Das fronteiras incertas entre o trabalho livre e a escravidão: As leis de locação de serviços no século XIX e suas interpretações historiográficas

Abstract

This work aims to understand the uncertain boundaries between free labor and slavery in the 19th century. In this sense, they were analyzed as ways found by the ruling classes to then try to regulate and control the work of the free and free, through the laws of renting services in the nineteenth century. To this end, we will make a historiographical balance on the subject, as well as a brief analysis of sources such as laws for renting services and parliamentary annals in division to discuss the subject in the political policies of the empire. The parliamentary speeches, held from May to July 1884, are an important part of the research as they reveal some of the views of the political elite about the work of free and freed men. We sought to establish a dialogue between bibliography and sources, in order to understand the blurred borders between the world of slavery and the world of free labor. These worlds came to coexist, before abolition, in a complex network of contradictions and ambiguities. The common research also understands how the ruling classes of the nineteenth century, when thinking about the inevitable end of slavery and still supported by a slave mentality, sought to regulate free work.