & Carlos
Eugênio Líbano Soares, “Em busca de um ‘risonho futuro’: Seduções, identidades
e comunidades em fugas no Rio de Janeiro escravista (século XIX)” (Locus: Revista
de História, Juiz de Fora-MG, v. 7, n. 13), pp. 9–28, 2001; “Identidades Escravas, Co-
nexões e Narrativas: Notas de pesquisas,” (Revista Sesmaria, Rio de Janeiro, v. 1, n. 1,
2001) pp. 21–45, and Flávio dos Santos Gomes, “Jogando a rede, revendo as malhas:
Fugas e fugitivos no Brasil escravista” (Tempo. Revista de História da Universidade
Federal Fluminense, Volume 01, Rio de Janeiro, 1996), pp. 67–93
8. On urban slavery in Rio de Janeiro, see Leila M. Algranti, O Feitor ausente:
Estudos de escravidão urbana no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1821 (Rio de Janeiro: Vozes,
1988); Mary Karasch, A vida dos escravos no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850. (São Paulo:
Cia. das Letras, 2000); Marilene Rosa Nogueira Silva, Negro na rua: A nova face da
escravidão urbana. (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1988) and Luís Carlos Soares, “Urban Slav-
ery in Nineteenth-Century Rio de Janeiro: 1808–1888” (University College London,
Ph.D. dissertation, 1988).
9. Arquivo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro (henceforth ANRJ, Codice 323, vol. 12,
21/10/1825, and vol. 8, 18/09/1823. See also Thomas Flory, “Fugitive Slaves and Free

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 Gomes 97

Society: The Case of Brazil” (Journal of Negro History, volume LXIV, no. 2, 1979),
pp. 116–130.
10. ANRJ, Codice 33, vol. 1, 07/04/1827; IJ6 163, 09/12/1824; Codice 323, vol. 8,
30/11/1829; Codice 331, vol.1, 1831 and Codice 324, vol.1, 05/09/1827.
11. ANRJ, Codice 327, vol. 1, 20/09/1823; 02/09/1823; 07/02/1825; Codice 333, vol. 1,
30/10/1838 and Codice 324, vol. 3, 09/02/1841 and Codice 323, vol. 13, 13/02/1834.
12. Diário do Rio de Janeiro (henceforth DRJ), 27/04/1826.
13. ANRJ, Codice 331, vol. 5, 26/04/1836; vol. 6, 15/04/1839; vol. 8, 05/05/1841;
vol. 5, 26/05/1836; Codice 332, vol. 1, 04/01/1826; Codice 331, vol. 5, 30/03/1836; IJ6
maço 185, 19/10/1837.
14. Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, 29/09/1812.
15. Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, 22/05/1816 and 23/09/1819.
16. Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, 09/08/1815, 30/08/1820. DRJ, 04/11/1826; Codice 403,
volume 1, 07/01/1813.
17. ANRJ, Codice 403, vol. 3, 23/05/1826; Codice, 360, 19/09/1826; Codice 359,
05/05/1826; 03/08/1826; Gazeta do Rio de Janeiro, 30/08/1820; Codice 359; 18/01/1826
and 23/10/1826.
18. ANRJ, Codice 323, vol. 1, 04/02/1828; IJ6 maço 171, 09/10/1835 and 25/11/1835.
19. ANRJ, Codice 331, vol. 5, 12/05/1837.
20. ANRJ, Codice 329, vol. 5, 30/03/1824; Codice 329, vol. 5, 21/04/1824; 26/04/1824;
Codice 332, vol.1, 26/01/1826; Codice 331, vol. 5, 12/05/1837 and Codice 343, vol. 1,
27/09/1833.
21. Berenice Cavalcante Brandão, et al. A Polícia e a Força Policial no Rio de
Janeiro: Estudo das Características Históricas – Sociais das Instituições Brasileiras,
Militares e paramilitares, de suas origens até 1950 (Rio de Janeiro: PUC, Dep. de
História, 1981).
22. ANRJ, Codice 323, vol. 11, 24/11/1832.
23. ANRJ, Codice 324, vol.1, 24/01/1828 and GIFI, pacote 5B 365, 24/01/1828.
24. Ver: LARA, Silvia Hunold. “Capitães-do-mato.” Campos da Violência : escra-
vos e senhores na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro, 1750–1808 (Rio de Janeiro: Paz e Terra,
1988), pp. 295–322.
25. ANRJ, Codice 332, 12/12/1825; 22/02/1826; 18/01/1826; 29/04/1826; 12/05/1826;
11/04/1826; Codice 333, vol.1, 27/01/1828; Codice 323, vol.12, 06/02/1828; 07/02/1829
e 16/11/1831.
26. See Klein, Herbert S. “Os homens livres de cor na sociedade escravista bra-
sileira,” (Dados, Rio de Janeiro, IUPERJ, number 17, 1978), pp. 3–27; Hendrik Kray.
“Politics of Race in Independence-Era Bahia: Black Militia Officers of Salvador,
1790–1840,” in Hendrik Kray. (ed.) Afro-Brazilian Culture and Politics, Bahia, 1790
to 1990s. (Armonk, New York: M.E.Sharpe, 1998), pp. 30–56; A. J. R. Russell-Wood,
The Black Man in Slavery and Freedom in Colonial Brazil (London: MacMillan
Press, 1982); “Colonial Brazil,” in David Cohen & Jack P. Greene, Neither Slave nor
Free. The Freedman of African descent in Slave Societies of the New World (The Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1972).
27. ANRJ, Codice 329, vol. 3, 11/10/1816 and vol. 4, 09/01/1818.
28. ANRJ, Codice 403, vol. 2, 20/03/1819; 07/07/1816; 19/07/1818; 16/06/1818;
19/08/1820; 22/10/1820; 16/10/1820.

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 98 Luso-Brazilian Review 47:2

29. ANRJ, Codice 329, vol. 5, 09/04/1824; vol. 5, 13/03/1824.

30. ANRJ, Codice 332, vol. 1, 20/01/1826 and Codice 333, vol. 1, 07/02/1828.
31. See Eduardo Silva. “Fugas, revoltas e quilombos: os limites da negocia-
ção.” João José Reis & Eduardo Silva (orgs.), Negociação e Conflito. A Resistência
Negra no Brasil (São Paulo: Cia. das Letras, 1989), pp. 62–78. A discussion of the
meanings of escapes and the free labor marjet can be found in Ademir Gebara,
“Escravidão; fugas e controle social” (Estudos Econômicos, São Paulo, IPE-USP,
volume 18, special issue, 1988), pp. 103–146 and “Escravos: Fugas e Fugas” (Revista
Brasileira de História, São Paulo, vol. 6, number 12, March/August 1986), pp. 89–
100.
32. Regarding the slave trade to Rio de Janeiro in the nineteenth century, see
Stephen Behrendt Eltis and David Richardson, “A participação dos países da Eu-
ropa e das Américas no Tráfico Transatlântico de escravos: novas evidências” (Afro-
Ásia, no. 24, 2001), pp. 9–50; Manolo Florentino, Em Costas Negras. Uma história
do tráfico de escravos entre a África e o Rio de Janeiro (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo
Nacional), 1994, p. 50 et seq.; Maurício Goulart, A Escravidão africana no Brasil
(das origens a extinção do tráfico) (São Paulo: Ed. Ômega, 1975), p. 154 et. seq.; Mary
Karasch, A Vida dos Escravos no Rio de Janeiro, 1808–1850 (São Paulo: Cia. das Le-
tras, 2000); Herbert Klein. “O tráfico de escravos africanos para o porto do Rio de
Janeiro, 1825–1830” (Anais de História, Assis, 1973), pp. 85–101; “The Trade in African
Slaves to Rio de Janeiro, 1795–1811,” The Middle Passage (Comparative Studies in the
Atlantic Slave Trade) (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1978), pp. 181–212;
“Shipping Patterns and Mortality in the African Slave Trade to Rio de Janeiro,
1825–1830,” in The Middle Passage, pp. 73–93 and Joseph Miller, “A Economia Política
do Tráfico Angolano de Escravos no Século XVIII,” in Selma Pantoja & José Flávio
Sombra Saraiva (orgs.), Angola e Brasil nas rotas do Atlântico Sul (Rio de Janeiro:
Bertrand Brasil, 1999), pp. 11–68.
33. Goulart, A Escravidão; Karasch, A vida dos escravos, p. 67 et. seq., and David
Eltis. The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 2000), pp. 224–257.
34. Karasch. A vida dos escravos, p. 35 et. seq..
35. David Eltis, David Richardson & Stephen D Behrendt, “Patterns in the
Transatlantic Slave Trade, 1662–1867: New Indications of African Origins of Slaves
Arriving in the Americas,” in Black Imagination and the Middle Passage (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 21–32.
36. On urban slavery, see also Marcus de Carvalho, Liberdade: Rotinas e ruptu-
ras do escravismo. Recife, 1822 1850. (Recife: Ed. Universitária, 1998); Sidney Chal-
houb, Visões da liberdade. Uma história das últimas décadas da escravidão na Corte
(São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 1990); Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares, Zungu:
Rumor de muitas vozes (Rio de Janeiro: Prêmio Arquivo Estadual, 1998) and Maria
Cristina Cortez Wissenbach, Sonhos africanos, vivências ladinas: Escravos e forros
no Município de São Paulo, 1850–1888 (São Paulo: Hucitec, 1993).
37. See Thomas H. Holloway, Polícia no Rio de Janeiro. Repressão e Resistência
numa cidade do século XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Ed. FGV, 1997).
38. The data for 1826 and 1827 are definitely repeated, taking into account all four
codices studied.

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 Gomes 99

39. Mary Karasch analyzes the sites where fugitives were arrested using Codice
359.
40. See José Roberto Goés, O cativeiro Imperfeito. Um estudo sobre a escravidão
no Rio de Janeiro da primeira metade do século XIX (Vitória, ES: Lineart, 1993),
pp. 59–60.
41. Regarding the ethnic identities of Africans in the diaspora, see Paul Lovejoy,
“Identifying Enslaved Africans in the African Diaspora,” Identity in the Shadow of
Slavery (London and New York: Continuum, 2001), pp. 1–29, and Kristin Mann,
“Shift ing Paradigms in the Study of the African Diaspora and of Atlantic History
and Culture,” Slavery & Abolition, volume 22, number 1, April 2001, pp. 3–21. See
also the classic work by Sidney W. Mintz & Richard Price. O Nascimento da Cultura
Afro-Americana. Uma Perspectiva antropológica (Rio de Janeiro: Pallas, 2003). On
Brazil, see Robert W. Slenes, “‘Malungu, Ngoma vem!’: África coberta e descoberta
no Brasil” (Revista USP, no. 12, Dec/Jan/Feb, 1991–1992).
42. See Maria Inês Côrtes de Oliveira, “Viver e morrer no meio dos seus. Na-
ções e comunidades africanas na Bahia do século XIX” (Revista USP, São Paulo,
no. 28, Dec/1995 and Feb/1996); João José Reis, “Tambores e temores: A festa negra na
Bahia na primeira metade do século XIX,” Maria Clementina Pereira Cunha (org.).
Carnavais e outras f(r)estas. Ensaios de História Social da Cultura (Campinas, SP:
Editora da Unicamp, Cecult, 2002), pp. 101–156; “Batuque negro: repressão e permis-
são na Bahia oitocentista,” in István Jancsó & Iris Kantor (orgs.), Festa: Cultura &
Sociabilidade na América Portuguesa (São Paulo: HUCITEC, EDUSP/Fapesp, Im-
prensa Oficial, 2001, volume 1), pp. 339–360; “Candomblé in Nineteenth-Century
Bahia: Priests, Followers, Clients” (Slavery & Abolition, volume 22, number 1, April
2001), pp. 116–134, and Stuart B. Schwartz. “Cantos e Quilombos numa conspiração
de escravos haussás,” Gomes & Reis, eds., Liberdade por um fio, pp. 332–372.
43. ANRJ, Codice 403, 29/06/1826; Codice 360, 20/11/1826; Codice 323, 07/07/1824;
IJ6 163, 1824; Codice 333, 03/03/1828 and GIFI 6 D5, 05/12/1837; Codice 403, 30/04/1819
and 06/05/1813. Karasch also calls attention to the number of escaped slaves cap-
tured in Lagoa. See Vida Escrava, p. 406 et. seq..
44. DRJ, 04/01/1826; 06/04/1826; 15/04/1826; 17/04/1826.
45. DRJ, 09/06/1826; 16/06/1826; 03/07/1826; 19/08/1826; 16/09/1826; 26/10/1826.
46. See Marcus de Carvalho, “Quem furta mais e esconde: O roubo de escra-
vos em Pernambuco, 1832–1835” (Estudos Econômicos, São Paulo, volume 17, 1987),
pp. 89–110, and Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares. Zungu, 1998.
47. ANRJ, Codice 401, vol.1, 23/03/1813; 12/07/1815; Codice 327, vol. 1, 04/09/1822;
Codice 403, volume 3, 06/06/1826 and 29/06/1826.
48. In addition to studies by João José Reis and Marcus de Carvalho, see Martha
Abreu, O Império do Divino. Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares. Zungu; A negregada
instituição: os capoeiras na Corte Imperial, 1850–1890 (Rio de Janeiro: Acess, 1998)
and Mariza de Carvalho Soares, Devotos da cor. Identidade étnica, religiosidade e
escravidão no Rio de Janeiro, século XVIII (Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira,
2000).
49. See Juliana Barreto Farias, Carlos Eugênio Líbano Soares & Flávio dos San-
tos Gomes, No labirinto das nações. Africanos e identidades no Rio de Janeiro, século
XIX (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2005).

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