The Boundaries of Freedom: Slavery, Abolition, and the Making of Modern Brazil

Racial democracy: For a long time, this was the term used to explain race relations in Brazil. Although its origins date back to the mid-nineteenth century, the concept gained broader—especially international—recognition from the 1930s onward, particularly after the publication and warm reception of The Masters and the Slaves by Gilberto Freyre in 1933. In broad terms, the idea held that Brazil’s highly mixed population was the result of supposedly more peaceful and harmonious racial relations, especially when compared to societies in which segregation was legally enforced, through, for example, Jim Crow laws in the United States or apartheid in South Africa.Social movements and intellectuals, however, have long denounced racial democracy as a well-orchestrated myth, masking the ways that racism and systemic violence have shaped Brazilian history and society. In this regard, The Boundaries of Freedom is a crucial work that dismantles this myth by offering a critical analysis of Brazilian history, highlighting the limits of freedom during the period of slavery (1500–1888) and in the postabolition era.Organized by historians Brodwyn Fischer and Keila Grinberg—both leading scholars in their fields—the book brings together a group of renowned Brazilian and international historians. It invites readers, particularly Anglophone audiences, to reexamine Brazilian history with close scrutiny. The book is structured into four sections, each addressing core aspects of Black experiences of slavery, freedom, and citizenship. Drawing on a wide range of documentary sources, the contributors provide interpretations that reveal not only the enduring legacy of slavery and racist reorganization in post-1888 Brazil but also the agency and resistance of Black men and women—Africans and crioulos (criollos), enslaved, freed, and free.The first section focuses on imperial Brazil, revealing aspects of its legal organization and the precariousness of freedom at that time. In this section, Grinberg and Beatriz Mamigonian analyze the precariousness of freedom for Black people—particularly free Africans—by examining legal frameworks of the Brazilian Empire (1822–89). Marcus de Carvalho interprets diplomatic records against the grain to show that illegal trafficking of enslaved children persisted in Pernambuco, supported by local networks. Ricardo Salles and Mariana Muaze explore the lives of slaves on coffee plantations in Rio de Janeiro’s Paraíba Valley, showing through inventories and wills that slave life extended beyond the senzala, involving emotional networks and mobility. Muaze focuses on domestic spaces and the violent experiences of enslaved women, especially wet nurses, who, despite some material “privileges,” remained trapped in a logic of dehumanization. Grinberg revisits diplomatic archives to show how slavery and its contestation shaped border relations between Brazil and Uruguay, especially in areas deemed “free land.”The second section highlights the limits of freedom from various angles. Drawing on letters and court petitions, Maria Helena P. T. Machado reconstructs the daily lives of women in the Paraíba Valley, showing how their freedom was marked by exploitation and restricted autonomy. Fischer’s contribution investigates Recife’s urban life through newspapers, criminal cases, and administrative sources, illustrating that freedom in the city was fragile and ambiguous, constantly under surveillance. Robson Martins and Flávio Gomes use legal petitions and oral histories to show how formerly enslaved people fought for land and autonomy in a racially hostile environment.The silencing and subjectivities of Black intellectuals is the theme of the third part of the book, where Celso Castilho and Rafaella Galvão begin by analyzing the Black press in Recife, focusing on the newspaper O Homem, which played a pivotal role in breaking the silence on race and advocating for abolition as a racial issue. Wlamyra Albuquerque examines the life of Teodoro Sampaio, a prominent Black intellectual and politician, showing how racism and restricted citizenship shaped his public life. A chapter by Ana Flávia Pinto argues that the Brazilian Republic (1889) failed to deliver on racial inclusion, based on the Black press’s search for alternative political action. Hebe Mattos draws on personal letters and press articles to explore the international journey of Black abolitionist André Rebouças, whose reflections reveal personal turmoil in the wake of both the celebration and disillusionment of freedom.The fourth and final section sheds light on life after abolition, adding complexity to the postabolition period. Daryle Williams’s chapter offers a reinterpretation of the famous painting The Redemption of Ham (1895) by Modesto Brocos, seen as a visual expression of both slaveholding nostalgia and racialized modernity. Sueann Caulfield analyzes the postabolition practice of raising illegitimate children in elite households, showing the persistence of racial hierarchies within family structures. Finally, Martha Abreu offers a transatlantic comparison of Black artists Eduardo das Neves (Brazil) and Bert Williams (United States), showing how their artistic achievements were shaped—and limited—by the racial expectations of the time.Although it spans different moments and regions of Brazil, The Boundaries of Freedom does not claim to fully represent the regional diversity that shaped the experiences of enslaved, freed, and free people across the country, nor does it aim to cover the multiple historiographical approaches developed in Brazil over recent decades. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the perspectives chosen by the authors contribute to a more complex understanding of the human experiences of Black men and women who lived under the rule of slavery and under the promise of a freedom that was not always realized. It is a difficult perspective, but one that also opens the door to new avenues of research. Finally, it is important to highlight that the book can also be understood as a direct challenge to the construction of Brazil’s misleading notion of racial democracy, reinforcing the idea that the country still lives with a present past when it comes to the persistence of its racist violence.