History of Slavery
Code
711051145
Academic unit
Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas
Department
História
Credits
6
Teacher in charge
Diogo Ramada Curto
Weekly hours
4
Teaching language
Portuguese
Objectives
1. To promote a general reflection concerning the use of conceptual tools in history, and more specifically a comparative
analysis of societies based on slavery.
2. To understand historically various devices of violence, negotiation, obedience and revolt associated with slave societies.
3. To introduce students into a variety of primary sources covering the history of slavery, including serial events, normative
and juridical discourses, as well as forms of representation witnessing slave agency.
4. To introduce students into the basic bibliography and oeuvres de référence, in order to identify what are the main
questions of a history of slavery.
5. To invite students to think about the question of moral and political values ascribed to a history of slavery.
Prerequisites
None
Subject matter
1. For a comparative history of slavery.
James Walvin, Uma história da escravatura
2. The beginnings of slavery.
Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, O mercado da mão-de-obra e os escravos, in Idem, Os Descobrimentos e a Economia
Mundial, pp. 151-206.
3. Slave societies: the case of Cape Vert.
António Carreira, Cabo Verde: Formação e extinção de uma sociedade escravocrata (1460-1878)
4. Slave societies: the case of Mozambique
José Capela, Escravatura: conceitos
5. Slave societies: the case of Angola
Isabel Castro Henriques, A Angola do século XIX: a presença portuguesa, os documentos e os conhecimentos, in Idem,
Percursos da modernidade em Angola, pp. 1-149.
6. Between the formation of the South Atlantic to slave exploitation in Brazil
Silvia Hunold Lara, Campos da violência: Escravos e Senhores na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro 1750-1808; Luiz Felipe de
Alencastro, O Trato dos Viventes: formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII.
Bibliography
1. James Walvin, Uma história da escravatura, trad. Jorge Palinhos (Lisboa: Tinda da China, 2008).
2. António Carreira, Cabo Verde: Formação e extinção de uma sociedade escravocrata (1460-1878), 3.ª ed. (Praia: Instituto
de Promoção Cultural, 2000).
3. Silvia Hunold Lara, Campos da violência: Escravos e Senhores na Capitania do Rio de Janeiro 1750-1808 (Rio de Janeiro:
Paz e Terra, 1988).
4. Luiz Felipe de Alencastro, O Trato dos Viventes: formação do Brasil no Atlântico Sul, séculos XVI e XVII (São Paulo:
Companhia das Letras, 2000).
5. Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Livros brancos, almas negras. A missão civilizadora do colonialismo português c. 1870-1930
(Lisboa: ICS, 2010).
Teaching method
Classes are divided between lectures and more interactive ones. During the former, the instructor follows the syllabus,
searching always to promote the debate around the most controversial points. In the interactive classes, the instructor
guides students through the range of interpretations suggested by documents and the main historiographical dossiers.
Office hours dedicated to tutorial sessions serve to clarify possible doubts, as well as to provide supervision to the
development of individual research works.
Evaluation method
Evaluation requirements articulates three different aspects, to which will be associated the same value: (i) written exam, (ii)
an essay around a single topic, one book or a small group of documents (5 thousand typefaces), (iii) and oral participation
of the students in all classes.